Why has the Toronto International Film Festival in Toronto suddenly become the hottest ticket in the movie world these last few years?
Simple: because here, the audience is king.
Along King Street, the main festival strip, there are seven or eight massive theaters. Every single screen is showing festival entries, and right outside each auditorium there's a ballot box. If a movie wrecks you (in the best way), you drop your ticket stub in the box on your way out. That's literally how the big prizes are decided.
No jury. No critics' circle. Just regular people voting with their hearts.
It's insane: people start lining up at 4 a.m. for the really hyped films. Tickets for the buzziest titles sell out faster than Coachella passes. Your only other options? Volunteer for the festival (three free tickets as payment) or flash a press badge. Blue badges get you anywhere, red ones have some restrictions, and yellow? Good luck—you're stuck in whatever theater they assign you.
Joey's new movie, Millionaire from the Block, definitely had buzz, but the subject matter, the R rating, and the fact that it centered on an Asian-American woman kept the walk-up crowds smaller than the blockbusters. People were curious, sure, but when push came to shove, most grabbed tickets for safer bets: Will Smith's feel-good The Pursuit of Happyness, Kate Winslet's Oscar-bait The Reader, or some cheap, creepy horror flick everybody was talking about.
You could hear it in the lobby chatter:
"I love Joey, but an Asian slum drama? Not really my thing."
"She's going super niche with the minority stories. Respect, but… I'm not running to see it."
"Yeah, I'm sure it's another 'American Dream' movie, but that world feels so far from mine."
So yeah, tons of folks milled around the theater 5 asking questions, but hardly anyone actually went inside. Tickets were gold; nobody wanted to gamble on something "risky."
Then the very first public screening of Millionaire from the Block went on sale.
The line was… polite. Embarrassingly short compared to the one snaking around the block for the Will Smith movie.
A handful of die-hard fans and curious walk-ups filed in. Lights down.
The movie opens with a shaky, handheld shot: decades-old American slums, trash everywhere, chaos, grit.
"Whoa, why is the camera shaking so much? I'm getting nauseous."
"Dude, chill. That's the point. It feels real."
Then Maggie Q appears on screen.
"Holy hell, she is STUNNING. We have Asian girls this hot??"
"Look at those legs, man."
From there, the air in the theater got heavy. You could hear a pin drop. The tension, the depression of living as a poor Asian immigrant back then was suffocating in the best way.
Then she wins that lottery money, and the whole room exhaled for the first time in twenty minutes.
But the heaviness came roaring back: family pressure, boyfriend bailing, a mom who tears her down constantly.
Maggie played every second of it so naturally it hurt.
"She's gonna blow up after this. Gorgeous and that good?"
"I literally can't look away."
This tiny, broke girl who refuses to be broken. There's a scene where she can't afford a train ticket, so she curls up under the seats, shoes stomping inches from her face while she quietly cries.
The entire theater cried with her.
Later, when her mom screams, "How are we supposed to survive?!" and Maggie, bruised and exhausted, looks her dead in the eye and says, "Love," half the audience lost it.
By the time she claws her way from nothing to building an empire (the "queen of cleaning products," sunglasses on, walking away like a total badass), people were cheering through tears.
Credits roll. One last card pops up:
"Thanks for watching. Stick around for a post-credit scene. – Joey Grant"
People were still wiping their faces.
"Did it just end?"
"I feel… wrecked. Like, good wrecked, but I can't explain it."
"Bro, same. My chest hurts and I don't even know why."
Nobody could quite put it into words. The movie wasn't flawless, but when you tried to name a single thing wrong with it… you couldn't. Every shot, every line felt hand-crafted. Even the ugliness was beautiful. The whole thing pulsed with this stubborn, unstoppable life force.
Yeah, it was raw and uncomfortable watching decades-old poverty and racism laid so bare, but that discomfort melted away because you could feel the strength pouring off the screen. Female strength. The kind Joey's fans already knew and loved.
It was just chicken-soup-for-the-soul stuff: little person beats impossible odds. Everyone knows that story. And yet every single person in that theater swallowed it whole and wanted seconds.
Maybe because 2008 had everyone terrified: layoffs, foreclosures, 401(k)s turning to dust. People were desperate for proof that you could still win, even when the world felt like it was ending.
Whatever the reason, when the lights came up, the ballot box outside that auditorium got absolutely stuffed. People weren't just voting; they were practically sprinting to drop their tickets in.
Over the next few days the weirdest thing happened: foot traffic to Millionaire from the Block stayed modest, but the vote count went through the roof. Pretty much 100% of everyone who saw it voted for it.
Critics and bloggers who caught screenings were floored. Ryan Fields from Variety wrote:
"We are in the presence of something great… Hollywood polish with relentless suspense, fairy-tale hope wrapped in epic scope, European-style humanity, and Joey Grant's razor-sharp vision. The rhythm is unlike anything I've felt in years."
Most of the industry still didn't get it. They saw a solid, slightly manipulative rags-to-riches flick that trafficked in poverty porn. Fine, but Best of Fest material? No way.
Then the final tally came in.
Millionaire from the Block didn't just win the People's Choice Award at Toronto.
It annihilated everything else. The margin was obscene.
The Hollywood Reporter's on-the-ground headline the next day said it best:
"In a festival full of tears you never saw coming, an underdog story about America's Asian underclass just became the biggest Cinderella run we've ever witnessed."