Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama “The Fabelmans” won the Toronto International Film Festival’s top prize, the People’s Choice Award, cementing its status as an Oscar favorite.

The Toronto People’s Choice Award was announced Sunday at the conclusion of the 47th edition of North America’s largest film festival, its first large-scale gathering in three years. The return of crowds to TIFF has led to the world premieres of a number of popular attractions, including ‘The Woman King’, directed by Viola Davis; “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” by Rian Johnson and “Bros” by Billy Eichner.

The Toronto audience’s choice, voted for by festival cinephiles, is a much-watched harbinger of the upcoming awards season. For the past ten years, the TIFF winner has been nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars and often won. Last year, the winner was “Belfast”, by Kenneth Branagh. The previous year, Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” won the TIFF award before winning the Oscar. Other winners include “12 Years a Slave”, “La La Land” and “Green Book”.

This year, the festival’s most anticipated film was “The Fabelmans,” based on Spielberg’s memoir of his childhood. In the film, which Universal Pictures will release Nov. 11, Michelle Williams and Paul Dano play the parents, and Gabriel LaBelle the teenage Spielberg.

“This is the most personal film I’ve ever made and the warm welcome from everyone in Toronto made my first visit to TIFF so intimate and personal for me and my entire ‘Fabelman’ family,” said Spielberg in a statement read by Cameron Bailey. , director of the festival.

Runner-up to take home the award was Sarah Polley’s “Woman Talking,” which is about women in a Mennonite neighborhood who come together to talk about decades of sexual abuse. In third place was Johnson’s “Glass Onion,” the director’s mystery sequel for Netflix.

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Jake Coyle is on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/jakecoyleAP