New Zealander Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit” won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. The festival has in years past been seen as a bellwether for the Academy Awards.

“Jojo Rabbit” is a satire about a 10-year-old German boy Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) during World War II. He finds out his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a young Jewish girl (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic and turns to Adolph Hitler (Waititi), his imaginary friend, for help.

Last week, Waititi was awarded the Toronto International Film Festival’s new Ebert Director Award, with the festival’s co-head Cameron Bailey praising his “razor-sharp humor, faultless style and boundless generosity.”

Among the most popular films by the half-Maori, half-Jewish director is “Thor: Ragnarok,” a 2017 superhero film based on the Marvel Comics character Thor. He is also known for “Boy” and “Hunt for the Wilderpeople.”

In the past 20 years, the Grolsch People’s Choice Award winner, selected based on voting by audiences at the Toronto festival, has gone on to win the Oscar for best picture five times — “Green Book” last year, “12 Years a Slave,” “The King’s Speech,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “American Beauty." Two Toronto runner-ups, “Spotlight” and “Argo,” also won Oscars during that time. 

Toronto Film Festival award winners have been nominated for best picture Oscars in all but one year in the past decade. 

The prize offers 15,000 Canadian dollars in cash and a custom award. The runners-up are Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” and Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite.” Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s “The Platform” won the festival’s Midnight Madness genre film award, and the documentary award went to Feras Fayyad’s “The Cave.”