As always before the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York film festivals, many questions are swirling around about the soon-to-be-truly-kicking-off Oscar season. And as always, Venice, Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF will at least partially answer some of those questions while launching brand-new ones.
Either way, these are the biggest questions of the fall festival season leading up to Venice’s opening night on August 28th, Telluride’s opening on August 30th, TIFF’s opening on September 5th, and NYFF’s on September 27th. Hopefully, some of them will get somewhat close to being answered by New York’s closing night on October 14th.
Will fall festivals actually decide the Oscar race again?
Technically, fall festivals haven’t played a role in deciding the Best Picture winner for three years, except in clearing the competition for spring-summer premieres “CODA,” “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and “Oppenheimer” to win. It’s also quite possible that the eventual Best Picture winner has screened early this year too unless something at Venice, Telluride, Toronto, or New York leaps ahead of “Sing Sing,” “Anora,” “Dune: Part Two” and “Emilia Perez” in the next few weeks and beyond.
But after a 2022 season where only two above-the-line Oscar winners debuted at a fall festival and a 2023 season where only three of them did, is this the year where we go back to Venice, Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF launching most of our significant winners, again? For that, hopes may hinge on projected Best Picture contenders like “Blitz,” “Conclave,” and “Nickel Boys,” Best Director early favorites Steve McQueen and Edward Berger, Best Actor preseason picks Daniel Craig, Joaquin Phoenix, and Ralph Fiennes, Best Actress favorites Angelina Jolie, Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, and Lady Gaga, possible Supporting contenders like Samuel L. Jackson, Stanley Tucci, Danielle Deadwyler, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Isabella Rossellini and Tilda Swinton, and any other surprise discoveries.
Will there be a true Best Picture favorite after the fall festivals?
It’s not just the lack of an “Oppenheimer” or “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that has caused so much early uncertainty this year. Last year, before fall festivals, most of us felt that Best Picture would come down to “Oppenheimer” vs. “Killers of the Flower Moon” until the latter started dropping off. In 2022, most everyone was comfortable with “The Fabelmans” as the preseason favorite even before its TIFF win and before the rise of “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” In 2021, it was a foregone conclusion that “Belfast” and “The Power of the Dog” would be the two early favorites after fall festival season, and most pundits viewed “Mank” or “The Trial of the Chicago 7” as the unseen favorites before “Nomadland” launched at Venice in 2020.
2024 doesn’t have any seen or unseen heavy favorites to win it all right now, as “Sing Sing” is nowhere near a comfortable default favorite, “Anora” and “Emilia Perez” have a lot more to do after Cannes, and there isn’t 100% total confidence in the biggest projected festival premieres. But after they screen, will we still be heavily divided over what the early Best Picture favorite is – perhaps more so than we’ve been this entire decade? Or will we finally feel confident that one or two films are comfortably ahead of the pack, regardless of whether they can stay that way?
Will we be in limbo until “Blitz’s” London/New York doubleheader?
Maybe the above question can’t be answered until this one is right at the tail end of festival season. Even after Venice, Telluride, and TIFF are finished, and its big winners are chosen, “Blitz” will still be the big elephant in the room for a few more weeks until it opens the London Film Festival on October 9th and goes to New York exactly one day later. For all the questions about its festival strategy, Apple’s lack of a theatrical co-distributor, and whether faith in McQueen alone is keeping it ahead in preseason charts, this is the last major piece of the puzzle that the festivals will fill in – one way or another.
If “Blitz” lives up to or exceeds expectations in these two opening screenings, will it become the de facto Best Picture favorite for the foreseeable future – to say nothing of whether it puts both McQueen and Saoirse Ronan in line for their long overdue individual Oscars? On the other hand, if the first word is good but not quite win competitive good, or something far worse, what kind of holes and opportunities would a “Blitz” downfall create for the rest of the field – whatever it may look like by October? Either way, the fall festivals seem poised to leave a lot hanging right to the very end.
How will Cannes favorites fare in North America?
Not all world premieres are coming to Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF. Four of Cannes’ biggest premieres in “Anora,” “Emilia Perez,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” and “All We Imagine as Light” will make their North American debuts in all three festivals as they reach the next crucial leg of their campaigns.
“Anora” could conceivably at least place in Toronto after winning at Cannes, just like Cannes and eventual Best Picture winner “Parasite” did in 2019 – although last year’s Cannes winner “Anatomy of a Fall” didn’t need to do that to win Best Original Screenplay. In any case, “Emilia Perez” seems to be making a far bigger play for the TIFF People’s Choice Award with seven scheduled screenings so far and would undoubtedly leap up the early Oscar ranks if it pulled it off. But since “Emilia Perez” didn’t have the unanimous raves at Cannes that “Anora” and a few others did, how loudly will raves from new audiences drown out any old and new critics?
Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF are also big tests for foreign critical darlings such as “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and “All We Imagine as Light.” If raves for those films keep getting louder, will they impact the Best Picture bubble along with the Best International Feature race?
What might this year’s “American Fiction” or “All Quiet on the Western Front” be?
Even among the Cannes holdovers and the Venice/Telluride/TIFF/NYFF world premieres, something that no one sees coming in mid-August will surely emerge as a major player by mid-September. After all, “American Fiction” was on very few radars until it won TIFF in 2023 and won Best Adapted Screenplay six months later, and “All Quiet on the Western Front” had a very quiet opening screening at TIFF that launched the eventual second-biggest Oscar winner of 2022.
Of course, if it were easy to pick which film would be the next, “American Fiction” or “All Quiet on the Western Front,” they wouldn’t be so undervalued right now, to begin with. In any case, some pundits are already beating the drums for underpriced films like “The Brutalist” and “Saturday Night” to storm into the Best Picture field, so it can’t be said no one saw them coming if they do win big at Venice and TIFF. And even if “The Wild Robot” wins the TIFF People’s Choice and breaks into the Best Picture conversation, its 10 TIFF screenings were certainly an early clue.
Maybe Ron Howard makes a sudden comeback into awards season with “Eden” from TIFF, or perhaps the Venice opener with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” really isn’t as head-scratching and entirely commercial as it first looked. Or maybe the big surprise of the fall fests is that there are no game-changing surprises this time.
What category placement twists will shock us right after TIFF this year?
In the last two years, just when everyone was starting to relax and fill out their projected fields after Venice, Telluride, and TIFF, a stunning announcement about someone’s category placement shook up the race days later. And in those last two years, it happened when a presumed unanimous Best Supporting Actress favorite was promoted to Best Actress instead – Lily Gladstone last year and Michelle Williams in 2022.
Leaving aside how both lost Best Actress after everyone practically engraved a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for them in mid-September – and how neither of their films won a single Oscar either – any similar shockwaves would probably come from elsewhere this year. For one thing, the early Best Supporting Actress field doesn’t have a Gladstone or Williams-esq heavy preseason favorite to bump this year. For another, some like Variety’s Clayton Davis have been insisting that presumed Best Actress contenders like Lady Gaga and Ronan’s “Blitz” performance will be dropped into Supporting instead – although Venice and New York audiences will see if that has any merit before long.
Maybe it will be the male categories shaken up this year, as Variety also predicts Denzel Washington will go from Supporting Actor to Lead for “Gladiator II,” despite already having a lead in Paul Mescal. But if that or some other move drastically shakes up an acting race or two, recent history suggests we’ll find out just days after TIFF.
Will any room be left for post-festival movies this year?
Last year made history and/or infamy, as it was the first year since the Best Picture ballot expansion that no film premiering after the fall festivals got nominated. For that matter, the only major nomination for any film that first screened after the festivals was Danielle Brooks’ Best Supporting Actress nod for the otherwise ignored “The Color Purple.” Moreover, 2022 only brought two major nominations for post-fall-fest films, “Avatar: The Way of Water’s” Best Picture nomination and Angela Bassett’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” Supporting Actress recognition.
Since a record six Best Picture nominees premiered before fall in 2023, and the other four came from fall festivals, that partly explains last year’s drought for winter movies. But with a less crowded pre-fall field of contenders this year, and with the likes of “A Complete Unknown,” “Gladiator II,” and “Wicked” waiting in winter, will there be enough fall festival hits to completely fill out the fields before Thanksgiving this time? If there isn’t, that puts a lot more pressure on the post-fall-fest premieres to really deliver—otherwise, 2024 would risk having a pretty wobbly Best Picture field.
How will our first “normal” fall festival gauntlet in years look?
Whether the festivals deliver more hits than bombs or make this year’s overall field look stronger or weaker, this season will be the closest thing to business as usual in some time.
After the pandemic crippled the 2020 and 2021 fall fests, after 2022 tentatively inched back to normal, and after the strikes hung over the mood and guest lists of the 2023 festivals, 2024 finally looks like the first regular, asterisk-free year of the festival season since 2019. All the stars that Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York could want are coming back, all screenings are in person, and no Hollywood or global crisis is in the way.
Barring unforeseen tragedy, this is expected to be the first time in five years that no ongoing disaster or the lingering effects of one disrupts the running of the festivals. That alone would be enough to make this season a total win, regardless of how the actual movies turn out—but greatness from the films and our possible future Oscar winners would be a nice bonus, too.
How do you think the fall film festivals will shape the Oscar race? What are some of your biggest questions as we head into this uncertain period of time where the race could very well be decided? Please let us know in the comments below or on Next Best Picture’s X account and be sure to check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
You can follow Robert and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars & Film on X @Robertdoc1984
