The best time of Oscar season is usually in the first few official weeks of it, as ominous as that makes the rest of the season sound. Nonetheless, the opening gauntlet of the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto Film Festivals is once more shaping to be the most exciting two-and-a-half weeks of the year, from the first major premieres at Venice on August 28th to the announcement of the TIFF People’s Choice winners on September 14th. And in those 18 days, some massive answers about the Oscar race to come will be revealed, whether we see them clearly now or in several months.
To that end, here are the major questions we all have going into Venice, Telluride, and TIFF, which will hopefully be answered in the next three weeks.
Where will “Sinners” stand when the fall fest dust settles?
While “Sinners” premiered months ago and is nowhere near the fall festivals, it is still hanging over them in a way. It had very little competition as the biggest potential Oscar contender from the year’s first eight months, but now it is about to see what it is really up against this season. After the fall festivals, we can figure out if “Sinners” is actually a truly serious threat to win it all, if it is still safe to get into Best Picture but will be crowded out of winning anything significant, or if the fall festivals will swarm in enough contenders to push “Sinners” all the way down into the bubble.
This is kind of where “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” “Oppenheimer,” and “Anora” were at this point and time in the last few years, as they waited to see if supposedly more serious threats to win Best Picture emerged from Venice, Telluride, or TIFF. But none of them could do it in 2022, 2023, or 2024 – so will another early premiere be too big for any fall fest contenders to knock down a peg in 2025?
Will “Sentimental Value” stay on the path of “Parasite” and “Anora?”
“Sentimental Value” is already behind the pace of “Parasite” and “Anora,” in that those NEON Best Picture winners won Cannes while “Sentimental Value” only won the Grand Prix. But it is moving on to its next big tests at Telluride and TIFF, just like “Parasite” and “Anora” did – and those North American premieres were where they proved they were for real.
Both “Parasite” and “Anora” made history as Palme d’Or winners and also placed in the TIFF People’s Choice top three. What’s more, they scored highly from both critics and audiences at Telluride, on the same level as many other past Best Picture winners and runners-up to screen there. As such, if “Sentimental Value” can be at least a TIFF runner-up and a big hit at Telluride, it will remain close enough on “Parasite” and “Anora’s” early paths to keep a NEON repeat very much in play.
Does “Rental Family” necessarily need good reviews to win TIFF – and much more?
Despite TIFF screening “Sentimental Value” and other Cannes winners, the most likely favorite for the TIFF People’s Choice award is “Rental Family.” With a sentimental premise, the benefit of being a TIFF world premiere, the benefit of a past Oscar winner in Brendan Fraser, and the backing of a frequent TIFF winner in Searchlight, it almost seems inevitable that “Rental Family” will strike a chord with Toronto audiences. But the larger question is how much it has to do with critics, and how much that might matter in the bigger picture.
Between past TIFF winners like “Jojo Rabbit,” “Green Book,” and “The Life of Chuck,” TIFF winners don’t always need high critic scores from MetaCritic or Rotten Tomatoes to win there, or to keep winning all the way to the Oscars. If “Rental Family” scores on the level of “Green Book’s” 69 on MetaCritic, or even on “Jojo Rabbit’s” 58, that alone might still be enough to win TIFF – and to be a future Oscar season villain in the eyes of grumbling pundits. Yet will that make it a threat to win so much more down the line?
Frankly, every single Oscar contender on the radar so far except “Rental Family” is the kind of film that’s either never won Best Picture or hasn’t in a long time – whether they are Netflix films, Focus films, Paul Thomas Anderson films, vampire films, musician biopics, blockbuster sequels that aren’t from “The Lord of the Rings” series, or a film from a studio that won the previous year. In that context, “Rental Family” is in prime position to not only win TIFF, but become a Best Picture frontrunner by default if and when so many other leaders falter – unless it has sub “Green Book” or “Jojo Rabbit” level scores.
Therefore, if “Rental Family” actually wins TIFF with scores in the mid-70s or higher, there’s a world where we look back and realize that was where it wrapped up Best Picture then and there.
What will Netflix’s award season pecking order become?
Netflix is one of those aiming to defy history, and to finally take home Best Picture after seven straight years of painful misses. To that end, it is unleashing its most crowded group of fall festival challengers yet, between “Jay Kelly,” “Frankenstein,” and “A House of Dynamite” at Venice, “Ballad of a Small Player” at Telluride, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” at TIFF, and Cannes holdover “Nouvelle Vague” screening at TIFF and Telluride.
The most conventional wisdom is that “Jay Kelly” will stay Netflix’s No. 1 Best Picture hopeful after its Venice premiere, with “Frankenstein” as its top backup and the others jockeying for position well behind them. Yet if “Jay Kelly” isn’t at a “Marriage Story” level festival smash, and if “Frankenstein” can’t join “Sinners” as a film that can break the Best Picture horror barrier, what will Netflix do then?
If either of those preseason favorites falters, Netflix may have to fully back a Cannes premiere for the second year in a row, should “Nouvelle Vague” experience a significant resurgence at Telluride and TIFF. Yet it didn’t have unanimous rave reviews at Cannes and is likely ripe for backlash from purist Jean-Luc Godard and cinema fans for being an American Netflix film about the making of a French cinematic landmark. But despite or maybe because of all that, it could easily become the next “Emilia Pérez” or “Maestro” as Netflix‘s latest Oscar season arch-villain – if the Netflix field is cleared enough for it to be the new top film left standing.
What will Focus Features’ No. 1 film finally be?
Focus Features doesn’t have a Netflix-level crowded field, but it is another studio that needs the fall festivals to help settle its top pecking order. In Focus’s case, its No. 1 film is either going to wind up being “Bugonia” after its Venice premiere, or “Hamnet” after its Telluride premiere. And since Focus’s No.1 film almost always manages to get into Best Picture these days and even win a major category, the “Bugonia” vs “Hamnet” debate could be a key piece to this season’s puzzle.
Since “Bugonia” is the latest Venice premiere and collaboration from Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, it would seem to be the obvious Focus frontrunner – but can Lanthimos and Stone really make “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” level lightning strike at Venice for a third straight time? If they can’t, does “Hamnet” then take advantage at Telluride a day or two later to become Focus’s true No. 1, put past Oscar winner Chloe Zhao back into the mix and make Jessie Buckley and/or Paul Mescal win-competitive threats for the first time? Or if both films disappoint, will Focus have to put all hopes on Daniel Day-Lewis’s comeback in “Anemone” to rescue it at the New York Film Festival?
Even after 20 years of falling short for Best Picture, Focus films are usually in the thick of the race one way or another. But this fall festival season, Focus has to first find out which film will lead the way there this year.
Which preseason favorites will become fall fest bombs this time?
For all the preseason favorites that live up to the early hype at fall festivals, there’s always at least one film and sometimes many more that flop harder. Last year alone, films like “Queer,” “Blitz,” “Saturday Night,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Maria,” and “Joker: Folie a Deux” were on everyone’s radar in late August, and then promptly dropped down the Best Picture charts by late September or slightly longer. So, what highly anticipated films will make us all look foolish to believe in this time?
In addition to any number of Netflix and Focus movies, films like “After the Hunt,” “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” “The Testament of Ann Lee,” “The Smashing Machine,” and “No Other Choice” all have some level of high hopes – and could just as easily come crashing down once people actually see them. Even if they’re not the next “The Son” or “Bardo” level of massive disappointment, odds are that at least a couple of major preseason favorites no one can imagine flopping will flop very painfully.
Will the winners of Venice and TIFF make any real impact?
When it comes to the 2024 Venice and Toronto film festivals, their winners were arguably the least important parts in the big picture. Venice Golden Lion winner “The Room Next Door” was hardly raved over on the level of Pedro Almodovar’s greatest films. Yet, a clearly Almodovar-friendly jury and audience gave it the upset win over “The Brutalist,” albeit before it barely made a blip the rest of the season. That was still more than what TIFF People’s Choice winner “The Life of Chuck” got to do, as NEON acquired it and promptly moved it out of 2024 altogether, only to come and go this past summer.
Venice and TIFF winners don’t always end up as Best Picture contenders or threats, but last year was the first time in a while where both did absolutely nothing else that season. As such, the 2025 Golden Lion and TIFF People’s Choice winners don’t have a high bar to go over this season, but will one or both of them have more to do after that this time?
How many major Oscar winners will actually premiere at fall festivals?
For the third straight year in 2024, very few of the eventual major Oscar winners came out of fall festivals, thanks in large part to Best Picture sweepers that first screened in spring or summer. Last year, the only exceptions were Best Actor winner Adrien Brody after “The Brutalist” premiered at Venice, and “Conclave” for Best Adapted Screenplay after its Telluride premiere.
There might be room to finally reverse the trend this year, since “Sinners” and “Sentimental Value” are the only two assumed major contenders that screened before fall festivals. To fill the gap, the festivals will unveil the likes of presumed Best Director favorites Lanthimos, Zhao, Noah Baumbach, Luca Guadagnino and Guillermo del Toro, Best Actor early favorites like Fraser, Jeremy Allen White, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson and Jesse Plemons, preseason Best Actress favorites like Buckley, Stone, Julia Roberts and Amanda Seyfried, assumed Best Supporting Actor favorites like Mescal, Adam Sandler, Andrew Garfield and Jeremy Strong, and projected Best Supporting Actress favorites like Ayo Edebiri, Laura Dern, Emily Blunt and Glenn Close. None of this takes into account any surprise films, actors, or directors that could come out of nowhere to shake up a race or two as well.
Yet with every passing year, as much as the fall festivals shape the race to come and separate preseason contenders from pretenders, they don’t decide who ultimately wins as much as they used to. Is this the year where that finally turns around with a whole crop of frontrunners and future winners, or will they fight for scraps that early wide releases and Cannes films leave behind once again?
Do you think the fall festivals still have the power to define the Oscar race, or are early-year releases and Cannes winners becoming the true frontrunners instead? If a film like “Rental Family” can win the TIFF People’s Choice Award with only modest critical reviews, should audience appeal matter more than critical acclaim when predicting Best Picture success? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
