Although the 2026-27 Oscar season has really been underway for months, thanks to the likes of “The Odyssey,” “Project Hail Mary,” “Obsession,” “The Invite,” and several Cannes films, the fall festival gauntlet of Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York still feel like the season’s Opening Day and Christmastime wrapped into one. From the start of Venice on September 2nd to the close of NYFF on October 12th, these next few weeks will shape whatever the next several months of the Oscar race become – and answer at least some of these burning questions.
Will anything actually surprise us at fall festivals this year?
Last year, fall fests premiered Best Picture nominees like “Bugonia,” “Frankenstein,” “Hamnet,” and “Marty Supreme.” Still, none of them really came out of nowhere – not like “The Brutalist” did out of Venice in 2024, or like “American Fiction” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” did out of TIFF in 2023 and 2022.
This year, all eyes are on long-projected contenders like “Wild Horse Nine,” “The Debut,” and “Behemoth!” to go from fall festival premieres to Best Picture hopefuls. But is anything going to break out at Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York that almost no one eyes as a Best Picture nominee right now – something like “Tender Loving Care” or “A Long Winter” from Telluride, “Possible Love” or “Bunker” at Venice, or even “Misty Green” or “I Play Rocky” at TIFF?
Between the assumed fall festival heavyweights and all the early pre-fall contenders, there might not be room for any nominee that absolutely nobody sees coming before September. As much as pundits and fans might like to see any new blood shake up the race, it might be a case of too little, too late or a case of needing to be careful what we wish for.
Will “Ink,” “Elsinore,” and “Primetime” live up to their sudden hype?
There are a few films that aren’t projected in a lot of Best Picture picks right now, but may be lurking just outside the top 10 because of how they’ve been positioned at fall fests. In that context, if they do surge higher up the bubble or even become locks after their festival runs, nobody can say they didn’t see it coming – not after Netflix bought “Ink” and suddenly put it at Venice, Toronto and likely Telluride, or how Focus Features turned “Elsinore” into a must-see Telluride premiere that might launch Andrew Scott’s Best Actor campaign, or how A24 made “Primetime” a potential major launch for Robert Pattinson at Venice.
“Ink,” “Elsinore,” and “Primetime” still aren’t considered sure-fire fall fest breakouts on the level of “Wild Horse Nine” and “The Debut.” Yet all the moves they’ve made these last several weeks have put them very close to that level. But now that Netflix, Focus and A24 have put a rather eyebrow-raising amount of faith in them, how many, if any of them, will actually reward that faith – and if they do, will it still be enough to make them and their stars contenders in the long run?
How will the Cannes favorites fare in North America?
As much as the world premieres at Telluride, TIFF and NYFF will be a big story, the non-premieres there will be just as important. Every year, Cannes winners and favorites have to prove they aren’t a fluke with their first tests amongst American audiences – and this year, supposed Oscar contenders from Cannes like “La Bola Negra,” “Fjord,” “All of a Sudden” and maybe even “Club Kid” will take that test.
Sometimes these results can be misleading, as “No Other Choice” won TIFF’s first International People’s Choice Award over future Best Picture nominees “Sentimental Value” and “The Secret Agent” but faded later on, while Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” didn’t have any speed bumps with American viewers until much later. Nonetheless, “La Bola Negra” will still hope to match its Cannes raves at Telluride and TIFF and further prove it can challenge “The Odyssey” and others for a Best Picture win, all as “Fjord” and “All of a Sudden” hope to start separating themselves in the race to be the second “safe” Cannes Best Picture nominee, and “Club Kid” hopes a potential TIFF People’s Choice win or place can give it a shot at the Oscar bubble.
Will a classic TIFF “villain” premiere this year?
Usually when a film becomes an Oscar season “villain’ to certain critics, it starts by winning or doing damage at TIFF, like “Green Book” did in 2018. But no TIFF film like that has really matched it in awards success or backlash since then, at least depending on what one thinks of other recent TIFF winners turned Oscar winners like “Jojo Rabbit,” “American Fiction,” and “Hamnet.”
In the last two years alone, films made to be seemingly sure-fire TIFF People’s Choice winners turned heavily backlashed Oscar contenders have flamed out instantly, like “Saturday Night” in 2024 and “Rental Family” last year. This year the biggest possible threat to upset at TIFF, break into the Oscar race and get tons of hate later on for it would seem to be “I Play Rocky,” if only because of the combination of a “Rocky”/Sylvester Stallone reenactment and the direction of “Green Book’s” own Peter Farrelly. If not that, it might be Opening Night film “Being Heumann” from “CODA’s” own Sian Heder, if not Chris Rock’s “Misty Green” or the Cynthia Erivo-led adaptation of “Prima Facie.”
The reliability of TIFF regularly premiering Oscar frontrunners, let alone those mainly adored by the most traditional Academy voters, has been shaky lately. Will this year be another sign of the decline of TIFF world premieres, or will one of them bring back the festival’s good old days – whether pundits and future viewers outside of Toronto like it or not?
How misleading will Venice reactions be this year?
Venice kicked off the 2025 fall festival season on a weird note, both during the festival and in the long run. While “Bugonia” and “Frankenstein” were the two Venice films that made it into Best Picture, they arguably had their worst receptions at their Venice premieres, as “Frankenstein” needed a TIFF People’s Choice runner-up mention to get back on its feet and “Bugonia” took until late fall to become a locked nominee again.
On top of all that, “Jay Kelly” started its collapse from preseason frontrunner to complete snub with its own mixed Venice reception, “A House of Dynamite” actually got raves from Venice but nowhere else the rest of the season, and eventual Golden Lion winner “Father Mother Sister Brother” was a non-factor the rest of the year just like 2024 winner “The Room Next Door.” With that in mind, how much stock can we really place in any word of mouth from Venice this year?
If “Wild Horse Nine” does get the raves most everyone expects out of Venice, will it be a lasting sign of Oscar success ahead – and if it doesn’t, will that prove misleading down the line anyway? “Bugonia” and “Frankenstein” had to play the long game after their initial struggles at Venice, but can something like “Ink” or “Primetime” afford to have less than perfect Venice reactions out of the gate? And should something out of nowhere win the Golden Lion again, is that now a kiss of death these days, or can a Venice winner match the likes of “Poor Things,” “Nomadland,” “Joker,” “Roma,” and “The Shape of Water” once again?
Does New York have another Best Picture premiere in waiting?
By a technicality through a “surprise” premiere that wasn’t really a massive surprise, “Marty Supreme” became the first New York Film Festival world premiere to make Best Picture since “The Irishman” in 2019. By and large, NYFF isn’t really a prime destination for world premieres turned Oscar contenders on the level of Venice, Telluride and TIFF, but it will hope to defy the odds again this year anyway.
NYFF’s chances for a second straight year of launching a Best Picture nominee seem to ride on “Behemoth!”, which will have its opening concert on October 2nd. By then, “Wild Horse Nine” might already be big enough that Searchlight doesn’t really need “Behemoth!” as an Oscar season priority anymore, unless it still wants to get two films in for the first time since 2017. But if “Wild Horse Nine” does tumble at Venice and Telluride, Searchlight will have a lot more riding on “Behemoth!’s” premiere – although “Is This Thing On?’s” closing night premiere at NYFF last year didn’t bail Searchlight out after “Rental Family” fell out of the running at TIFF.
Beyond that, NYFF has three other world premieres with Oscar pedigree: it launches “Godzilla Minus Zero” three years after its predecessor, “Godzilla Minus One,” won the 2023 Best Visual Effects Oscar, and will later have “A Statement” from “Spotlight” director Tom McCarthy. In addition, the recently announced premiere of Luca Guadagnino’s already-controversial “Artificial” is sure to draw attention. Yet if these three films and “Behemoth!” fade after their NYFF premieres, it will be back to business as usual.
Will the fall fests launch major Oscar winners again?
Thanks to “One Battle After Another,” “Sinners,” and “Weapons,” the only 2025 above-the-line Oscar winner who premiered at a fall festival was Jessie Buckley, following “Hamnet’s” Telluride premiere and TIFF People’s Choice win. But that can’t be written off as a one-year fluke, since 2024’s only fall festival Oscar winners were Adrian Brody and the script for “Conclave,” 2023’s were Emma Stone, Da’Vine Joy Randolph and the script for “American Fiction,” and 2022’s were Brendan Fraser and the script for “Women Talking.” And of course, there still hasn’t been a Best Picture winner from a fall festival in a non-pandemic year since “Green Book” back in 2018.
Between “The Odyssey,” “La Bola Negra,” Inde Navarrette, Anne Hathaway, and post-fall-festival premieres from the likes of Tom Cruise, “Digger,” and “Dune: Part Three,” this is already looking like another year where most major Oscar winners will be from films outside the fall festival circuit. Right now, the biggest hopes to turn that around seem to be from Martin McDonagh and the stars of “Wild Horse Nine,” Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti from “The Debut,” and maybe stars from the likes of “Ink,” “Elsinore,” “Behemoth!” and “Primetime.”
Admittedly, since the current Next Best Picture projections have Moore, Giamatti and “Wild Horse Nine” as favorites for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Original Screenplay, and John Malkovich as the top consensus Best Actor nominee, maybe this can be a year with more balance between early contenders and fall festival films. But if “Wild Horse Nine” and/or “The Debut” do not live up to their hype, will it be another year where fall festivals have little to no impact on who wins the biggest Oscars – or will a few unlikely saviors make this a comeback year after all?
Do you believe any of these Best Picture contenders are similar to last year’s contenders? Which films are you currently predicting for Best Picture before the fall film festivals begin? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account, and check out Next Best Picture’s latest Oscar predictions here.
