What Did The 2024 Fall Film Festivals Tell Us About The Oscar Race?

Before the Venice, Telluride, and Toronto film festivals began, it was clear there were still more questions than real answers about the coming Oscar season – and that has not changed over two weeks later. However, although we are no closer to figuring out what’s ahead over the next six months, Venice, Telluride, and TIFF gave us some crucial new evidence to help us out.

Here are the nine biggest things that fall festival season revealed, with NYFF still lying ahead for one more potential curveball or two.

“The Brutalist” is now the big question mark of the seasonBefore “The Brutalist” premiered at Venice and TIFF, there were rumblings that Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half hour post WWII epic could be the big critical breakout of fall festival season. As such, those who listened may not have been so surprised at its near-perfect reviews, Corbet’s Silver Lion win, and the arrival of Adrian Brody, Guy Pearce, and Felicity Jones into acting contention.

However, now a saga that may be even longer and filled with more twists and turns than “The Brutalist” itself is underway. With A24 now handling this and “Sing Sing” as its top Oscar priorities, and with “The Brutalist” still waiting for a release date and rollout strategy that hopefully won’t resemble “Sing Sing,” this film’s fate may shape the entire race one way or another.

But if a three-and-a-half hour film like “Killers of the Flower Moon” was shut out last year despite having Martin Scorsese, Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and backing from Apple, can a similar film with far less star power like “The Brutalist” do any better and actually win in a year without an “Oppenheimer” like juggernaut in the way – assuming it isn’t this year’s “Oppenheimer?”

“Anora” and “Emilia Perez’s” festival dominance continuedIn every major festival they’ve competed in, “Anora” and “Emilia Perez” have been among the top three in some fashion. After “Anora” won the Cannes Palme d’Or and “Emilia Perez” split its Best Actress prize four ways, their festival dominance continued at both Telluride and Toronto.

In Telluride, “Anora” was the top-rated film in “The Professional’s Telluride” poll at Michael’s Telluride Film Blog by a wide margin – like many past Best Picture winners and runners-up before it – while “Emilia Perez” was a distant third. But “Emilia Perez” finally edged out “Anora” as the first runner-up at TIFF while “Anora” was the second runner-up, just like the previous Cannes winner turned TIFF runner-up “Parasite.”

After they both screen at NYFF, “Anora” and “Emilia Perez” will complete one of the most dominant Cannes/Telluride/TIFF/NYFF festival runs in some time – but then general audiences and Oscar voters will finally get to weigh in.

Low-scoring films won big at fall festivals – and may keep winning“Anora” won Cannes after being its most critically acclaimed movie, yet critics were not a factor for audiences at Venice and Toronto – which could signal they may be similarly ignored at Oscar time.

Venice Golden Lion winner “The Room Next Door” and TIFF People’s Choice winner “The Life of Chuck” each ended their festival runs with a mere 7.4 average score on Rotten Tomatoes, with neither getting higher than 70 on Metacritic either. Nonetheless, they each beat far bigger critical darlings like “Anora” and “The Brutalist” to win the biggest prizes of fall festival season, which single-handedly put them on the Best Picture bubble at minimum.

That seems to be the final outcome on Oscar night every three years, too, as it was for “Green Book” in 2018 and “CODA” in 2021. In a 2024 season that seems to be similarly fractured and wide open, early wins for films like “The Room Next Door” and “The Life of Chuck” seem to be a bigger sign – or warning – that maybe we should be ready for the likes of “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Sing Sing” or similar critics pick to lose to another far lower reviewed film on Oscar night too.

Then again, the last time Venice and TIFF both had such low-scoring winners was in 2019 with “Joker” and “Jojo Rabbit“—yet Cannes winner, TIFF runner-up, and critics’ pick “Parasite” still won in the end anyway.

The bubble is more wide open for post-fall-fest films than everBefore the fall festivals began, only four movies looked like safe bets to get into Best Picture – and that number hasn’t improved by much. Right now, five or six films at most seem like secure nominees, such as “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Emilia Perez,” “Conclave,” and maybe still “Sing Sing.” But beyond that, things have gotten much more complicated and messier.

“Nickel Boys” and “Hard Truths” look like they need prominent critic pushes to get in, “Saturday Night” didn’t get the TIFF win or placement it needed to overshadow its mixed scores, “The Room Next Door” and “The Life of Chuck” are mainly in the picture because of their festival wins, “Babygirl” and “Queer” are A24’s third and fourth options at best, and “Joker: Folie à Deux” underperformed even by the low critical standards of its predecessor. Beyond that, “The Piano Lesson” may only be on the bubble as long as Danielle Deadwyler is a potential Best Supporting Actress frontrunner, Cannes foreign favorites “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and “All We Imagine as Light” might not have made enough waves at Telluride and TIFF, “Nightbitch” is probably an Amy Adams play only after all, and “The Wild Robot” didn’t get the TIFF placement it needed to cross over into Best Picture consideration.

With that kind of chaotic bubble, the biggest winners from the Venice/Telluride/TIFF gauntlet may be the films that didn’t open there. Now there’s even more room for still unseen films like “Blitz,” “A Complete Unknown” and “Gladiator II” to round out a field that could really need them – and maybe the likes of “Juror No. 2,” “Wicked,” “Here,” and “Nosferatu” will have an opening if they exceed pundit expectations too.

Best Actor may be mostly locked after festivals – againLast year, the Best Actor field was pretty much settled after the fall festivals. Cillian Murphy, Paul Giamatti, Bradley Cooper, and Colman Domingo were all widely picked to get in by mid-September, and all got in, with Leonardo DiCaprio and eventual nominee Jeffrey Wright the top picks for the final slot.

This year, the post-fall fest Best Actor consensus can easily be seen as our eventual Best Actor field, too. Most everyone has Domingo, Adrian Brody, Timothee Chalamet, Ralph Fiennes, and Daniel Craig as the consensus top five at the moment, and it could very well look that way on nomination morning as well.

Of course, there are possible wrinkles ahead – like how no one’s actually seen Chalamet in “A Complete Unknown” yet, how box office for “Joker: Folie à Deux” could still get Joaquin Phoenix back in the race, how “Gladiator II’s” box office and more could push Paul Mescal into consideration, and whether Craig will have to be a potential lone nominee for “Queer” like Domingo was for “Rustin” last year. Nonetheless, it is hard to see the overall Best Actor field changing that much after the fall festivals, just as it didn’t a year ago.

Best Actress competitors look all but setAs for the other lead acting field, it looks like the top ten competitors in Best Actress are set, and if not, who the nominees will be. Barring any category placement shockers or surprises from still unseen performers like Cynthia Erivo in “Wicked” or Robin Wright in “Here,” the field looks like it will come down to:

Two favorites from potential Best Picture winners: Mikey Madison in “Anora” and Karla Sofia Gascon in “Emilia Perez.”

Six past Oscar winners and/or multiple nominees with movies that may barely have enough nominations elsewhere to help them, if any at all: Angelina Jolie in “Maria,” Saoirse Ronan in “The Outrun,” Nicole Kidman in “Babygirl,” Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in “The Room Next Door” and Amy Adams in “Nightbitch.”

Two critics pushes with their most acclaimed work in almost 30 years but may have distributors too inexperienced to get them all the way: Demi Moore in “The Substance” for MUBI and Marianne Jean-Baptiste in “Hard Truths” for Bleecker Street.

And a collection of dark horses fighting to break into the ten or go higher: Fernanda Torres in “I’m Still Here,” Pamela Anderson in “The Last Showgirl,” and Ryan Destiny in “The Fire Inside.” If nothing changes soon, this is who we have to pick five Best Actress nominees from.

Best Supporting Actor might actually be competitive this yearBest Supporting Actor has not been much of a race the last two years, after Ke Huy Quan’s wire-to-wire blowout in 2022 and Robert Downey Jr’s industry sweep previous year. However, after Telluride and TIFF turned “The Piano Lesson’s” Samuel L. Jackson and “Conclave’s” Stanley Tucci from preseason favorites to being merely on the bubble, 2024’s Best Supporting Actor race suddenly looks like the most wide open in years – for now.

Between those twists, “Sing Sing’s” suddenly shaky prospects endangering Clarence Maclin, Kieran Culkin likely needs more support from “A Real Pain” before he can win competitively, and Guy Pearce’s prospects for “The Brutalist” perhaps depending on how that film’s other above-the-line prospects pan out, there is no Quan or Downey-like dominant frontrunner to speak of. Of course, that could instantly change once Denzel Washington emerges to try and take the throne in “Gladiator II.”

The Best Supporting Actress frontrunner is likely someone from “Emilia Perez”Just like with Supporting Actor, the fall festivals weeded out potential Best Supporting Actress favorites, as “Nickel Boys” Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and “Conclave’s” Isabella Rossellini were downgraded from possible winners to on the bubble. But unlike with Best Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress has two clear frontrunners for the moment, in “The Piano Lesson’s” Deadwyler and “Emilia Perez’s” Zoe Saldana.

However, Saldana is probably the best long-term bet between “The Piano Lesson” being at or below the Best Picture bubble and how Best Supporting Actress often goes to breakouts in musicals that fall short of Best Picture. In fact, the biggest thing that could stop her might well be Netflix if reactions from Telluride and TIFF trigger a category switch where Saldana goes Lead and Gascon goes down to Supporting – just like how post-fall festival Supporting Actress favorites Michelle Williams and Lily Gladstone were moved to Lead days after TIFF in 2022 and 2023.

Even in that scenario, Gascon could well keep “Emilia Perez” ahead for a Supporting Actress “consolation” win or keep it alive for something bigger. Nonetheless, between Selena Gomez possibly splitting votes with Saldana or Gason, Saoirse Ronan perhaps looming ahead for “Blitz,” and Lady Gaga probably dropping into Supporting soon enough, maybe “Emilia Perez” doesn’t have this category locked up no matter what quite yet.

All eyes now turn to “Blitz”Before Venice, Telluride, and TIFF, there was no definitive or near-unanimous preseason Best Picture favorite, perhaps for the first time at this time of year since 2019—and arguably there still isn’t. Even with the arrival of “The Brutalist” and with “Anora” and “Emilia Perez’s” latest festival success, there isn’t a Best Picture leader most pundits and analysts can all agree on yet. Which means there’s no better opportunity for “Blitz” to become that default leader.

With its London Film Festival premiere on October 9 and its NYFF premiere the next night, these back-to-back screenings could make “Blitz” the obvious favorite we’ve been waiting for, even if it doesn’t get reviews like “Anora” or “The Brutalist.” But in a year like this, being textbook old-school Academy voter catnip/comfort food could be enough – and being a McQueen epic at or near a “12 Years a Slave” level may or may not be even better. Yet if “Blitz” isn’t up to any of those standards, we will be right back to square one – just like we were after Venice, Telluride, and TIFF.

What have been your big takeaways from the last few weeks from Venice, Telluride, and TIFF as they pertain to the Oscar race? 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