Reporting from fall film festivals used to be a more streamlined process – what’s good, what’s bad, what’s being sold, what has Oscars chances – but with each year, the season arrives with larger, more existential questions. The 2025 run, from Venice to Telluride to Toronto, was notably underwhelming and took place months after Sinners went from box-office hit to legitimate contender and at the same time as One Battle After Another skipped festivals and went on to win best picture. The pipeline that had once birthed winners such as Birdman, Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave and The King’s Speech had no longer played as big of a part with Covid-affected Nomadland being the last fall festival film to win the top prize.
Even without an awards hat on, there has been a more general lack of buzz, an excitement of something new that much harder to find as more films of considerably lower quality took up underserved space. If the trades are to be believed, a lot of it is down to studios choosing against the risk of bad buzz and potential embarrassment to A-listers because for every The Shape of Water or Poor Things, there’s a White Noise or Joker: Folie à Deux. So while this season might see new films starring Tom Cruise, Timothée Chalamet, Anne Hathaway, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ben Affleck and Mikey Madison, none of them are braving a festival premiere.
As Oscar nominations were being announced back in January of this year, the next crop of contenders started revealing themselves over in Park City where Utah hosted its final Sundance film festival. The biggest story was the return and reinvention of Olivia Wilde, who was the best part of Gregg Araki’s comedy I Want Your Sex and finally announced herself as a serious director with chamber comedy The Invite, a remake of the Spanish film The People Upstairs. It was the buzziest title of the festival and after a rapturous premiere, a heated auction led to A24 buying the rights and a summer release scored solid box office and sustained word of mouth.
It didn’t automatically seem like an obvious Academy pick even if it might have been viewed as such years prior – a talky, human comedy about sex and relationships without much of a recent precedent – but it slowly seemed like a surer thing. Wilde could become the first woman ever to receive nominations for acting and directing while, as it stands, it seems like A24’s strongest contender. There was also support for John Turturro’s turn in simple, old-fashioned crime drama The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, a film that was purchased by Sony Pictures Classics, an Oscar campaign clearly in mind.
Turturro has yet to receive an Oscar nomination and with a rare every-scene performance here, he could sneak into the best actor five. The festival’s big prize isn’t usually a predictor of Oscar success (recent winners have included Clemency, Atropia, Nanny and In the Summers), yet films such as Coda, Minari and Whiplash have managed to use this early win as the start of fruitful Oscar campaign. This year’s winner was Josephine, an acclaimed drama starring Channing Tatum that seemed like one of the bigger breakouts.
But its uncomfortable subject matter – an eight-year-old girl spirals after witnessing a graphic sexual assault – made it a difficult watch for some (there were walkouts) and an even more difficult purchase for buyers, ultimately going to a small and untested new company called Sumerian Pictures. Tatum gives arguably his greatest performance yet (I would hand him the best supporting actor Oscar now if I could) and the film is thoughtfully made by writer-director Beth de Araújo, but it’s a steeper hill to climb due to its backers and content and it might have to unfairly settle for some critics circle prizes. The Berlin film festival hasn’t tended to produce many Academy-friendly movies over the years (Ethan Hawke in Blue Moon, Charlotte Rampling in 45 Years, four wins for The Grand Budapest Hotel) but with more doors open for international films at the Oscars, it’s become more present in the race.
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