Start the clock: Even as we’re only just entering the sleepy dog days of late summer, things are going to get very busy approximately seven weeks from now. The fall festival season officially commences on Sept. 2, when the lights go up on the 83rd Venice Film Festival, followed in short succession by the Sept. 4 launch of Telluride’s 53rd edition. Movie lovers and awards-spotters next hopscotch to Toronto on Sept. 10 for TIFF ’26 and then gear up for the 64th New York Film Festival on Sept. 25. It’s a gauntlet worthy of Matt Damon’s Odysseus, albeit with a lot more sitting and popcorn-consuming and a lot less fighting and/or running away from mythological gods and monsters.
The Odyssey comparison is also apt because Christopher Nolan‘s brawny, brainy epic opens in theaters this weekend riding waves of acclaim that make it the de facto 2027 Oscar front-runner in every category except maybe the acting races. That places pressure on the quartet of fall festivals to prove why we all shouldn’t just declare the race over and stay home. After all, it was just three years ago that Nolan’s previous July premiere, Oppenheimer, handily defeated all awards season comers and dominated Oscar Night.
The festival news spigot was certainly in the “on” position this week as Venice, NYFF, and TIFF unveiled a flurry of premieres and lineup announcements before the Oscar awards circuit takes its August break. We decided to take stock of the films that have found festival homes, the films that haven’t found festival homes, and whether there’s an Odyssey killer in either mix.
Another opening, another show
As of this weekend, we officially have three of the four fall festival Opening Night selections set: Danny Boyle’s Ink will get Venice started on Sept. 2; Siân Heder’s Being Heumann will bring the curtain up on TIFF on Sept. 10; and James Gray‘s Paper Tiger is kicking off NYFF on Sept. 25. Of that trio, two are world premieres (Ink and Being Heumann), and only one (Paper Tiger) has a confirmed awards season release date, with Neon booking the Adam Drive and Miles Teller-starring crime drama in U.S. theaters on Nov. 20.
By going directly to New York, Paper Tiger will bypass the Telluride-Toronto corridor as it seeks to reintroduce itself to viewers and voters after a mixed launch at Cannes in May. While the film — one of the highest-profile American titles at a festival that the major Hollywood studios opted to skip — delighted the Gray faithful, critics weren’t unanimous in their praise and it also went unrewarded by the festival jury. For a filmmaker who has long struggled to gain Oscar traction, Paper Tiger needed to be the King of the Cannes Jungle to really leave its mark as an early contender. For now, the movie is slumbering in the 27th slot on Gold Derby’s Best Picture leaderboard.
Best Picture
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But Gray’s deep roots in the New York film scene makes the NYFF route a no-brainer; much like Marty Supreme‘s sneak peek at last year’s edition, Paper Tiger hopes that the warm embrace of the hometown crowd will kickstart the awards buzz the crested and crashed on the Croisette. And it helps that filmmaker has an experienced Oscar operator like Neon backing him up after his previous Cannes-praised features like Two Lovers, The Immigrant, and Armageddon Time weren’t necessarily given the proper TLC by their respective studios.
(Speaking of TLC, it was revealed this week that the latest film from beloved British auteur Mike Leigh is titled Tender Loving Care. Bleecker Street will release the movie on Dec. 4, and Leigh’s long history with NYFF means it’ll inevitably join the lineup as a world or North American premiere.)
There’s certainly room in the Best Picture race for the kind of character-based crime yarn that Hollywood used to make and reward with nominations and/or stateuttes: think Goodfellas, The French Connection, and — going way, way, way back — The Racket. That’s a lane that resonates with voters, and is also crucially one that The Odyssey can’t occupy given its larger-than-life spectacle and flights of fantastic fantasy. As long as Bronx cheers aren’t heard throughout Alice Tully Hall on Sept. 25, Paper Tiger could still sink its claws back into awards season.
Social warriors
NYFF’s choice to anoint Paper Tiger with Opening Night status does mean that we won’t get a sequel to one of the most famous festival-launchers in its 64-year history. Back in 2010, NYFF audiences were the first to click “like” on David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network, which went on to earn eight Oscar nods and a Best Adapted Screenplay win for the prolific writer.
Sixteen years later, Sorkin is back as the writer and director behind the follow-up The Social Reckoning. The new film stars previous Oscar nominee Jeremy Strong as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (a role previously played by Jesse Eisenberg, who declined to reprise his Best Actor-nominated performance), previous Oscar winner Mikey Madison as Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, and Emmy winner Jeremy Allen White as journalist Jeff Horwitz.
That combination of heavy-hitting talent, timely contemporary subject matter, and previous awards pedigree has given Reckoning the early perception of being this season’s designated Serious Movie for Grown-Ups, a status previously enjoyed by the likes of such past contenders as Spotlight, Zero Dark Thirty, and, of course, The Social Network. Even as Nolan imbues The Odyssey with clear thematic allusions to our present, the movie’s aesthetic goal is to embed the audience in a mythical past.
Granted, the pre-festival buzz always suggested that Sorkin had his eye on a Venice launch for Reckoning instead of a return to NYFF. But recent reports that the movie is in the midst of additional shooting days complicate its festival rollout. If the movie isn’t ready to be part of the Lido parade in early September, a spot as NYFF’s Centerpiece or Closing Night selection — or even a “secret screening” a la Marty Supreme — in early October would still allow Sorkin his festival flowers.
It could also give Strong the opportunity to establish a firmer foothold in the Best Actor race. Right now, the Emmy-winning Succession star is hanging onto the No. 10 spot, a placement that’s likely due to Eisenberg’s long shadow, as well as the snarky memes about his performance that have proliferated online since the first trailer debuted.
Best Actor
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John Malkovich
Wild Horse Nine
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Ryan Gosling
Project Hail Mary
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John Turturro
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York
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Robert Pattinson
Primetime
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Jeremy Strong
The Social Reckoning
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At least The Social Reckoning crew won’t have to compete for festival attention with the season’s other star-powered tech bro movie, Artificial. That recently completed Luca Guadagnino film stars Social Network veteran Andrew Garfield as Open AI head Sam Altman alongside an ensemble that includes Monica Barbaro, Mark Rylance, and Yura Borisov, who shared the screen with Madison in Anora. Originally bankrolled by Amazon MGM, Artificial was orphaned after the studio dropped it from its fall slate reportedly due to its parent company’s partnership with Altman’s company.
After various distributors circled the project, Neon ultimately brought Artificial into its fold and seems bullish on its awards season prospects. But the cast doesn’t have to worry about booking airfare to Colorado or Canada; a source close to the film confirms to Gold Derby that it will be skipping the major festivals for a theatrical premiere. Given that After the Hunt saw its awards fortunes plummet after underwhelming receptions at Venice and NYFF last year, Guadagnino is probably just as happy to stay home.
The boxer
TIFF programmers dropped a few more Special Presentation titles this week, including David and Nathan Zellner’s Alpha Gang, Benjamín Naishtat’s Glaxo, Rachel Morrison’s Love of Your Life, Ben Shirinian’s The Housewife, and Bassam Tariq’s Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. The full 2026 lineup will be rolled out next week, and we’ll frankly be knocked out if the list of premieres doesn’t include I Play Rocky, the Sylvester Stallone biopic that finds newcomer Anthony Ippolito playing both Sly and his alter ego, Rocky Balboa.
Opening almost 50 years to the day after the original Rocky proved it could go the distance, the new film hails from Peter Farrelly, who has become a Toronto staple since bringing Green Book to the festival in 2018. Although that movie proved divisive with critics, it locked down the coveted People’s Choice Award on its road to a 3-for-5 performance at the 2019 Oscars. Green Book ultimately scored statuettes for Best Supporting Actor for Mahershala Ali (his second win in that category after Moonlight two years earlier), Best Original Screenplay, and Best Picture. Since 2018, only one other People’s Choice winner has gone on to claim the Best Picture prize — Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, which premiered during the festival’s COVID-impacted 2020 edition.
Of course, that bit of history didn’t exactly help Farrelly when he brought The Greatest Beer Run Ever to TIFF in 2022. But I Play Rocky is better positioned to be an awards season underdog thanks to the Rocky franchise’s longevity and the industry’s ever-present desire to feature more four-quadrant crowdpleasers in the Oscar mix. Farrelly previously missed out on a Best Director nod for Green Book, joining the ranks of filmmakers like Argo‘s Ben Affleck and Driving Miss Daisy‘s Bruce Beresford who saw their movies win Best Picture while they themselves weren’t recognized. (Let’s just say that’s one of several comparisons that can be drawn between Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy.) If Rocky connects with crowds at TIFF and beyond, maybe some of that shine rubs off on its helmer this time around.
Then again, Amazon MGM already has a four-quadrant crowdpleaser in its arsenal — one with its own Rocky, mind you — courtesy of Project Hail Mary, which lit up the box office during the first quarter of 2026. The directing team behind that movie, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, currently boasts a significant lead over Farrelly among Best Director contenders, coming in at No. 7 versus his No. 35 placement on our leaderboard. And since they’ll be battling it out with another space odyssey director, Dune: Part Three‘s Denis Villeneuve, for that No. 5 spot in a tight race that Nolan is handily leading (for now), you can bet that they’ve been practicing their eye of the tiger.
Best Director
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Christopher Nolan
The Odyssey
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Alejandro G. Inarritu
Digger
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Martin McDonagh
Wild Horse Nine
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Javier Ambrossi, Javier Calvo
La Bola Negra
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Denis Villeneuve
Dune: Part Three
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Phil Lord, Christopher Miller
Project Hail Mary
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Ryusuke Hamaguchi
All of a Sudden
Rising sun
Japan is a reliable presence at all the major fall festivals, but the Japan Society’s annual summertime event, Japan Cuts, gives the island nation center stage. Gold Derby swung by the Manhattan-based cultural institution this week for the New York premiere of Diamond Diplomacy, Yuriko Gamo Romer’s new documentary that explores why baseball is the national pastime of both America and Japan.
The sold-out screening was packed with movie lovers, baseball fans, and a real life legend of the diamond, Masanori “Mashi” Murakami, who became the first Japanese player to join a Major League Baseball team when he was recruited for the San Francisco Giants in 1964. The festival organizers scored a home run with a moving moment following the screening where an elderly New York Mets fan revealed that he was in the crowd Mashi’s first-ever appearance at Shea Stadium in ’64, and fielded the ball that batter Charley Smith fouled into the stands off his first pitch. He then presented that ball to Murakami after keeping it in his personal collection of memorabilia for 62 years.
It’s a moment that Diamond Diplomacy‘s U.S. distributor, Strand Releasing, would be wise to promote as the film opens in theaters with an eye towards a berth in the 2026 Best Documentary race. “I would love to have the film recognized,” Romer told us. “The reality is that it requires a lot of work and, it seems, a lot of money, too. We will work first toward Oscar eligibility and keep our fingers crossed about being short-listed, and nominated.”
Besides Diamond Diplomacy, this year’s Japan Cuts lineup includes Makoto Nagahisa’s well-received Sundance premiere Burn and Sheep in the Box, the latest film from Cannes-winning and Oscar-nominated auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda. Prior to the screening, the current Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, headlined a reception where she spoke about how Japan increasingly views its movies as a way to “export Japanese culture to the world.”
Those exports aren’t always imported into the Oscar race, though, even as the Academy voting body has grown more global in recent years. This past cycle, for example, saw a quartet of strong Japanese contenders — the animated films Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, Scarlet, and Chainsaw Man — Reza Arc, as well as the Tom Cruise-endorsed period drama, Kokuho — go overlooked. (Kokuho did score a single nod for Best Makeup and Hairstyling.)
“Looking at the nature of the Oscars and Oscar campaigning, I believe that many acclaimed Japanese movies often are distributed too quietly to build awards momentum,” Japan Cuts program director, Peter Tatara, tells Gold Derby about that apparent disconnect. “Outside of the politics of getting Academy attention, the very nature of Japanese film is it’s Japanese film. Japanese films look, sound, and feel different than U.S. works, and depending on the audience, this can either be supremely exciting or a major obstacle in getting attention.”
But attention must be paid this year thanks to the returns of two Japanese directors who have scored Oscar attention in the past. Three years after Godzilla Minus One made history as the first Japanese film to win the Best Visual Effects statuette, director Takashi Yamazaki is unleashing the Imax-sized sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero. Look for that movie to potentially upset Hollywood-made spectacles like Avengers: Doomsday, Project Hail Mary, The Odyssey, and Dune: Part Three in the VFX competition next March.
Meanwhile, five years after directing the first Japanese film to crack the Best Picture race, 2021’s Drive My Car, Ryusuke Hamaguchi is back with what could emerge as the stealth Oscar vehicle of this upcoming season, All of a Sudden. (Drive My Car also picked up nods for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and became the second Japanese film in Oscar history to win the Best International Feature statuette.) Set in Paris and Japan, the film was one of the buzziest, best-received premieres at Cannes — where it picked up a shared Best Actress prize for stars Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto — the movie exceeds The Odyssey‘s three-hour runtime by 16 minutes and offers the kind of intimate character drama that should delight the actor’s branch in particular.
Look for All of a Sudden to join Neon’s other big Cannes title, Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning Fjord, on the Telluride-Toronto-New York circuit, where the anticipated raves should start raising its Oscar odds across multiple categories. Efira is already sitting at No. 8 on our Best Actress leaderboard, while Okamoto is No. 6 among Supporting Actress contenders.
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Michelle Williams
A Place in Hell
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Inde Navarrette
Obsession
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Mikey Madison
The Social Reckoning
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Emily Blunt
Disclosure Day
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Virginie Efira
All of a Sudden
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Ruth Madeley
Being Heumann
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Count Tatara in as being bullish on the awards futures for both Godzilla Minus Zero and All of a Sudden. “I feel they’ll do well with audiences with an interest in Japanese cinema, and I’m optimistic they’ll find wider audiences as well,” he notes. “To have the backing of distributors like Neon is a tremendous vote of confidence for these films, and a big part of the recipe for them to find critical, popular, and awards success in the U.S.”
