How the Summer Film Festivals Have Shaped the Oscar Race

Summer is gone, and so are some of the most important film festivals that distributors and producers use to show their cards for the awards season. The movies that created the most hype at Cannes have now started a new life in other countries, and the reaction from different audiences is important. The critics and public at Cannes are different from those in Toronto or Telluride, festivals that are much more connected to the Oscars and the ceremonies that come before them.

This is why, even though we are still months away from the nominations, I always find this part of the Oscar season particularly interesting. The first names start appearing, some movies gain momentum, others lose it, and the international films begin to show whether they can move beyond the Best International Feature category.

Venice

For the past years, Venice has been an important place for big Hollywood movies to show their potential. Last year, we had Frankenstein from Guillermo del Toro, Bugonia from Yorgos Lanthimos and The Voice of Hind Rajab from Kaouther Ben Hania, all of which eventually received Oscar nominations.

This year, Venice had a noticeable lack of star-driven Hollywood movies, but the festival still gave us some important titles for the Oscar race. The most interesting result was Possible Love from Lee Chang-dong, which won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize. The film is being released by Netflix internationally, and the platform is already putting a campaign behind La bola negra, so I am curious to see how much of that campaign will also be dedicated to the South Korean film. Possible Love has now also been selected by South Korea as its submission for Best International Feature.

Another campaign that started at Venice was for John Malkovich in Wild Horse Nine. Malkovich won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor, and that immediately put him into the early conversation for the Best Actor category. It is still very early, but a major festival acting prize is exactly the kind of thing that can start an awards-season campaign.

And then there was Woman Unknown, directed by May el-Toukhy, which won the Golden Lion for Denmark, Sweden and Latvia, with Mathilde Arcel also winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. It was one of the biggest surprises of Venice and gives Denmark another film to follow closely during the international Oscar season.

Telluride and Toronto

From Telluride, many of the movies shown there had already premiered at Cannes and were now being introduced to an American audience. This is one of the reasons I find this part of the festival season so interesting: the same movie can have a completely different conversation depending on where it is shown.

It seems from the early reactions that La bola negra and Club Kid received some of the most enthusiastic responses. Both are very different films, but they have the emotional and cultural elements that can connect strongly with audiences during awards season.

La bola negra is probably the clearest example. The film had already won Best Director at Cannes for Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, and it later won the People's Choice Award at Toronto. It also received the audience award at San Sebastián. These awards do not guarantee an Oscar nomination, but they give the film something very important at this stage: momentum and a much broader audience outside Cannes.

Club Kid, the debut feature from Jordan Firstman, followed a similar festival path, from Cannes to Telluride and Toronto, where it continued to attract attention. The film is about a gay club promoter who discovers that he has a ten-year-old son, and its reception will be interesting to follow as the season moves towards the awards.

Also in Telluride and Toronto was the new movie from Mike Leigh, a director who won the Palme d'Or for Secrets & Lies and the Golden Lion for Vera Drake. Tender Loving Care has been described by Leigh as potentially his last film, and once again he looks at British society, this time through the perspective of social workers.

The movie received strong reactions across the festival circuit and recently won the Golden Shell at the San Sebastián Film Festival, as well as the Jury Prize for Best Screenplay for Leigh and the Silver Shell for Best Leading Performance for Kate O'Flynn.

Another movie following a similar trajectory is The Debut, the new film from Jesse Eisenberg after the recognition he received for A Real Pain in 2024. His new movie was shown at Telluride, Toronto and San Sebastián, and the conversation around it has focused particularly on Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.

The film follows a shy housewife who gets a small role in a community theatre production. It is a comedy, but also a very particular look at acting, ambition and the strange world of community theatre. Moore has received much of the attention so far and main name for the lead actress category, while Giamatti has also been mentioned in the supporting-actor conversation.

The International Feature Film race

The International Feature Film category is one of my favourite parts of the Oscar season, and this year it is already becoming particularly interesting.

Most countries have now selected their films, and many of the titles were already present at the major European festivals and had won prizes there. Romania selected Fjord from Cristian Mungiu. The film had its world premiere in Cannes, but its reception in North America has been not that welcoming as in France. It also givestwo recent nominated actors like Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan another possible route into their second nomination.

Japan selected All of a Sudden from Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, one of my favourite films of the year. The film won the Best Actress prize at Cannes for Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, and Hamaguchi already has an Oscar win for Drive My Car. That history, together with the Cannes prize and the attention around both actresses, gives the film several different ways to enter the Oscar conversation beyond the international category.

Poland selected Fatherland from Paweł Pawlikowski, who already won this category for Ida and received a Best Director nomination for Cold War. The film is also campaigning around Sandra Hüller, which makes her one of the most interesting actresses to follow this season, especially because she also appears in Austria's submission, Rose.

And talking about Sandra Hüller, Austria selected the superb Rose, directed by Markus Schleinzer. Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlinale for the film, and now MUBI has to manage a particularly unusual awards-season situation with Hüller appearing in two international submissions that it is distributing in North America.

MUBI has even more work in this category with Minotaur, the new film from Andrey Zvyagintsev. The director has already represented Russia twice in this category, but this time he is representing France, his adopted country of residence, with a Russian-language film that won the Grand Prix at Cannes. France selected Minotaur as its official submission, giving MUBI another major international campaign to handle.

MUBI also has the rights in North America to Belgium's submission, Coward from Lukas Dhont, who was already nominated in this category with Close in 2022. Coward won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne.

And then there is Possible Love, which I already mentioned after Venice, as well as Denmark's Woman Unknown, which arrives in the international race with the Golden Lion and the Volpi Cup for Best Actress.

Germany is another particularly interesting case. Everytime from Sandra Wollner was officially selected by Germany, after winning the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes. At the same time, Yellow Letters from İlker Çatak, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, remains another German film that could potentially be considered under the Academy's new rules.

This is one of the things I find particularly interesting this year: some countries have more than one film that could potentially attract Oscar attention, even though only one can officially represent them in the International Feature Film category.

What is still missing?

There are still a few movies that have not had their major festival moment, and they could change the conversation completely.

One of them is Behemoth! from Tony Gilroy, the director of Michael Clayton, which has Pedro Pascal in the lead. Searchlight has set the film for December 4, and it could become an important late-season title depending on how audiences and critics react.

And then there is Artificial from Luca Guadagnino. He is not a regular at the Oscars, although Call Me by Your Name gave him one of his biggest Oscar successes. His new film has Andrew Garfield and Yura Borisov at the centre of a story about the development of artificial intelligence, and NEON is using the New York Film Festival as an important launch for the movie. It feels like a very deliberate awards-season move, especially after the way A24 used the festival circuit for Marty Supreme last year.

The first Oscar picture

The Oscar race is already starting to take shape, although I think it is still too early to call anything secured.

There are already several names receiving strong attention in the acting categories. There are international films being discussed beyond Best International Feature. And there are movies in languages other than English that are entering the Best Picture conversation.

This last part is particularly interesting to me. The Academy has already shown that films in languages other than English can compete directly for Best Picture, and this is no longer as unusual as it was a few years ago. With several of this year's English-language contenders receiving a more mixed reception so far, I would love to see even more international films make that jump this year.

For someone who has followed the Oscars for so many years, this is probably the moment I enjoy the most: when the race is still completely open, the festivals have given us the first clues, and there are still several movies waiting to change everything.