{"id":857143,"date":"2026-09-22T23:42:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T23:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/857143\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T23:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T23:42:18","slug":"5-things-the-fall-festivals-told-us-about-the-2027-oscar-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/857143\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things the Fall Festivals Told Us About the 2027 Oscar Race"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe fall festival triple crown ended the way it always does, with a Toronto audience getting the last word. On Sunday, those words were in Spanish.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLa Bola Negra<\/a>,\u201d the sprawling Netflix epic from Los Javis, took TIFF\u2019s People\u2019s Choice Award<\/a>, capping three weeks in which Venice handed its Golden Lion to May el-Toukhy\u2019s \u201cWoman Unknown\u201d and Telluride did what Telluride does, launching contenders without ranking a single one. Three festivals, three very different kinds of potential voters. Put their verdicts side by side, and the shape of the 99th Academy Awards starts to come into focus.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere are five things the festivals told us.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cWild Horse Nine\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSearchlight Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tVenice and Telluride agreed on one thing, and that\u2019s John Malkovich.<\/p>\n

\n\tMartin McDonagh\u2019s \u201cWild Horse Nine\u201d premiered in competition on the Lido to a 13-minute standing ovation. The next day, Searchlight brought it to Telluride as the surprise patron screening, timed to John Malkovich\u2019s Silver Medallion tribute<\/a>. And nine days later, Venice closed the loop and handed him the Volpi Cup for best actor.<\/p>\n

\n\tMalkovich plays a dying CIA agent sent to Easter Island in the tense days before Chile\u2019s 1973 coup, and the performance is equal parts menace and, of all things, tenderness. He\u2019s been nominated twice, for \u201cPlaces in the Heart\u201d and \u201cIn the Line of Fire and hasn\u2019t been back since the Clinton administration. Between the prize, the tribute and the ovation, the Academy has been handed a narrative with a bow on it. Searchlight opens the film Nov. 6.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cLa Bola Negra\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCarla Oset\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLa Bola Negra\u201d is the international feature front-runner, and it\u2019s playing well beyond the category.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe directing team known as Los Javis has everyone\u2019s attention now.<\/p>\n

\n\tJavier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi won best director at Cannes in May, carried the film to Telluride and then took Toronto\u2019s top prize<\/a>. Shot on 35mm and inspired by Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca\u2019s unfinished work of the same name, Spain\u2019s Oscar selection moves among 1932, 1937 and 2017, following three generations of gay men across nearly a century of Spanish history.<\/p>\n

\n\tA subtitled Netflix film that festivalgoers won\u2019t stop talking about is exactly where you want to be heading into the international feature race. But People\u2019s Choice changes the size of the conversation. Over the last decade, nine of 10 winners landed a best picture nomination, with only 2024\u2019s \u201cThe Life of Chuck\u201d missing. Two of them, \u201cGreen Book\u201d and \u201cNomadland,\u201d won the whole thing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat gives Netflix, which has never won best picture, every reason to campaign across the board. And consider this \u2014 stars Guitarricadelafuente and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz weren\u2019t even in Telluride to work the room, and the movie still had people talking.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u201cI Play Rocky<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of TIFF<\/p>\n

\n\tToronto\u2019s audience is signaling a wide-open and competitive best picture field.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe know the internet wants to call the race already for Christopher Nolan\u2019s \u201cThe Odyssey,\u201d and it\u2019s definitely at the top of the heap for films that have screened and performed, but there\u2019s six more months to go. <\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, some housekeeping. Social media spent the weekend asking how \u201cLa Bola Negra\u201d could win People\u2019s Choice but not the International People\u2019s Choice Award. TIFF officials tell Variety there\u2019s no separate ballot, and the international prize isn\u2019t limited to non-English-language films but to non-North American ones. \u201cLa Bola Negra\u201d received the most votes overall, so the international honor went to the next highest non-North American film. That\u2019s how a British drama, spoken in English and starring an Irish actor, ended up with it.<\/p>\n

\n\tBehind \u201cLa Bola Negra\u201d came Peter Farrelly\u2019s \u201cI Play Rocky\u201d and Si\u00e2n Heder\u2019s \u201cBeing Heumann,\u201d two crowd-pleasers with clean, sturdy narratives built to gain a legion of lovers during a long season. Heder knows how far that love can travel, after riding \u201cCODA\u201d from Sundance all the way to best picture.<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the last decade, two of every three films finishing in Toronto\u2019s top three went on to a best picture nomination. In 2019, all three (\u201cJojo Rabbit,\u201d \u201cMarriage Story\u201d and \u201cParasite\u201d) made the lineup and \u201cParasite\u201d won. In 2020, only \u201cNomadland\u201d did and it won, too.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat statistic can be a bit uncomfortable for two presumed heavyweights, \u201cWild Horse Nine\u201d and \u201cThe Debut<\/a>,\u201d neither of which cracked the top three. But missing the podium isn\u2019t fatal. In 2017, \u201cThe Shape of Water\u201d was one of the most talked-about titles in Toronto, finished outside the top three and won best picture anyway. The same for 2016\u2019s \u201cMoonlight\u201d from Barry Jenkins, who toppled the TIFF audience winner, \u201cLa La Land\u201d at the Oscars. But on the other hand, the winner of the Cannes best director prize has never won the Oscar for directing. The last Cannes winner to convert to an Oscar nominee was Pawe\u0142 Pawlikowski for \u201cCold War\u201d (2018) and before that was Bennett Miller for \u201cFoxcatcher\u201d (2014).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tHalle Bailey and Julianne Moore in \u201cThe Debut\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA24<\/p>\n

\n\tThe best actress race has a front-runner, and she already owns an Oscar.<\/p>\n

\n\tJulianne Moore walked into Telluride as a name on the lineup. She walked out as the actress to beat.
In \u201cThe Debut,\u201d Jesse Eisenberg\u2019s third feature as a director, Moore plays Mona Friedman, a meek New Jersey homemaker who stumbles into a community theater musical and discovers she can\u2019t stop. The role lets her be funny, fragile and completely unguarded, often in the same breath and she sells Eisenberg\u2019s original songs like a woman who has waited her whole life for someone to ask.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Telluride crowd applauded in the middle of the movie during a rehearsal scene opposite Paul Giamatti and again before the credits rolled. Festival audiences rarely do that even once.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe complication is \u201cStill Alice.\u201d Moore won best actress for it 11 years ago, and voters know exactly what she can do. That\u2019s the double edge of chasing a second Oscar: the respect is already banked, and urgency is harder to manufacture. A24, which opens the film Dec. 11, will need to sell this as a Moore the Academy hasn\u2019t seen before, not a victory lap.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there\u2019s Venice. Mathilde Arcel won the Volpi Cup for \u201cWoman Unknown,\u201d the Danish postwar drama that also took the Golden Lion, a double the jury can only award unanimously. By her own account, it\u2019s her first lead role and her first film festival. Arcel isn\u2019t a name the Academy knows. Still, a performance attached to a Golden Lion demands a look, especially now that the prize makes \u201cWoman Unknown\u201d eligible for international feature under the Academy\u2019s new rules.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tAndrew Scott stars as Ian Charleson and Olivia Colman as Margaret Johnson in \u201cElsinore.\u201d <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAnthony Dickenson<\/p>\n

\n\tThe field is broad, and we shouldn\u2019t expect \u201clocks\u201d any time soon.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s a lot of themes circling movies of the fall. Many are about the craft of acting, and the actors branch loves watching those. The actors branch is the Academy\u2019s largest; it alone decides the four acting categories and it votes on best picture like everyone else. Hand actors a movie about their own work and history, and they lean in. That helps movies like \u201cElsinore\u201d and \u201cThe Debut\u201d down the line. <\/p>\n

\n\tIf you look at history, \u201cAll About Eve,\u201d a movie about a Broadway star and the understudy coming for her crown, earned a then-record 14 nominations and won best picture. \u201cShakespeare in Love\u201d beat \u201cSaving Private Ryan.\u201d \u201cThe Artist\u201d won with a silent film star who can\u2019t survive the talkies. \u201cBirdman\u201d won with a faded actor staking everything on a Broadway opening. \u201cBlack Swan,\u201d \u201cLa La Land\u201d and \u201cJudy\u201d handed Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Ren\u00e9e Zellweger each their own individual Oscar statuettes. And only six months ago, Jessie Buckley won best actress for \u201cHamnet,\u201d a film that builds to a crowd at the Globe Theatre watching Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cHamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tObviously, the branch\u2019s affection has limits as it tends to favor movies about the craft, not the business. Case in point: Damien Chazelle\u2019s \u201cBabylon\u201d cast Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt as silent-era stars and came away with zero acting nominations. <\/p>\n

\n\tIn a time of mergers and AI, real people doing the real artistic work might just do the trick.<\/p>\n

\n\tMoral of the story is that it\u2019s still early, and anything can change between now and nomination voting in January. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fall festival triple crown ended the way it always does, with a Toronto audience getting the last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":857144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[189658,88,256898,283178,310429],"class_list":["post-857143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-awards-circuit-column","tag-entertainment","tag-i-play-rocky","tag-la-bola-negra","tag-the-debut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/857144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}