Awards Update: Fall Festival Winners & Losers

Welcome to an ongoing series where I cover the 2024/2025 awards season. On a regular basis, I will update my Oscar predictions, taking into account the new information that has been received since the last update. Full predictions in every category can be found on the Home and Awards page.

“Frenzied” and “chaotic” would be the words most apt to describe the two weeks where the Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival crash into each other. Reactions pour in, standing ovations are timed, and prizes are bestowed upon a select few. It’s one of the most fun stretches of the year as a cinephile and an awards junkie, a time when you can eat your fill of quality cinema and confirm/deny your early Oscar predictions. Because there’s so much to talk about and so little margin space to fit it all in, let’s split everyone off into two groups: Winners and Losers. Of course, all of this is relative, and anything could happen in the six months we have left in the season.

Starting with the winners, more specifically the actual winners, we’ve got Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door nabbing the Golden Lion in Venice, a victory I learned about as I exited from the press screening of the film at TIFF underwhelmed. But the Isballe Huppert-led jury saw something different, which I don’t think many other people will agree with so enthusiastically. This is not a top-tier work by the famed Spanish filmmaker, with the lead performances by Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore being the only viable awards chances. They’re both being submitted as lead actresses by distributor Sony Picture Classics, which is the morally correct move. But that category has found itself quite stacked in the past few weeks, and SPC already has Saoirse Ronan in The Outrun to campaign.

We can scratch The Life of Chuck, this year’s TIFF People’s Choice winner, off the prediction charts. It’s just been picked up by Neon with a planned Summer 2025 release. That also means we’ll have to wait and see if the film can repeat what the last twelve winners of that award did and be nominated for Best Picture. Could we get two People’s Choice winners nominated at the 2026 ceremony?

The two runners-up at TIFF, Emilia Pérez and Anora, both solidified themselves as top-tier contenders. They both received swaths of attention at Telluride and TIFF, showing that they can perform just as well at public festivals as they did at a high-brow competition like Cannes. I expect them to dominate the above-the-line categories, with Emilia Pérez nabbing a handful of craft nominations for its outstanding musical numbers.

However, there was no bigger winner these past few weeks than Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which nabbed its director the Silver Lion for Best Director. It was by far the best thing I saw at TIFF, a sentiment that many critics agreed with. It’s amazing that something made so cheaply (under $10 million) feels so similar to the epic Hollywood productions of the past. How A24 will be able to maintain that desire and enthusiasm until the release date announced on December 20th will be a question, but they certainly have something special on their hands that people are hungry for. I mentioned in my last update that I would put it in several categories if the reviews were kind, and now that promise comes true.

Other small winners would be Babygirl and Hard Truths, both of which gained great reviews for their lead actresses Nicole Kidman and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, respectively. Conclave and The Piano Lesson would also fall into this category, although some of the early predictions for Stanley Tucci and Samuel L. Jackson turned out to be wishful thinking. Regardless, both of those adaptations received strong enough reviews and public sentiment that they should find themselves in more than one category. There’s also September 5, which was picked up by Paramount and received strong reviews despite its under-the-radar status.

Sitting in the loser territory (only slightly) is Luca Guadagnino’s Queer. Reviews were fine, but the passion is definitely lacking, which is something this very challenging (no pun intended) movie needs. It’ll likely only have an awards presence through Daniel Craig’s performance. Also a small loser is Pablo Larraín’s Maria. Angelina Jolie will almost certainly be nominated, but I’m thinking Larraín and Netflix are striving for a bit more considering this is supposed to be his final entry in his biopic trilogy. And then there’s Nightbitch, a movie that is much more subdued and normal than its title and trailer led us to believe.

Of course, we can’t end this article without mentioning the dud that was Joker: Folie à Deux. This sequel could have never repeated the overwhelming success of the first film, but the mediocre reviews, bad press, and low box office projections suggest that it will be a mighty challenge to muster any awards attention. It’ll probably still get some craft nominations, just nothing substantial.

Now it’s on to the regional festivals (NYFF, AFI, Middleburg, Chicago, etc.), where most of these winners (and some of the losers) parade themselves around to gain national support. It’s a lot like the election primaries, so we’ll need to have our ears to the ground and listen for which ones are gaining traction when even more eyes are placed upon them.