ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS  SEPTEMBER 05, 2019 Your Ticket to the Toronto International Film Festival Happy awards-season kickoff day! The Toronto International Film Festival has officially begun, bringing a wealth of Oscar hopeful films to audiences for the first time. Vanity Fair will host robust coverage of the fest, with reviews from critics Richard Lawson and K. Austin Collins, interviews and features from Julie Miller, a special Little Gold Men podcast episode, and portraits and videos from our TIFF studio. So, which films are best poised to walk away with the lion’s share of the event’s buzz? Lawson has pinpointed 16 contenders in his TIFF preview, from Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers to Jennifer Lopez as a savvy stripper to the lightning rod that is Joker. The real question, though, may be which movie winds up being a surprise hit, à la last year’s Green Book—which, as if you had forgotten, rode a wave of unforeseen TIFF love all the way to best picture, despite encountering several bumps along the way. Lawson augurs that the movie fitting that bill this year could be Just Mercy, from Short Term 12 director Destin Daniel Cretton. “It’s a death row drama starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, and Brie Larson,” he writes. “So that’s two Oscar winners and a shoulda-been nominee (for Creed and Black Panther), in a story about the American justice system, arriving at a time when that whole thing is really, really broken. Sure, it’s maybe not initially as flashy-seeming as a Mister Rogers movie, or a film about how the Joker is bad, but it might have the makings of a festival sensation.” Elsewhere in HWD, Miller previews a heartwarming documentary that shows the softer side of Truman Capote; a host of exciting new names join Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit docket, including Netflix wizard Ted Sarandos; V.F. reveals its 2019 Best-Dressed List, featuring new style icons like Billy Porter and Jason Momoa; and in a must-see Late Show clip, Stephen Colbert presses Joe Biden about the 2020 Democratic front-runner’s seemingly bottomless tendency for making gaffes.

Oh, Canada From Tom Hanks as Mister Rogers to Jennifer Lopez as a savvy stripper to the lightning rod that is Joker, here’s what we’ll be watching as the Oscar race begins to take shape at the Toronto International Film Festival. READ MORE » The Real Truman Capote For the first time, Kate Harrington opens up about her unconventional relationship with Capote in Ebs Burnough’s documentary The Capote Tapes, which premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival. READ MORE » A List More titans of media, technology, and culture continue to join the sixth annual New Establishment conference in Los Angeles this October, including Ted Sarandos, Sheryl Sandberg, and Edward Norton. READ MORE » Dressed to Impress From Jason Momoa’s couture scrunchie to Elle Fanning’s Cannes looks to Beckham family fashion, this year’s Best-Dressed List is a parade of individual style. READ MORE » “Are You Going Nuts?” 2020 Democratic front-runner Joe Biden insisted on The Late Show that his numerous verbal flubs are not “substantive.” But as Stephen Colbert pointed out, “The devil is in the details.” READ MORE »