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Friday, July 30, 2021

A GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD’S BIGGEST RACES

JULY 30, 2021

The Fall Festival Lineups Reveal Some Early Oscar Front-Runners

If your film didn’t land a spot at a festival this week, does it even exist?

I’m Rebecca Ford and over at Awards Insider, we’re tracking all of the festival announcements, and getting very excited for the fall—that is, if delta doesn’t rain on our parade.

This week brought about a flurry of festival news, with the lineups now clearly taking shape and some presumed early front-runners landing at multiple festivals. The Venice Film Festival, which is the first out of the gate, will feature a cornucopia of auteurs, including Denis Villeneuve’s Dune,Pablo Larraín’s Princess Diana film, Spencer, Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel, and Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog. And on Wednesday TIFF added to its stacked lineup, including Campion’s film and Stephen Karam’s The Humans. We have to say there seems to be a lot of tails wagging for The Power of the Dog, which was also named a New York Film Festival centerpiece. My colleague David Canfield has more thoughts on what these festival announcements may reveal about the films we haven’t seen yet, and the Little Gold Men team discussed the festival outlook on this week’s episode as well.

So that’s the good news. But when chatting with publicists this past week, it’s become very clear that there are a lot of looming questions about what attendance looks like at these festivals. Especially at the Toronto Film Festival, which opens on September 9. While Canada has announced plans to open the borders to fully vaccinated Americans on August 9, the festival is moving forward with a hybrid format that will allow many to attend remotely. And as COVID numbers continue to climb due to the delta strain, many of the industry folks I’ve spoken to are unsure if they’ll want to head up to Toronto at all. It seems likely that the domestic fests—Telluride and NYFF—are the more attractive options with the future so unclear when it comes to COVID.

While we wait for another month to see how it all shakes out, Awards Insider remains wrapped up in all things Emmys. We’ve been chatting with nominees, including stars like The Flight Attendant’s Rosie Perez, The Queen’s Gambit’s Thomas Brodie-Sangster, and Hacks’ history-making Carl Clemons-Hopkins, plus behind-the-camera talent like director Zach Braff (Ted Lasso) and casting director Francine Maisler(The Underground Railroad). Check it all out on Awards Insider now, and we’ll be back in your inboxes next week.