How Telluride and Toronto Reshuffled the Best Picture Race

The fall festival circuit does not decide the Oscar race, but it does set its early terms. Venice ran first, followed by the Telluride Film Festival from Sept. 4 to 7, and the Toronto International Film Festival, which opened Sept. 10 and runs through Sept. 20. Together, the three festivals put more than a dozen potential Best Picture contenders in front of critics and industry voters before a single studio campaign has fully begun.

Two films have separated themselves from that field: Martin McDonagh's 'Wild Horse Nine,' powered by John Malkovich's Best Actor win at Venice, and Netflix's Spanish-language epic 'La Bola Negra.' Other high-profile premieres, including Andrew Scott's 'Elsinore' and Danny Boyle's 'Ink,' landed with more divided results, and Toronto's own audience verdict, historically one of the season's most reliable signals, has not yet been delivered.

Malkovich's Volpi Cup Gives Wild Horse Nine an Edge

'Wild Horse Nine,' McDonagh's black comedy about two CIA officers sent to Easter Island in the tense days before Chile's 1973 coup, premiered in competition at Venice on Sept. 3. John Malkovich plays Chris, a terminally ill CIA veteran whose bond with a pair of rebellious students complicates the mission; Sam Rockwell plays his protégé, Lee. Steve Buscemi, Tom Waits and Parker Posey round out the cast.

On Sept. 12, Venice awarded Malkovich the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. He accepted with a pre-taped message. Malkovich has two prior Academy Award nominations, both for supporting actor, for 'Places in the Heart' in 1984 and 'In the Line of Fire' in 1993, and has never won.

That momentum carried into Telluride and a Toronto Special Presentations slot. The film holds a 92% approval score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 79 on Metacritic. Searchlight Pictures will release it Nov. 6 in the U.S. and U.K.

The Debut Turns a Comedy Into an Oscar Contender

Jesse Eisenberg's 'The Debut' premiered at Telluride on Sept. 5. The comedy follows a shy New Jersey housewife, played by Julianne Moore, whose life unravels after she is cast in a community-theater production of a fictional musical called 'Nosy Neighbors' under the influence of its demanding director, played by Paul Giamatti. The cast also includes Halle Bailey, Colton Ryan, Bonnie Milligan, Lilli Cooper, Maulik Pancholy and Bernadette Peters.

Reviews compared the film's mix of ensemble comedy and character study to 1990s mockumentaries such as 'Waiting for Guffman.' One review credited Moore with earning laughs even in her character's most exasperating moments and praised the 'riotous showdown' between her and Giamatti's characters. The film holds a 95% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 79 on Metacritic.

A24 is distributing the film in the U.S., with a Dec. 11 theatrical release; Lionsgate holds U.K. rights for January 2027. It is also scheduled to play San Sebastián's main competition, the New York Film Festival's Spotlight section, and the BFI London Film Festival, where it will close the festival.

Elsinore's Notice Splits Between the Performance and the Film

Simon Stone's 'Elsinore' premiered at Telluride on Sept. 4 and played Toronto on Sept. 12. It stars Andrew Scott as the Scottish actor Ian Charleson, whose career had stalled after his roles in the Oscar-winning 'Chariots of Fire' and 'Gandhi.' Set in autumn 1989, the film follows Charleson taking over a National Theatre production of 'Hamlet' after Daniel Day-Lewis withdraws, defying his doctor's warning that he is too sick with AIDS-related illness to perform; he completes 24 performances while undergoing hospital treatment. Olivia Colman plays his doctor; Billie Piper and Johnny Flynn also star.

Critics were nearly unanimous in praising Scott's performance as among the finest of his career. The film holds an 84% score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 75 on Metacritic, positive but noticeably lower than 'Wild Horse Nine' or 'The Debut.' At least one review praised Scott while describing the film around him as leaning on familiar prestige-drama conventions.

Focus Features will release 'Elsinore' in North America starting Nov. 20, expanding through Thanksgiving and December, with Universal Pictures International and Studiocanal handling other territories. It is also set to open the BFI London Film Festival on Oct. 7, ahead of a U.K. release in late January 2027.

Ink Draws a More Divided Response

Danny Boyle's 'Ink' opened Venice in competition for the Golden Lion on Sept. 2, then screened at Telluride and Toronto. Adapted by James Graham from his 2017 stage play, the film follows Larry Lamb, played by Jack O'Connell, accepting Rupert Murdoch's offer, with Guy Pearce as Murdoch, to edit The Sun tabloid; Claire Foy plays a fictional composite character. StudioCanal, Media Res and House Productions produced the U.K.-France-U.S. co-production.

Its aggregate scores, 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and 79 on Metacritic, describe a generally favorable reception. But that average obscures a real split in tone: some reviews called it a punchy piece of filmmaking, while at least one Telluride dispatch described it as a surprising disappointment that lacked a clear moral center. Compared with the more uniformly positive notices for 'Wild Horse Nine,' that divide has left 'Ink' positioned as a contender in some categories rather than a Best Picture frontrunner. Netflix will release it in U.S. theaters Dec. 11 ahead of a Jan. 8, 2027, streaming debut, with StudioCanal handling U.K. and French distribution.

Netflix Puts Its Weight Behind La Bola Negra

'La Bola Negra,' directed by Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi on a reported €15 million budget, follows three gay men across three timelines, 1932, 1937 and 2017, in a story inspired by the unfinished work of Federico García Lorca. It stars Penélope Cruz and Glenn Close alongside Guitarricadelafuente, making his acting debut, and was shot on 35mm film. The film premiered at Cannes on May 21, where Calvo and Ambrossi tied for the festival's best director prize, and went on to win the audience award at the Sydney Film Festival.

Spain selected it as its official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. Under the Academy's rules, each country's entry goes through a two-stage review: a preliminary committee narrows all national submissions to a shortlist of 15, and a separate nominating committee then selects the final five nominees by secret ballot. To qualify, a film must first play at least seven consecutive days in commercial theaters in its home country during the eligibility window.

'La Bola Negra' then played Telluride and Toronto's Special Presentations section, where Cruz received a TIFF Special Tribute Award, presented by Chanel, on Sept. 13 at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. Netflix is backing the film with a 47-day exclusive theatrical run, opening Oct. 16 and staying in theaters until its Dec. 2 streaming premiere. That surpasses the window Netflix gave Noah Baumbach's 'Marriage Story' in 2019, previously its longest theatrical commitment, and is longer than the two-week IMAX run it gave David Fincher's 'Cliff Booth.' Netflix has already promised an even longer, 49-day window for Greta Gerwig's 'Narnia: The Magician's Nephew' in 2027, suggesting the strategy extends well beyond this one release.

Toronto's Verdict Is Still Pending

Toronto's own Oscar-season contribution is not finished. The festival added new names to the conversation in its first week: Siân Heder's opening-night film 'Being Heumann,' about disability rights activist Judy Heumann, for Apple, at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes; Chris Rock's 'Misty Green' with Rosalind Eleazar, at 72%; Peter Farrelly's 'I Play Rocky,' in which Anthony Ippolito plays a young Sylvester Stallone, at 81%; Susanna White's 'Prima Facie' with Cynthia Erivo; and Bassam Tariq's 'Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,' starring Mahershala Ali as a devoutly religious hitman, at 100%.

None of that has been tested against Toronto's audience vote yet. The festival's People's Choice Award, given in the past to eventual Best Picture winners including 'Chariots of Fire,' 'American Beauty,' 'Slumdog Millionaire,' '12 Years a Slave' and 'Green Book,' has become, in the words of one history of the award, effectively 'the starting gun of the Academy Award nominations race.' It is not announced until the festival's close on Sept. 20.

Until then, industry trackers are working from critics' reactions and studio release strategy alone, not from the audience signal that has often set the tone for the rest of the season. 'Wild Horse Nine' and 'La Bola Negra' carry built-in advantages heading into that vote, but Toronto's own history shows the award can still reorder the conversation in its final days.