The battle to win over Academy Awards voters played out at fancy parties and splashy premieres at international film festivals in Venice, Toronto and Telluride. The 97th Academy Awards are months away, but the race is already on. This fall stands in contrast to last year’s empty red carpets – due to the Hollywood writers and actors’ strikes – as studios launch their biggest awards contenders, while also scrambling to remind voters of splashy titles that debuted earlier in the year.
The latest challengers screened in recent weeks at international film festivals in Venice and Toronto (TIFF), where Washington Post reporters were on the ground. Without a Barbenheimer juggernaut sucking up all the oxygen, it feels like this year’s race is so up in the air that no one knows which big-budget studio fare or indie darlings might make the cut for up to 10 best picture slots. In Europe, early favourites such as Pedro Almodóvar’s droll euthanasia drama The Room Next Door , which casts Tilda Swinton opposite Julianne Moore, and Pablo Larraín’s Maria , a biopic starring Angelina Jolie as opera singer Maria Callas, met with comically long standing ovations.
Almodóvar’s movie, which won the Golden Lion, was greeted with such a warm reception that the director ran around the theatre at its premiere, kissing and hugging attendees. In Canada, films that debuted in May at the Cannes Film Festival – including Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner Anora and Jacques Audiard’s.