With Venice and Telluride in the rear view, Screen Talk co-hosts Anne Thompson and Ryan Lattanzio parse the winners and losers. In the end, Telluride boasted the stronger Oscar lineup, while Venice offered a disappointing “Joker” sequel and many ambitious efforts that may not hit the popular zeitgeist. Ryan praises two lengthy entries, Alfonso Cuaron’s upcoming five-and-a half-hour Apple TV+ series “Disclaimer,” starring Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, as well as Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” starring Adrien Brody, a sales title picked up by Focus International. He also admired Nicole Kidman in sexy “Babygirl” (A24) and Luca Guadagnino’s unrequited love story “Queer” (A24), starring Daniel Craig as a gay junkie barfly. Ryan was also unhappy with Pedro Almodovar’s first English-language movie “The Room Next Door,” a two-hander starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.
Playing both festivals was Pablo Larraín’s lusciously mounted “Maria” (Netflix), starring Angelina Jolie singing opera as Maria Callas, which Anne was moved by — more than Ryan, who found it unemotional. In any case, Jolie should land on the Best Actress list after two acting nominations and one supporting win (“Girl, Interrupted”).
The established Cannes titles at Telluride played best for audiences, including Neon’s “Anora” and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” Netflix’s “Emilia Pérez,” and “All We Imagine as Light” (Janus/Sideshow). The new breakouts included RaMell Ross’s radiantly photographed “Nickel Boys” (Amazon/MGM), starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Edward Berger’s riveting papal drama “Conclave” (Focus), starring Ralph Fiennes, and Jason Reitman’s comedy “Saturday Night” (Sony).
Up next, the still-sprawling Toronto International Film Festival, which is not as expansive as it used to be but still runs in the film-friendly city for 11 days and includes many familiar festival titles and world premieres, many of them sales titles. Even the opening night movie, David Gordon Green’s family comedy “Nutcrackers,” starring Ben Stiller as the reluctant caretaker of his late sister’s four boys, is available for sale. The Christmas movie may sell to a streamer. In another era, the movie would be a studio release across the country. (On opening night, both Green and Stiller were grateful the movie had a chance to debut with an audience of moviegoers at Roy Thomson Hall.)
Bailey lays out the festival’s scale, which is bigger than the last few years, but will not ever get back to its old levels, plus likely commercial breakouts, including Rebel Wilson’s closing night comedy, “The Deb,” a sales title, Morgan Neville’s Pharrell Williams Lego movie “Piece by Piece” (Focus), Michael Gracey’s audacious musical “Better Man” (Paramount), R. J. Cutler’s documentary “Elton John: Never Too Late” (Disney+), and Marielle Heller’s “Night Bitch” (Searchlight) starring Amy Adams as a woman who is dealing with “the horrors that come with motherhood,” said Bailey. Adams could be one of the Oscar contenders, he said, “it’s not just for genre heads at all. Amy Adams is on fire, it’s one of the strongest performances I’ve seen all year.” Marianne Jean-Baptiste’s tightly wound performance in Mike Leigh’s “Hard Truths” (Bleecker Street) could emerge. “It’s one of the most singular pieces of work I’ve seen all year.”
The Canadian government is investing in a new $17 million Toronto market, coming in 2026, a big global content market like Cannes or Berlin, said Bailey. North America has no market alongside a major festival. Among this year’s big sales titles, Ron Howard’s “Eden” stars Jude Law as a settler in a past Galapagos Islands alternate society.
Bailey also addressed the current state of film festivals and a robust list of sponsors for TIFF, which has replaced Bell with new presenting sponsor Rogers Communications. “We started a new chapter, responding to changes,” said Bailey. “There is some consistency and some change. It’s not critical, in the sense that we would not survive.”
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Screen Talk is produced by Azwan Badruzaman and available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify, and hosted by Megaphone. Browse previous episodes here, subscribe here, and be sure to let us know if you’d like to hear the hosts address specific issues in upcoming editions of Screen Talk.
