Which Fall Festival Favorites Are Now in the Oscar Race?

Best Picture frontrunners like "La Bola Negra" and "Wild Horse Nine" emerge as TIFF, Telluride, and Venice come to an end.

As the first wave of fall festivals comes to an end, we have a much clearer picture of which films have the most appeal to Oscar voters. Some frontrunners generated buzz after premieres at Venice, Telluride, and Toronto, while other earlier festival entries survived the stress test of a reassessment months after their debuts at Cannes or Sundance.

At this stage, two lauded 2026 blockbusters are frontrunners for a Best Picture nomination: “Project Hail Mary” (Amazon MGM), and “The Odyssey” (Universal). The pair of films are also expected to factor into most of the craft categories, from Best Cinematography and Best Production Design to Best Film Editing and Best Sound.

On the specialty cinema side, “The Invite” may not have surpassed the gross of the fellow A24 films like “The Drama,” but it was the MVP of Sundance 2026, and boasts a quartet of outstanding performances, including director Olivia Wilde.

Here are the festival award contenders at this stage of the game.

Best Picture Contenders

With few exceptions, like “Life of Chuck,” the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Awards winner usually winds up in the Best Picture Race. Kudos to the award runners-up “Being Heumann” (Apple) and “I Play Rocky” (Amazon MGM), which both had their world premieres at TIFF, but it’s the first-place finisher “La Bola Negra” (Netflix) that’s now not just a favorite to be nominated for Best Picture, it’s one of the frontrunners to win. And the surprise international People’s Choice award went to English-language UK entry “Elsinore,” which will not be eligible for Best International Feature, but is clearly registering with audiences.

Spain’s pick for Best International Feature, directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo (Los Javis), which also played well at Telluride, is the only other film so far to match the scale of “The Odyssey” and “Project Hail Mary,” making it a contender across all the craft categories as well. All three TIFF People’s Choice Awards winners should be considered for the Best Casting Oscar as well, as all three introduce audiences to a bevy of talented actors. If there was a through line in last year’s nominations for the new category, it was films that do a lot of world building via their casting (for example “One Battle After Another” won, and “The Secret Agent” was a surprise nominee).

The Venice and Telluride entry certain to be a Best Picture nominee is Martin McDonagh’s “Wild Horse Nine” (Searchlight). Its reception at the two very different festivals was equally glowing, with special emphasis on lead John Malkovich, who received both a tribute at Telluride, and an award from the competition jury at Venice, the Volpi Cup for Best Actor. The film’s 1970s Easter Island setting, which is beautifully captured by cinematographer Ben Davis, should put the film in craft categories more focused on scale, but the heads of departments that more so deal with actors on a personal level, like hair and makeup or costumes, are not as likely to be recognized, even if the Academy loves to award a period film in those categories. Original Screenplay will be a given.

Mike Leigh’s “Tender Loving Care” (Bleecker Street), which had its world premiere at Telluride, is building considerable goodwill, as the British auteur’s likely swan song is beloved. It is too early to tell whether Leigh has the momentum to make it into the Best Director race, but he will certainly be considered for a sixth Best Original Screenplay option, and his lead Kate O’Flynn is poised for an Oscar run fresh off winning an Emmy for her performance in “Widow’s Bay.”

Finally, although it did not place for People’s Choice at TIFF, Jordan Firstman’s crowd-pleaser “Club Kid” is the Cannes premiere building the most considerable word-of-mouth and could wind up with multiple nominations including Best Picture.

Acting Contenders

Two Telluride premieres more clearly yielded Actor candidates: Jesse Eisenberg’s community theater valentine “The Debut,” starring Best Actress Oscar-winner Julianne Moore (“Still Alice”) and Paul Giamatti, and “Elsinore” (Focus), starring the incandescent, never-nominated Andrew Scott as a dying actor performing his ultimate role, “Hamlet.” The former is an A24 film initially pegged as a Best Picture contender, but is proving to be too idiosyncratic as time moves along. Its exclusion from the TIFF People’s Choice Award lineup supports that theory, even if Moore is still seen as a front-runner for Best Actress, and the original musical numbers for Best Original Song.

Never count out Sony Pictures Classics. The distributor’s last triumph was landing Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay nominations for Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” starring Ethan Hawke. Though the Best Actor race is crowded with stars like Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Ryan Gosling, and John Malkovich — none of whom have won an Oscar for any of their performances — Sundance premiere “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” was enough of a hit at Telluride to warrant putting John Turturro high on the list of nominee possibilities, especially considering the veteran actor has never been nominated for an Academy Award.

International Feature Film Contenders

While the TIFF award for “La Bola Negra” seals the deal on the Spanish entry being the favorite to win Best International Feature, it will be fascinating to watch how the rest of the wide field of international entries shakes out this year.

May el-Toukhy’s “Woman Unknown” is already eligible for the category by having secured the Venice Golden Lion, and could end up as Denmark’s submission as well. Should the film find a distributor soon enough, it has the momentum to make it onto the Best International Feature shortlist, but it is unlikely that the film will be widely seen enough in time for lead Mathilde Arcel, winner of the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, to break into the Best Actress race.

More likely is the Venice Grand Jury Prize winner “Possible Love” overtaking several Cannes favorites (“Fatherland” or “Fjord”?) for Best International Feature. The film from auteur Lee Chang-dong is already South Korea’s submission for the category, and is backed by Netflix as its distributor.

At Telluride, the other Cannes titles that built up steam were Austrian entry Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose,” and France’s official selection “Minotaur.” A French production filmed in Russian in Latvia, the film’s auteur Andrey Zvyagintsev lives in Paris now.

Though Cristian Mungiu’s “Fjord” won the Palme d’Or, is led by two recent Oscar nominees, and is being released by Neon, which distributed the most recent Best International Feature winner “Sentimental Value,” the Romanian entry faltered in its fall festival run. Similarly, Mubi release “Fatherland” has Oscar winner Paweł Pawlikowski at the helm, and possible double Best Actress nominee Sandra Hüller as one of its leads, in addition to being Poland’s Best International Feature entry, but the buzz for the Cannes winner has quieted down in recent months.

Documentary Feature Contenders

Two fest documentaries made a splash and could wind up as contenders: “Free Solo” Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin’s “Everest: The Other Side” (National Geographic) and Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s rule-breaking non-fiction portrait of Elizabeth Holmes, “You Can See Everything” (A24). That nomination depends on how open-minded the often opinionated doc voters turn out to be.

Venice and Toronto premiere “Musk” (Bleecker/HBO), Alex Gibney’s four-hour profile of controversial billionaire Elon Musk, could also factor in this year’s race. Since Gibney won the Oscar for “Taxi to the Dark Side,” nominations have eluded him. Maybe the doc branch will come around.

Lastly, there is “NAZA,” the most talked about film to premiere at Venice, featuring IDF soldiers revealing war crimes committed by Israel during the war in Gaza. The Special Jury Prize-winning film comes from Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, two of the four directors who won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature recently for their film “No Other Land.” With a distribution plan already in place, the film is on track for another nomination, but it is highly unlikely that any documentary, however popular it is among voters, breaks into the Best Picture race.