Toronto, Venice, Telluride: which has the edge as an awards-season launchpad?

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) gets underway this week after the traditional early starts for Venice and Telluride, and with it comes the annual parlour game of figuring out which event carries the most weight as an awards-season launchpad. Awards consultants know only too well that, Cannes notwithstanding, the fall festival trifecta offers the best opportunity to launch their campaigns and begin the long march to honours and, ultimately, the 97th Academy Awards on March 2, 2025.

This is the time to unleash the latest prestige works and usher in a torrent of interviews, soundbites, red-carpet memes and frantically reshuffled contenders lists. It is also a time to see what the competition has up their sleeves and course-­correct strategy for the ensuing weeks and months. This is serious business, and a lucrative one for the consultants who guide the studios, streamers, other distributors and talent. For the festivals, it is about getting the right combination of coveted film premieres and attending A‑­listers, which goes a long way towards keeping funders, sponsors, Hollywood and audiences happy.

Venice Film Festival artistic director Alberto Barbera made a provocative remark in an interview with Vanity Fair last month, in which he noted Hollywood has been bringing heavy-hitters to the Lido ever since eventual best picture Oscar winner Gravity premiered there in 2013. “There is almost no press in Toronto, apart from the trades,” Barbera declared erroneously, adding that Venice was a great place to launch an international campaign. “We have something like 3,000 media representatives from all over the world, so they can really make a proper promotion with the film, the marketing of the film, starting from Venice.”

When Screen International gave TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey the opportunity to reply to his Italian counterpart, the response was characteristically diplomatic. “I don’t know what happens at other festivals around the same time as ours,” said Bailey. “But I can tell you that in Toronto we have thousands of media that come every year to cover the festival. All the major US entertainment press are here — they don’t all travel overseas — and that’s worth remembering.”

Bragging rights

TIFF, which runs September 5-15, has a huge official selection of some 270 films this year, and earns bragging rights with world premieres of Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, to be released by Bleecker Street in the US and Studiocanal in UK, Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch starring Amy Adams at Searchlight Pictures, Ron Howard’s all-star survival adventure Eden, and music films such as Disney Branded Television’s Elton John: Never Too Late and DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot with a voice cast that includes Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal and Bill Nighy.

World premieres at Venice, wrapping its 2024 edition on September 7, included festival opener Beetle­juice Beetlejuice from Warner Bros. While not an awards contender, it still delivered a statement when Jenna Ortega, Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Monica Bellucci and director Tim Burton posed on the red carpet, banishing memories of last year’s star-light season due to the Hollywood strikes. Warner Bros also brought Joker: Folie à Deux to the Lido, five years after Todd Phillips’ original launched there, and the combination of Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga will have been catnip for Barbera and the assembled press and paparazzi.

Other coveted premieres have included Angelina Jolie in Pablo Larrain’s Maria — which Netflix snapped up for the US — as well as Pedro Almodovar’s The Room Next Door at Sony Pictures Classics and Warner Bros in the UK and select territories, plus local boy Luca Guadagnino’s Queer starring Daniel Craig, which A24 acquired for the US.

Premieres at Telluride, the intimate event nestled in the Rocky Mountains (August 30-September 2), included RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, Malcolm Washington’s August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson at Netflix, Edward Berger’s Conclave at Focus Features, Michael Gracey’s Robbie Williams biopic Better Man at Paramount and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The End starring Tilda Swinton, which Neon has for the US.

So which is the most prestigious or important festival to launch an awards season prospect? “Venice and Telluride are the festivals a film would prefer to premiere at, especially if you’re jockeying to be a best picture contender or be in the awards race,” notes one awards strategist who, like others in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. “Both festivals accept far fewer films [than Toronto] so it’s hard to get a spot.”

The campaigner added: “Toronto is a very good festival for certain films, especially ones that maybe aren’t as niche and are playing to a wider audience. But smaller films can also get lost in Toronto because it’s so big. I think what Alberto said [in the Vanity Fair interview] may apply to international markets and international press, but definitely Toronto has more domestic press that are more helpful to a campaign. A lot of the Venice selection don’t necessarily cross over to a more consumer audience. You have the red carpet and the photos in Venice, but you also get that from Toronto.”

Certainly Venice has provided the most best picture Oscar winners of the past 11 years, launching four on the path to glory: 2014 selection Birdman won in 2015, Spotlight won in 2016, The Shape Of Water in 2018 and Nomadland in 2021 — an asterisk year during Covid, when Venice, TIFF and Telluride adopted a collegial approach and shared the world premiere launch of Chloé Zhao’s film.

Telluride can claim two best picture launchpad wins for Nomadland and its 2016 selection Moonlight, as can TIFF with Zhao’s drama plus Green Book, which premiered in Toronto in 2018. However, it is also worth noting that while TIFF is not competitive, unlike Venice with its Golden Lion, it does present the influential People’s Choice Award. Taking a sample pool going back 15 years, all but one TIFF audience award-winner earned a best picture Oscar nomination the following year, with The King’s Speech, 12 Years A Slave, Green Book and Nomadland winning the top Oscar.

“Toronto, Venice and Telluride — each has a slightly different personality, a slightly different purpose, a slightly different audience,” says another veteran awards consultant. “In Venice you’re arriving in a boat and you’re dressed gorgeously; there is a formality to that.

“There’s a formality to Toronto too, because a lot of films are premiering. It’s a populist festival, so you’re going to hit a big cross-section of movie­goers, people that like to just see lots of different movies. There are lots of parties, press opportunities and junketing — you can achieve a lot there.

“Telluride is much smaller, relaxed and it’s for pure movie-lovers,” notes the strategist. “Sometimes where you premiere boils down to timing, and sometimes it’s down to the types of people you’re hoping to attract.” 

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