The Fall Festival Season Is Already Sorting Itself Out — And the Distribution Story Is Just Getting Started

There's a moment in any close race where the gap becomes the story. Two films, two distributors, two very different formal bets — and after two weekends in limited release, Teenage…

The conventional wisdom on A24's summer is Backrooms ($396.6 million globally, per IndieWire) and The Invite ($25.5 million). Both were phenomena built on genre mechanics and algor…

Venice opens tomorrow. Telluride starts Thursday. TIFF follows ten days later. The fall festival corridor — the one that historically determines which films get talked about throug…

The fall festival calendar is filling up fast (Venice opens September 2, TIFF follows September 10, NYFF runs September 25 through October 12, per Screen Daily), which means the ne…

A few hundred dollars. That's the margin separating two of the most interesting limited releases of the summer after their second weekends in theaters. According to IndieWire's Ren…

Venice opens September 2. Telluride follows the next day. Toronto arrives September 10. The festival calendar is about to become a firehose, and when it does, the critical conversa…

The fall festival corridor is about to open — Venice runs September 2–12, Toronto September 10–20 — but the story worth paying attention to right now is NYFF, which has already ann…

The New York Film Festival selections dropped last week, and the titles getting the most attention aren't the ones in the main competition. They're in the Spotlights section — and…

There's a number buried in this week's specialized box office report that deserves more attention than it's getting: $60,047. That's the per-screen average A24's Tony pulled from j…

The per-screen average is the most honest number in indie film. It strips away the noise of wide-release saturation and asks a simple question: when you put this film in front of a…

The fall festival season is close enough to smell. Here's what's actually worth your attention right now. --- 1. Venice Is Three Weeks Out — And the Competition Slate Is Unusually…

The calendar flipped to August, which means the industry has officially entered its holding-breath phase. Venice opens September 2, TIFF follows on September 10, and between now an…

There's a particular kind of film announcement that lands differently from the rest. Not the trailer drop, not the acquisition news, not the festival premiere — but the production…

The most interesting theatrical release this week isn't a wide-release platform play or a prestige acquisition sitting in limited markets. It's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma…

The Venice 2026 competition lineup dropped last week, and the first thing you notice is the names: Martin McDonagh, Werner Herzog, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Lee Chang-dong. The second thi…

There's a version of the "save the moviegoing experience" argument that's become almost as exhausting as the problem it's diagnosing: vague appeals to communal magic, nostalgic han…

The summer doldrums are real, but they're not total. Here's what's actually worth tracking right now. --- 1. The Invite Is Still the Season's Most Interesting Ongoing Story Covered…

The news that Rose Byrne is reuniting with If I Had Legs I'd Kick You director Mary Bronstein for a new film called Nasty — with Jenna Ortega co-starring and Margot Robbie's LuckyC…

There's a scene that keeps playing in my head this week, and it has nothing to do with any film I actually watched. It's the mental image of a sold-out Friday night at Film Forum i…