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 Male
Venice runs September 2–12, which means the acquisition frenzy starts in roughly 21 days. The lineup announcement already drew notice for being "heavily skewed towards films by male directors," per Screen Daily — a pointed observation from a trade that usually leads with the glamour.
The competition films worth tracking:
- Possible Love — Lee Chang-dong's first film since Burning (2018). Eight years between features from one of Korean cinema's most precise storytellers. This is the one.
- Wild Horse Nine — Martin McDonagh's CIA thriller set before the 1973 Chilean coup, backed by Film4 and set for Searchlight release. McDonagh has premiered his last two films at Venice; this is a homecoming of sorts.
- Bunker — Florian Zeller's follow-up to The Father and The Son, about an architect whose marriage fractures over a billionaire's bunker commission. The cast (Cruz, Bardem, Graham, Dano) is doing a lot of work before a frame has screened.
The studio-and-streamer retreat from Venice that Screen Daily flagged is worth watching. If the big platforms are pulling back from the Lido, that changes what kinds of films get acquisition heat there — and who's positioned to buy.
2. Josephine Has a Trailer and a Date — Finally
The Sundance double-winner (Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award) from director Beth de Araújo now has a trailer and a confirmed theatrical release date of November 20. Stars Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan.
A Sundance double-winner sitting on the shelf until November is either a smart awards-season play or a sign that the distributor needed time to figure out what they had. The trailer will tell you which. What's notable: de Araújo is a genuinely interesting filmmaker, and this is the kind of film that could get buried by the fall prestige pile-up or break through it. November 20 puts it squarely in the thick of awards season traffic.
No word yet on screen count or whether it's going wide or limited — that distinction will matter enormously for whether general audiences actually find it.
3. Locarno Is Happening Right Now — And the Reviews Are Mixed
Locarno runs through August 15, which makes it the live festival of the moment. The dispatch worth reading: The Playlist's review of Destroy All Girls, a skate-punk escape story that, per the headline, "goes nowhere." A film that earns a Locarno slot and then disappoints is its own kind of data point — the festival has been swinging for younger, more formally adventurous work, and not every bet lands.
Locarno acquisitions rarely get the same attention as Venice or TIFF pickups, but that's partly where the value is. Films that screen here without distributors attached are often the ones Kino Lorber or MUBI can move on quietly.
4. The Criterion Channel's August Slate Is Doing Real Work
IndieWire's streaming guide for August flags the Criterion Channel's "Rock Biopics that Don't Suck" series as a pointed counter-programming move against the Michael / *Bohemian Rhapsody