It’s the most wonderful time of the year: fall festival season! The cinema floodgates officially open with Tokyo throughout September and October. Our nimble team of correspondents will be on the ground at all of these fests—and more! Telluride traditionally withholds its lineup until opening day; Tokyo has yet to announce its stash—where we will be gathering high-quality fodder for best-of lists and gauging the Letterboxd community’s first reactions.

This autumn, however, things look a little different. For one, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are in effect, meaning many actors likely won’t be in attendance (although there are exceptions). For another, there’s no clear frontrunner: this time last year, Everything Everywhere All at Once was the juggernaut underdog barreling towards assured awards season victory (the final tally higher than anyone on that team could have dreamed). 

Nevertheless, the festival lineups are stacked with auteurs and stars (including Chris Pine’s directorial debut, Poolman, and Richard Linklater’s latest collaboration with Glen Powell, Hit Man), and that’s not even to mention the hidden gems waiting to be unearthed by cinephiles around the world.

American Fiction

Written and directed by Cord Jefferson. Premiering at TIFF.

Is there anything so American as encouraging marginalized people to share their stories, only to turn around and say, “No, not like that”? It’s a question that seems to churn beneath Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial debut American Fiction, a literary culture satire about the thorny demand for “authenticity” placed upon Black writers. Jefferson made waves with his work on Watchmen, taking home an Emmy for co-writing the prestige miniseries’ arguably centerpiece episode, a poignant treatise on generational trauma and America’s legacy of racial violence. A journalist-turned-screenwriter with other credits including The Good Place and Succession (RIP Vaulter), he brings a deep understanding of the media industry to his take on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure.

Coming off The Batman and his stellar turn in Asteroid City, Jeffrey Wright stars as English professor Thelonious “Monk” Ellison. As Monk struggles to sell his latest novel, one that publishers reject as “not Black enough”, he’s confronted by the popularity of a new bestseller he derides as Black trauma porn. His contempt drives him to pen a pseudonymous parody in the same vein; though Monk intends to expose the publishing industry’s hypocrisy, his plan backfires spectacularly when his satire goes unnoticed and the novel experiences instant success. It’ll be a treat to see Wright tackle this searing portrait of a conflicted artist, and the rest of the cast offers just as much intrigue: Tracee Ellis Ross and Sterling K. Brown play Monk’s siblings, Leslie Uggams portrays his mother diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and Erika Alexander, Issa Rae and Adam Brody also co-star. AL

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

Written and directed by William Friedkin, based on a play by Herman Wouk. Premiering at Venice.

The first narrative feature from William Friedkin in over a decade, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial was already a can’t-miss event… and then the take-no-prisoners director of The French Connection, The Exorcist, Cruising and so many more ed away on August 7 at the age of 87, marking this as his final work. He leaves behind a legacy of wading into the moral murk with explosive tales of characters navigating the gray areas between right and wrong. That certainly makes Caine Mutiny an appropriate swan song, as naval lawyer Barney Greenwald (Jason Clarke, fresh off his scene-stealing work in Oppenheimer) begins to question the code of conduct after he’s reluctantly assigned to defend mutineer Stephen Maryk (Jake Lacy) for removing Lieutenant Commander Phillip Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) of his command after showing signs of mental instability aboard the vessel.

The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial has a lofty legacy on the stage and screen, including Edward Dmytryk’s 1954 film which netted seven Oscar nominations and was headed by a crackling firework of a performance from Humphrey Bogart. Some may wonder if the definitive version of this tale has already been told, but we’d wager Friedkin has plenty left to add. A veteran of stage adaptations (among them, his pitch-black excavations of paranoia and American greed, Bug and Killer Joe) and courtroom dramas (his 1997 adaptation of 12 Angry Men earned six Emmy nominations), the director knows how to twist his audience into knots with barbwire dialogue that rips through the screen with as ferocious velocity as any of his iconic car chases. “I knew that I wanted to create a highly tense, pressurized scenario which would move rapidly like a bat out of hell,” Friedkin said in his Venice director’s statement of Caine Mutiny. Something tells us that the guy who made Sorcerer is going to have no trouble doing exactly that. MB

With El Conde, Larraín sets off to investigate the ever-present ripples of Pinochet’s regime, which, on top of operating on the basis of violent oppression, placed a suffocating stranglehold on the country’s cultural and intellectual production. The director has hinted at how El Conde intends to play with notions of immortality and legacy, and, if the trailer is anything to go by, we are all in for a treat that includes a deliciously oblivious Pinochet downing a bucket of blood while donning a flamboyant military cap. Count me in. RSR

Evil Does Not Exist

Written and directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Premiering at Venice, playing at TIFF and NYFF.

How do you follow up Drive My Car? Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s empathetic ruminations on the human condition culminated in his 2021 quiet epic, a three-hour Murakami adaptation that charmed audiences on its way to four Oscar nominations (including Best Picture and a win for International Feature). Not to mention Hamaguchi’s other (equally fantastic) feature from the same year, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, a gentle triptych about life’s miraculous coincidences. That’s a lot to live up to—but when has the director ever missed?

It seems like remnants of Hamaguchi’s previous film will carry into Evil Does Not Exist, whose origins began as a collaboration between the filmmaker and Drive My Car composer Eiko Ishibashi. First conceived as a live score performance accompanied by a silent short film titled Gift, the project ballooned into a feature. Ishibashi’s serene score was a subtle highlight of Drive My Car, so the suggestion of music being a key element of this film is particularly exciting. Dipping into the ecological terror of urbanization, Evil Does Not Exist revolves around a father and daughter whose idyllic way of life in a village outside Tokyo is threatened by the development of a glamping site in their neighborhood.

Evil Does Not Exist will, of course, attract the most eyes as it makes the festival rounds. As for its partner project, Gift will only be performed live with no plans for a filmed version. If you manage to catch the latter, just know I’m extremely jealous. IM

Fingernails

Directed by Christos Nikou, written by Nikou, Stavros Raptis and Sam Steiner. Premiering at TIFF before streaming on Apple TV+ starting November 3.

The quest for a soulmate, and the intersection of love and technology, is fertile ground for cinema; think Her, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Lobster. Fingernails is 2023’s buzzy addition to this subgenre, imagining a world in which a machine can determine if you and your partner truly are a match just by analyzing your—brace yourself—pried-off fingernail.

With an immaculate cast tailor-made for a viral Pop Crave tweet—Jessie Buckley, Jeremy Allen White, Riz Ahmed, Annie Murphy and Luke Wilson—Fingernails follows Buckley’s Anna as she uses the machine to test the love of her longtime partner while navigating a surprising spark with another man. Rendered in a retro sci-fi world—characters use landlines instead of smartphones—this unorthodox romance is the English-language debut of Greek filmmaker Christos Nikou, who helped direct Yorgos Lanthimos’ Dogtooth. Nikou’s 2020 dystopia Apples caught the attention of an up-and-coming producer you may have heard of: Cate Blanchett, who serves as producer along with her husband Andrew Upton.

Slated for a splashy debut at Toronto International Film Festival before its release under the juiciest apple of them all, Apple TV+, Fingernails will undoubtedly be a visual feast on the big screen, with cinematography from Emmy-winning Marcell Rév, the director of photography behind Euphoria and The Idol. If you like your sci-fi with a side of existential romance and a light peppering of body horror, Fingernails is the fall premiere to watch, with or without your soulmate. GF

Next Goal Wins

Directed by Taika Waititi, written by Waititi and Iain Morris. Premiering at TIFF before releasing in theaters on November 17 via Disney.

The last time Taika Waititi had a film at TIFF, it was the 2019 sleeper hit Jojo Rabbit, which went all the way to the Oscars with six nominations and one win (for Waititi’s adaptation of Christine Leunens’ novel). Two months after that world premiere, he was on set in Hawaii filming Next Goal Wins, the narrative comedy version of Mike Brett and Steve Jamison’s documentary of the same name about a Dutch-American football coach (played in Waititi’s film by Michael Fassbender) who is sent to American Samoa to bring the local team up to scratch some years after they suffer a historic, humiliating 31-0 loss to Australia.

It has shades of John Turtletaub’s 1993 film Cool Runnings, and probably every other fish-out-of-water, underdog-sports-team comedy out there—but with a specific island vibe. As Joachim Jelle writes in their review of the original doc, “At times, the sport at hand is simply a gateway into another culture that allows for differences to meet, not in hostility but in acceptance and affection. It’s not a culture clash; it’s a culture embrace.”

Film fans will go for another Waititi hit comedy, I will be going for an authentic Polynesian story told by Polynesians; as well as Waititi as writer-director (and no doubt in a cameo; the man can’t help himself), the film stars celebrated writer-director-actor Chris Alosio from recent horror hit Talk to Me. We’ve waited a whole pandemic for this South Pacific soccer comedy, and while the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike rightly means that the stars of the Searchlight Pictures film can’t hit the red carpet, I can be at the front of the TIFF queue. LK

Poor Things

Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, written by Tony McNamara and Alasdair Gray. Premiering at Venice and playing at NYFF before releasing in US theaters on December 8 via Searchlight Pictures.

In no uncertain , Yorgos Lanthimos is one of our most visionary contemporary auteurs. While the filmmaker’s signature stilted style may be polarizing for the uninitiated, the Letterboxd community thankfully understands his brilliant mind: Dogtooth, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer all clock in at a respectable 3.8-out-of-five-star average. But it wasn’t until 2018 that he finally received his long overdue flowers for The Favourite, picking up a well-deserved 180 awards, including ten Oscar nominations and a Best Actress win for Olivia Colman.

Five years later, the Greek god returns with Poor Things, an erotic sci-fi that reunites him with several collaborators from his previous venture: leading actress Emma Stone, writer Tony McNamara, editor Yorgos Mavropsaridis and cinematographer Robbie Ryan.

Stone stars as raven-haired renegade Bella Baxter, recently resurrected by mad scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). Enamored with the outside world and longing to break free, she runs away with mustachioed lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), finding liberation and adventure in her globe-trotting quest to learn about humanity. Rounding out the cast of eclectic characters she meets on her journey to self-actualization are Christopher Abbott, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael and Margaret Qualley.

Careening between stately black-and-white and picturesque fisheye landscapes, the vivacity bursting from Lanthimos and team’s whimsical production design, as well as the fish-out-of-water plot, uncannily calls to mind Barbie for weird brunette girls. That’s me! MLV

Priscilla infamously met Elvis when she was fourteen years old and he was 24, and a teaser trailer sparked discussions anew about grooming and consent. It does Coppola a disservice to assume she’ll gloss over the power imbalance, with the teaser’s girlish dress-up beginnings and an inquiry about boys in school already hinting the opposite. I wouldn’t expect the film to be wholly black-and-white, but it looks to honor Priscilla’s own narrative, drawn from her memories and told in a way she endorses. Notably, the film might not have pleased all the of the Elvis Presley estate, while Priscilla, who served as an executive producer, praised Coppola’s “extraordinary perspective”. AL

The Queen of My Dreams

Written and directed by Fawzia Mirza. Premiering at TIFF.

With Signature Move, writer and actor Fawzia Mirza introduced herself as a queer comedic voice to watch in the feature space. With The Queen of My Dreams, a Canadian Urdu-English language film world premiering at TIFF 2023, Mirza makes her debut as a director. The film shares the same title as Mirza’s 2012 short film, a sapphic reimagining of 1969 Bollywood classic Aradhana. In 2023’s version, it’s 1999 and queer Muslim grad student Azra (Sex Lives of College Girls star Amrit Kaur) must travel back to Pakistan to attend the funeral of her late father, Hassan (Hamza Haq). 

As Azra faces pressure from her mother Mariam (Nimra Bucha) to perform dutiful, doting daughterness with their family, the film cuts 30 years back into the past to Mariam’s own youth. Kaur plays both Azra and the younger version of Mariam, alongside Haq, who plays both versions of Hassan. The Queen of My Dreams is distinct not only in its mother-daughter casting choices, but also in its dual nature as a coming-of-age story and family dramedy, rooted in the shared love two generations of women have for Bollywood star Sharmila Tagore. AT

Rustin

Directed by Geoge C. Wolfe, written by Julian Breece and Dustin Lance Black from a story by Breece. Premiering at TIFF before streaming on Netflix starting November 17.

In Civil Rights-era biopics—films like Till—visual patterns create a sense of familiarity with the textures of a recent American past, peppered with Black affinity and community leaders martyred by the FBI. Here’s the sequence that introduces the de jure and de facto segregated spaces in the world of our Black cast, here are the barking dogs, and the sonorous Black chorus. 

With playwright and director George C. Wolfe’s Rustin set to premiere at TIFF, North American audiences will be reintroduced to Bayard Rustin, the undersung co-organizer of the historic March on Washington where Dr. King delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. Rustin, played by longtime Wolfe collaborator (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and A24 darling Colman Domingo, was an out-gay quaker in the 1960s whose presence in the movement was contentious, even with friend and peer Dr. King. With Milk screenwriter Dustin Lance Black on the script, and the Obamas’ Higher Ground Productions behind the scenes, Rustin’s story will finally receive its cinematic roses and posthumously continue to disrupt the pattern. AT