Following The Awards Season 2020: Early Festival Contenders
Despite the awards season being unnaturally extended and the inability of most festivals to hold physical screenings, the fall film festival circuit has found ways to push forward and offer a true start to the 2020/2021 Awards Season. Large players are finally being seen by wider audiences and smaller gems are starting to be found. Over the course of the 2020/2021 Awards Season, CLAPPER will run a series of articles commenting on how the competition in this year’s Awards Season shapes up over time and the perfect place to begin with is taking a look at the biggest stories and contenders emerging out of the 2020 festivals in Venice, Toronto, New York, London and elsewhere.
Easily the largest story of the festival season has been of Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland. Not only garnering incredibly positive reviews but also becoming the first film in history to win both the Golden Lion at Venice and the TIFF People’s Choice Award, it is nearly guaranteed that on March 15th it will feature as one of the Best Picture nominees. The TIFF People’s Choice Award has become an important early predictor in the Oscar race, with nine of the past ten winners going on to receive a Best Picture nomination and three also taking home the final prize of the night. The Golden Lion has been less precise, but is still coming off a three-film streak for Best Picture nominations coming out of Venice after The Shape of Water, Roma and Joker.
Although in a traditional year this would put Nomadland as an automatic front runner in the Best Picture category, this Awards Season has made it impossible to make that claim yet. Compared to any other year, the importance of all awards predictors has been thrown into question. Not only did events like TIFF have drastically reduced programming but the festival now sits a shocking 5-months away from the Oscar Nomination Ceremony after the latter was delayed until April. It has been seen continually through various Award Seasons that momentum is hard to keep with the film that takes the early lead, as early front runners struggle to keep their momentum and often end up dropping out of the conversation quite quickly. Despite an early December release and the timeliness of its quiet and calculated meditative look at the American experience, the idea that Nomadland can stay at the top of the Oscar conversation for that long is questionable.
In hopes to stay relevant in the race, other potential major Oscar contenders coming out of these festivals – such as Regina King’s One Night in Miami and Azazel Jacobs’s French Exit – have set early January and February release dates, respectively. Regina King gained high marks for her screenplay and directing, while French Exit – despite the overall reaction being mixed – has found universal love in the lead performance from the ever-iconic Michelle Pfeiffer. Being honoured with its own Virtual Gala at TIFF, Anthony Hopkins’s-starring The Father has also attracted unending praise for his performance. With the film as a whole raising its stance in the conversation for the remaining above-the-line categories, it is even starting to seem like a credible threat to take home the grand prize.
Although these contenders have benefited from their early reactions, others have not. The overwhelmingly mixed reaction to French Exit quickly turned the narrative surrounding that film to centre exclusively around Pfeiffer. Similarly, Sofia Coppola’s newest feature On the Rocks looks set to leave its sole Oscar chances to lie with Bill Murray in a supporting role and even that is starting to look like wishful thinking. Ammonite got a decent reaction coming out of TIFF but also clearly lacked passion in its response, becoming almost an afterthought despite the fact it originally seemed to be a legitimate contender across the board.
In addition to titles already in the conversation already for these above-the-line categories, it is equally important to remember what hasn’t been seen yet. The Netflix machine has learned well from its previous Oscar campaigns, which had largely suffered from over-exposure in the past, and chose to sit out of the conversation up to this point. While they did pick up some popular contenders, such as Pieces of a Woman and Bruised, the studio has been more focused on building towards the releases of its other major juggernauts. Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 has entered a limited theatrical release to a strong amount of acclaim, cementing the film as a challenger for Best Picture as well as Best Director, Screenplay, and acting Oscars. Moreover, December release dates and early promotional materials have been released for Mank and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, both of which seem to be on track to become serious Best Picture plays, with David Fincher currently sitting as the front runner for Best Director. Also, both Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman are likely to win Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor awards, respectively, for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Considering even more prospective contenders are on the horizon, including Hillbilly Elegy and The Midnight Sky, the size of Netflix’s campaign is nearly overwhelming, which could be either their greatest asset or their undoing. Whereas, in an already limited year of releases, the field has never been so open for Netflix to get multiple nominations in nearly every category, the burden of handling so many campaigns leaves wide open the threat of films getting lost in the shuffle. Eventually, Netflix is going to need to pick which films it truly wants to focus on. Until then, it is impossible to truly gauge what effect each of these films is going to have on the awards season.
Although these larger titles get the bulk of the attention coming out of the autumn film festivals, these events also serve as an important place for films in the Documentary, International and Animated feature categories to build names for themselves. With Sony Picture Classics distributing and a scheduled late December release, it is impossible not to see The Truffle Hunters as a serious play for Best Documentary Feature given its strong praise coming out of these festivals. Inconvenient Indian was also well received at TIFF, even bringing home the TIFF People’s Choice Award for Documentaries. This is never a bad start for any film, but TIFF historically has shown a pattern of favouring smaller Canadian films in these categories which ultimately failed to build too much momentum come the Oscars. Without a large distributor and with a clear Canadian focus, it seems early on that Inconvenient Indian will fall into this category, but only time will truly tell. The other two major documentaries to gain praise from these festivals, MLK/FBI and Time, are unlikely to go far in this Awards Season. While both films are genuinely fantastic and teeming with both a thematic and emotional weight, the Academy has continually proven that, no matter how much buzz a film has, if it relies heavily on archival footage, it won’t be nominated. If huge early front runners like One Child Nation, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? and Jane missed out because of this, it is hard to imagine a future where MLK/FBI or Time manage to break through past the shortlist.
The International Film category has been slower than ever before. Without Cannes giving early buzz to certain titles and the programming at these various festivals being reduced, the conversation has been light as far as big buzzy titles are concerned. The early official submissions for certain countries have started to trickle in with some of the buzziest being Poland’s Never Gonna Snow Again and Ivory Coast’s Night of the Kings, the latter of which has found a home with Neon. The most interesting conversation in this category has been the question of what Mexico will officially submit. Interestingly, Neon also has picked up New Order to contend for the category, but the Netflix film I’m No Longer Here, which was released earlier this year, has also received quite the buzz. It recently cleaned house at the Mexican Academy of Film Awards and it is predicted to bag the nomination over New Order. Neon found themselves in a similar situation last year with Portrait of a Lady on Fire which was overlooked for the nomination despite receiving a considerable amount of buzz. Instead, France went with Les Misérables, which scored them a Best International Feature nomination. Over the next couple months, countries like Mexico will be forced to make the hard decision and finalise their submissions, which will hopefully put jumper cables into this category and really get the conversation fired up as more and more films are made available to wide audiences.
Finally, the Best Animated Feature category has seen multiple new players find first reactions, with the biggest being that of Soul. The newest feature from Pixar had its world debut at LFF and was predictably met with universal acclaim. With a new Christmas release date on Disney+, Soul stands as the automatic front runner in the category. However, with the switch to streaming, there seems to be a slight opening for a potential upset. Cartoon Saloon has gone three-out-of-three in Best Animated Feature nominations so far and their newest film Wolfwalkers easily has the biggest buzz out of any of their films. This stunning film has been the talk of the town coming out of TIFF and LFF and will ultimately ride or die on Apple TV+’s ability to form a campaign. The service looked to enter the conversation last year with The Banker, which was subsequently delayed. This year finally marks their first attempt at playing the game. The distributor has already found success in TV with Golden Globe nominations and Emmy wins, and with the combination of seemingly endless money and the power of Wolfwalkers, it is entirely possible they could pull an upset over Disney. Netflix is also in the game with Over the Moon which has gained a decent amount of praise ahead of its late October release. While it is never a good idea to doubt Netflix, especially after they shocked the world getting both I Lost My Body and Klaus nominated in the category last year, the early release date makes it more in line for a nomination than a win.
All things considered, this point the awards race is shrouded in speculation. The fall film festivals have created an illusion that we find ourselves close to the end of the awards season while we stand near the start of it. There are countless releases still left to be seen and the conversation is more open than ever for films to surprise and jump into the running for a potential Best Picture play. While it seems now like the biggest Oscar players will be Mank, The Father, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom and The Trial of the Chicago 7, keep an eye out over the next few months specifically for words and reactions regarding News of the World, Respect, Hillbilly Elegy and Judas and the Black Messiah.
Not only can you find reviews for all the awards contenders here at Clapper, but we will be back Mid January for another entry in the Following the Awards Season 2020 series, breaking down the 2021 Gotham Award Nominations, previewing potential players from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, and analysing the Awards Conversation at that point right before the Guild Awards start and Golden Globe Nominations are announced in February!
