The Vogue editors’ festival film picks for Venice, Toronto, and the New York Film Festival this season include two Palme d’Or winners, one of which is already slated to open NYFF. Deputy editor Taylor Antrim, plus editors Liam Hess and Lisa Wong Macabasco, broke it all down on the latest episode of The Run-Through, and the list is heavier on awards-season contenders than your average preview podcast.
Paper Tiger and the Question Nobody Can Quite Answer
The conversation opened on James Gray’s Paper Tiger, which follows two brothers chasing the American Dream in 1980s Queens who get pulled into a Russian mob scheme that eventually tears their family apart. Gray’s first film since 2022’s Armageddon Time, it stars Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson.
The trio had already seen it. Lisa’s verdict was dry: ‘There’s a lot of wigs and suits and accents that are a little over-the-top.’ Taylor had a bigger question nagging at him after his screening, one he took straight to his group chats: ‘Is Adam Driver a great actor or not?’ The group weighed in. Consensus, apparently, was elusive.
Paper Tiger received a 10-minute standing ovation at its world premiere in competition at Cannes, where it was acquired by Neon, according to Deadline. It opens the 64th New York Film Festival on 25 September before a limited theatrical release on 13 November. As Variety has noted, 13 of the 64 films chosen to open NYFF between 1963 and 2025 earned Academy Award nominations for best picture, though only one (Chariots of Fire, in 1981) won the top prize. That lineage is either a great sign or an enormous amount of pressure, depending on your disposition.
The Vogue Editors’ Festival Films: Cannes Winners and French-Language Debuts
From there, the podcast moved through a run of films that have already made noise on the festival circuit. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden, the Japanese director’s French-language debut, is loosely adapted from the non-fiction book You and I – The Illness Suddenly Get Worse by Makiko Miyano and Maho Isono. It stars Belgian actress Virginie Efira and Japanese actress Tao Okamoto, and at Cannes it collected a double actress award for both performances, according to the Festival de Cannes.
Then there is Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord, which the editors described as a legal thriller but which reads more fully as a legal thriller family drama. It is based on the true story of a Romanian-Norwegian conservative couple whose children are seized by Norwegian authorities amid allegations of abuse, the film deliberately blurring the line between genuine concern and prejudice over religious parenting. It runs nearly two and a half hours, per The Film Stage.
Fjord is Mungiu’s first English-language film and first shot outside Romania. Sebastian Stan, cast as the Romanian father, was himself born and raised in Romania until age eight, a detail that Deadline noted lends the casting an extra layer of biographical proximity. The film won the Palme d’Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival, Mungiu’s second, following 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days in 2007, with Best Screenplay for Beyond The Hills (2012) and Best Director for Graduation (2016) in between, according to Variety. That is five films in competition at Cannes across 19 years. Neon acquired the North American rights ahead of the premiere.
The editors also touched on Hope, an action film starring Squid Game breakout Hoyeon; Gentle Monster, led by what the group called an excellent Léa Seydoux; and the prospect of following Parker Posey through Venice.
Lightning Round: The Films They’re Most Excited to See
Each editor closed with two personal picks. Liam chose Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love and Primetime, a documentary about To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen. Lisa went for Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, starring the Mara sisters, and Chris Rock’s Misty Green. Taylor rounded out with Danny Boyle’s Ink, a biographical film about Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of The Sun, and Magazine, an indie from former Vogue contributor Alexandra Pechman.
Separately, Chloe and Marley Marius covered the reported return of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to the UK, plus reviews of Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie and Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter.
With two Palme d’Or winners already in the mix, this festival season has started with some unusually firm footing. The NYFF opener slot on 25 September is the first real test of whether Paper Tiger‘s Cannes momentum translates into an awards run.
