Film Festivals and the Oscar connection
The fall film festivals have kicked off Award Season, so let’s take a look at what these big festivals might mean for the Oscars. Do you need the big festivals to get a nomination or maybe even to win? We define the big festivals as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride and Toronto.
So let’s look at the numbers.
Since the preferential ballot was introduced along with the expanded Best Picture field of up to 10 nominees, 106 films have been nominated for Best Picture. Of those 73 (69%) has had a screening at one or more of the big festivals.
44% of Best Picture nominees were screened at Toronto while 25% had a screening at Telluride and 16% at Venice. Sundance and Cannes tie with 14% while Berlin has 11%.
Sponsored content:
So it looks like especially the fall festivals are important to get a Best Picture nomination. When we are looking at Best Picture winners the picture becomes even clearer. Of the 12 Best Picture winners since 2010 every single one has been screened at one or more festivals. And every winner except Birdman were at the Toronto International Film Festival. Birdman did however screen at both Venice and Telluride. Telluride also hosted screenings of 75% of winners while Venice had 42% and Cannes 17%.
On curiosity is The Hurt Locker, which played at Venice and Toronto in the 2008/2009 Award Season, but won the Oscar in the 2009/2010 Award Season. You don’t get a much earlier momentum builder than that.
On average Best Picture nominees screen at 1,2 of the big festivals. If we isolate the films that have a minimum of one big festival on it’s resume, then we see that these films screen at 1,8 festivals on average. Best Picture winners however screen at 2,3 big festivals.
So with 10 nominees it looks like we will only have to find 3 of them outside the festivals, and the winner will be seen within the next couple of weeks. We just don’t know which film it is yet.
Click here to read more about the connection between film festivals and Oscars.
Sponsored content:
