Venice Shocks the Oscar Race! Is Fjord Starting to Fall?

The fall festival season is starting to reshape the Oscar race.We break down the surprising end of the Venice Film Festival, where Woman Unknown pulled off an unexpected Golden Lion win, before turning to one of the biggest questions coming out of Telluride and TIFF: is Fjord suddenly in trouble? After winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, its North American reception has been much more divided—and the backlash could matter when awards season gets serious.We also get into the huge TIFF response to I Play Rocky, whether it could become this year’s crowd-pleasing Best Picture contender, the growing buzz around Artificial, Netflix finally giving some of its awards movies real theatrical windows, France’s latest International Feature dilemma, and some increasingly wild Oscar predictions.Oscars Outsider looks at the awards race, film festivals, Hollywood, and Oscar history from slightly outside the usual consensus.Subscribe for weekly Oscar predictions, reactions, and film history.I’d use “Is Fjord Starting to Fall?” rather than repeating “Is Fjord in Trouble?” verbatim—the thumbnail and title reinforce each other without saying exactly the same thing.