Fall Film Festival Recap: The Best & Worst of TIFF, Telluride and Venice

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor
and Keith Kimbell, Metacritic Film Editor – September 17, 2017

The fall film season kicks off each year with a trio of prestigious festivals: the just-completed Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Venice Film Festival (now in its 74th year), and the smaller but no less interesting Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. It is at these festivals where many of the year's Oscar contenders typically make their debuts. (Last year, five best picture nominees—including eventual winner Moonlight—had their world premieres at one of these festivals.) And this year's crop includes promising upcoming releases from Guillermo del Toro, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Sorkin, Joe Wright, and Armando Iannucci ... as well as more divisive films from the likes of Alexander Payne, George Clooney, and Louis CK.

Below, learn more about the critical response to these and other notable films (and TV shows) debuting at the three festivals in 2017.

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58 Victoria and Abdul

Stephen Frears re-teams with his Philomena star, Judi Dench, for this story of the unlikely friendship between Queen Victoria and Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal), a clerk from India who travels to England to participate in the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The Playlist’s Rodrigo Perez finds it “engaging and charming thanks to Judi Dench,” but, John Bleasdale of CineVue thinks a “cliché-ridden plot ultimately inhibits what could have been a spritely historical period drama.” The film opens on Friday.

Victoria and Abdul