Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | August 17, 2026
The Summer is coming to an end, which means it's almost time for festival season! That's right, now that the blockbusters have had their moment, they need a breather before Christmas and the great battle of Avengers versus sandworms. So, in come the awards contenders, hoping to grab the attention of critics, voters, and distributors the world over. It's sports season with higher heels and messier publicists.
What is interesting is how many highly anticipated films with autumn/winter release dates are seemingly bypassing the festival cycle: Aaron Sorkin's The Social Reckoning, Tom Cruise's return to "serious" acting with Digger, a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, Taika Waititi's adaptation of Klara and the Sun, even Alexander Skarsgard's woody f*ck-fest Wicker. Most of these are at the very least in the conversation for the 2026 awards season, and it would typically be expected for them to premiere in at least one of the major fall festivals. But they're all jumping straight to cinemas.
Why? My guess is money, frankly. Studios don't think the buzz-building outweighs the cost, or the risk of burning out before reaching cinemas. Show me a recession indicator for $500, Ken. I imagine the studio thinks Digger will do fine with just Cruise's name above the title, and a Social Network sequel sells itself to the target audience of people who want to throw Mark Zuckerberg into the sea. There's also the possibility that some of these films are, well, crap. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it!
For now, this list is focused on the movies receiving their world premieres at one of the four major film festivals of the season: Venice, Toronto, Telluride, or New York.
PRIMETIME
Why don't you take a seat? Robert Pattinson is playing Chris Hansen in a film that looks like the 2026 version of Nightcrawler, and we are all in on this. The recent documentary Predators offered a terrifying insight into the rise and fall of To Catch a Predator, the oft-memed NBC series that claimed to be activist journalism but mostly made a for-profit spectacle out of children's trauma. Lance Oppenheim's Primetime is delving into that same nightmare, albeit with a more feverish tone and satirical slant. We at Team Pajiba are hearty supporters of Pattinson's feral goblin man era, and this seems like the perfect vehicle for his brand of heavily accented madness.
BUCKING FASTARD
Is it the best titled movie of the year? Werner Herzog returns to fiction with this kooky drama inspired by the true story of twin sisters Freda and Greta Chaplin, who were so close that the spoke, moved, and stalked a man in unison. Real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara play the pair, who do literally everything together and decide to dig a tunnel through a mountain in the hopes of finding an imaginary land where true love is possible. The man they stalk is played by Orlando Bloom. Herzog is the king of idiosyncratic stories of people pushed to the edge, usually by their own follies, but it's been a while since he's gone truly off the leash. It'll be exciting to have a reminder of what he can do when he's not too busy being a meme.
STUFFED
Stop me if you've heard this one before: a lonely taxidermist decides that she wants to try her talents on a human specimen, and a man who is afraid of being forgotten offers his body to her, and then they fall in love. Also, it's a musical. I know, we're so sick of the taxidermy horror romantic musical subgenre. It's like the MCU of the arthouse scene! Okay, I joke, but admit it, you're interested. Stuffed is based on a short film by Theo Rhys, making his feature directorial debut here, and the lovers are played by Jodie Comer and Harry Melling. I'd watch those actors in anything, particularly Melling, who has one of the most fascinating careers in indie cinema right now. We hope this one will be toe-tappingly grotesque.
WILD HORSE NINE
Martin McDonagh divided audiences with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri but won them back with The Banshees of Inisherin. Mr. Waller-Bridge is flying out to Easter Island with Wild Horse Nine, with this story of CIA agents who are dispatched to the region on the eve of the 1973 Chilean coup. He's reuniting with some of his regulars, like John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, as well as Steve Buscemi. Did you know that Steve Buscemi has never been nominated for an Oscar? Isn't that ridiculous? Martin, you know what you have to do...
INK
In 1969, an Australian businessman named Rupert Murdoch decided to buy a failing British newspaper named The Sun. The rest is history, and boy does it suck. James Graham's play Ink is now a film courtesy of Danny Boyle, with Guy Pearce playing Murdoch and Jack O'Connell starring as Larry Lamb, the man who became the paper's editor and shaped it into the evil rag it is today.
TENDER LOVING CARE
The legendary Mike Leigh has declared that Tender Loving Care will be his last film due to ill health. He deserves to go out on a high, and given that he's never made a truly terrible film, we believe he can pull it off. Leigh is renowned for his semi-improvisational approach to storytelling, largely focusing on working class British narratives and lived-in realism. His swan song focuses on a social worker who struggles to balance professional and personal when her father begins to show the early signs of dementia. Headlining Tender Loving Care is Kate O'Flynn, fresh from her sunset cocktails extravaganza in Widow's Bay. Yes, she's British!
THE DEBUT
Did you ever watch that one episode of The Simpsons where Marge starred in a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire and wish it was a live-action comedy starring Julianne Moore? Okay, I doubt The Debut is based on one of the greatest episodes of that series, but reading its synopsis -- a shy woman comes out of her shell when she's cast in a community theatre musical -- did make me think of that. Jessie Eisenberg is the writer, director, and co-star of this one. He's also co-writing the songs alongside Emile Mosseri, which will be sung by a cast that includes Halle Bailey, Bernadette Peters, and Paul Giamatti. Two original musicals on this list? We are back!
MUSK
A near-four-hour documentary on Elon Musk? Is this what they force Alex to watch in A Clockwork Orange? Who the hell is going to sit through that in one sitting? The story is still ongoing and won't be over until death, jail, or an especially fiery SpaceX crash. But this is directed by Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentarian who has made films on everything, from Scientology to Enron to Elizabeth Holmes. Sometimes, his work is a little bit "let's film the Wikipedia summary" in its execution, focusing on familiar beats rather than a more penetrative perspective. Yet when he's on the ball, he's like the tour guide into the unknown you want by your side. Musk has already called the documentary a "hit-piece", so you know it's probably pretty good, and we're all in favour of stuff that pisses that loser off. Still, four hours...
BUNKER
French playwright Florian Zeller turned his first play, The Father, into his film directorial debut and it earned him an Oscar. The follow-up, The Son, came and went without a trace. Sadly, his third effort is not called The Holy Spirit but it does have an intriguing premise: a billionaire asks an architect to build him an underground bunker, putting pressure on the architect's marriage and integrity. Real life spouses Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem are in the lead roles (I'm a sucker for acting power couples working together), alongside Stephen Graham and Paul Dano.
BAD LIEUTENANT: TOKYO
Okay, this one is slightly breaking the rules because it will have its world premiere in Japan this month, but I'm counting it because it's Takashi Miike and he's worth it. When you've directed literally over 100 films, plus a ton of TV series, stage plays, and video games, it would be easy for fans to grow weary of your output. But when you're the guy who made Ichi the Killer and Audition, your fans are always excited. Miike is best known outside of Japan for his ultra-violent thrillers where the body is torn beyond comprehension, but he's dabbled in every genre, from cop procedural to anime adaptation to zombie musical. His next film, Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo is a remake-slash-sequel of both the Abel Ferrara drama and the oddball follow-up by Werner Herzog. There's a crooked cop, a weird investigation, and probably a ton of bloodshed. Also, Liv Morgan from the WWE is in it. What more could you ask for?
