The Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 15 Best Films of the Fall Fests

David Rooney, Sheri Linden, Jon Frosch, Leslie Felperin, Jordan Mintzer and Michael Rechstshaffen
·5 min read
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All of Us Strangers

Telluride

A lonely gay London writer, orphaned young, revisits his past while starting a new romance with a neighbor in Andrew Haigh’s hauntingly beautiful study of grief, love and family. With a quartet of shattering performances from Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, this is a soul-stirring work, heartfelt and unforgettable. — DAVID ROONEY

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American Symphony

Telluride

Matthew Heineman’s deeply moving doc follows musician Jon Batiste and his life partner, Suleika Jaouad, through a year of highs (his exploding career) and lows (her cancer recurrence). It’s a concert film, a love story and a snapshot of America’s dogged emergence from the pandemic. — DANIEL FIENBERG

The Boy and the Heron

Toronto

Hayao Miyazaki emerges from retirement with a profoundly personal swan song — a rumination on love, loss and the intersection between life and death in a world spinning out of control. Centering on a grieving boy and the bird who offers to lead him to his late mother, the film looks astonishing even by Miyazaki’s soaring standards. — D.R.

Dream Scenario

Toronto

Nicolas Cage has never been as flat-out hilarious as he is in Kristoffer Borgli’s gleefully dark, savagely sharp satire, playing a meek college professor who keeps popping up in people’s nightmares. The star takes a whiny victim role and turns it into a master class in reactive comic acting. — MICHAEL RECHTSHAFFEN

Evil Does Not Exist

Venice

Ryusuke Hamaguchi follows his Oscar winner Drive My Car with this haunting, slow-burn drama about the conflict created when a Tokyo company’s project to build a luxury camping retreat threatens the purity of a village’s spring water supply. The film builds a hypnotic momentum, along with a quiet sense of dread that sneaks up on you. — D.R.

Green Border

Venice

Agnieszka Holland’s profoundly moving, flawlessly executed multistrand drama, shot in stark black and white, tracks refugees from various nations in 2021 trying to cross from Russia ally Belarus into EU member Poland. Facing inevitably tragic consequences, the characters become pawns in a game of “pass the parcel” between guards on both sides of the title’s green border. — LESLIE FELPERIN

Hesitation Wound

Venice

A Turkish criminal defense attorney juggles urgent matters on the job and within her family in Selman Nacar’s drama, which packs a sustained wallop of tension and unraveling into a concise 84-minute running time. Tülin Özen, in the lead role, delivers a pitch-perfect turn as an astute professional who hasn’t time for her own vulnerability. — SHERI LINDEN

His Three Daughters

Toronto

Carrie Coon, Elizabeth Olsen and Natasha Lyonne are exceptional as sisters who reunite to care for their father in Azazel Jacobs’ sharp, tender tale of sibling bonds strained to the snapping point. The setup is familiar, but the film is wry, vivid and moving in unexpected ways — a testament to Jacobs’ singular touch, his gently eccentric blend of comic absurdism and emotional generosity. — JON FROSCH

Io Capitano

Venice

A Senegalese teenager (indelibly played by non-pro Seydou Sarr) leaves home on a quest across thousands of miles to reach Europe in Italian director Matteo Garrone’s emotionally searing but ultimately uplifting epic. It’s a painstakingly composed work, an adventure peppered with moments of nauseating horror but also ravishing beauty and grace. — L.F.

Maestro

Venice

Bradley Cooper directs and stars here as composer Leonard Bernstein while a never-better Carey Mulligan plays his wife of 27 years, Felicia Montealegre. Amplifying its force with thrilling use of the subject’s music, this is a transfixing biographical love story and a layered examination of a relationship that might be grossly oversimplified today as that of a closeted gay man and his “beard.” — D.R.

Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros

Venice

The latest from great American documaker Frederick Wiseman is a four-hour immersion inside one of France’s finest restaurants, which has been run by the same family for four generations. Set in the kitchens, dining rooms and neighboring farms of a Michelin three-star establishment in the bucolic Loire region, the film uncovers the alchemy that makes such places succeed. — JORDAN MINTZER

Poor Things

Venice

A brilliant absurdist comedy and reflection on female freedom, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Venice winner adapts Alasdair Gray’s novel about a woman who reinvents herself after being brought back from death by a mad scientist. Stuffed with rude delights, spry wit and radical fantasy, the movie is a feast. And Emma Stone gorges on it in a fearless, career-defining lead performance. — D.R.

Priscilla

Venice

Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi play Priscilla and Elvis Presley in Sofia Coppola’s delicate, quietly affecting drama, which tells a famous love story but places at its center the young woman who becomes caught up in a romantic daydream. The movie might appear on its surface to show a protagonist without agency, but the Priscilla portrayed here is always attuned to her own needs. — D.R.

Wildcat

Telluride

Ethan Hawke’s sublime portrait of Southern writer Flannery O’Connor is distinguished by its visual elegance, its electric leaps between an author’s life and her work, and the delicious intensity of the performances, with Maya Hawke and Laura Linney each taking on a half-dozen interconnected roles. It’s a film rich in nuance, detail and creative juice. — S.L.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Venice

Wes Anderson’s perfectly crafted mini-marvel of a Roald Dahl adaptation tells the story of a rich Brit (Benedict Cumberbatch) who becomes fascinated by a man claiming to see without his eyes (Ben Kingsley). At 40 minutes, it’s a delectable amuse-bouche that even the Anderson-allergic may enjoy. — L.F.

This story appears in the Sept. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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