Following a similar trajectory is Malcolm Washington’s The Piano Lesson, which premiered at Telluride this past weekend before it heads east to the Toronto Film Festival. With his feature directorial debut, Washington set his sights on adapting the fourth installment of August Wilson’s American Century Cycle, the playwright’s 10-play magnum opus about the African American experience during the twentieth century. Unfolding in 1930s Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the film stars John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman) and Danielle Deadwyler (Till) as siblings who must determine what to do with a fraught family heirloom: a piano carved with likenesses of their enslaved ancestors. Their clash unearths questions about the weight and meaning of family legacy. Also featured in Washington’s pitch-perfect cast are Academy Award nominee Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Fisher, Michael Potts, and Corey Hawkins.

Fresh off a starry Venice Film Festival premiere, Academy Award winner Angelina Jolie and director Pablo Larraín brought their film Maria stateside to Telluride. Jolie transforms into renowned opera singer Maria Callas in Larraín’s latest film, his third exploring iconic women at inflection points in their lives. Previously, Larraín has followed Jacqueline Kennedy (Jackie), as she rebuilds following her husband’s assassination, and captured a tense and tumultuous Christmas Eve for Princess Diana in Spencer. Maria is both a creative imagining and a psychological portrait of Callas in the 1970s, toward the end of the legend’s life. Written by Academy Award nominee Steven Knight (who also penned Spencer) and lensed by Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Edward Lachman (the pair previously partnered on El Conde), the film will also screen at the New York and London Film Festivals, and will be released on Netflix in the U.S. at a later date.

While superlative narrative filmmaking was unquestionably a focus, a pair of revealing documentaries also met a warm reception at Telluride. The one and only Martha Stewart was on hand for the world premiere of MARTHA, an intimate examination of her life as both the embodiment of the domestic ideal and a true entrepreneurial icon. “Martha said to me many times that reflecting was not something that she wanted to be doing, which, of course, poses a challenge,” filmmaker R.J. Cutler (The September Issue) told Queue. Nevertheless, the director succeeds in painting an honest portrait of Stewart who tells her story in her own words for the first time.

Also finding favor with audiences was Will & Harper, filmmaker Josh Greenbaum’s cross-country trek with comedians and longtime pals Will Ferrell and Harper Steele. The Sundance Film Festival breakout follows the duo as they set out on a road trip to recalibrate their shared understanding of their friendship following Harper’s decision to come out as transgender. Full of warmth and humor, the film chronicles the pair’s adventures, with long, uninterrupted stretches of highway between destinations serving as a space for deeper conversations about Harper’s experience.

“It felt like an incredible opportunity to tell a beautiful story of friendship to potentially help shift culture, to bring people into the conversation who might otherwise stay out of it, and really to explore what it means to be an ally,” Greenbaum told Queue of the film, which will make its international premiere as a gala presentation in Toronto.

The buzzworthy Canadian event is set to screen a raft of its own world premieres, filmmaker Sydney Freeland’s Rez Ball among them. The inspiring and heartfelt coming-of-age drama, produced by LeBron James, centers on a Native American basketball team whose members must unite to keep their state championship dreams alive in the aftermath of tragedy. “This film is an invitation to see a side of America, to see a community that they may not be familiar with,” says Freeland, who penned the Rez Ball script with Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs). “Hopefully, we can expand people’s horizons just a little bit more.”

Also premiering in Toronto is Pedro Páramo, an adaptation of author Juan Rulfo’s seminal 1955 Mexican novel that marks the feature directorial debut of Academy Award-nominated cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto (Brokeback Mountain, Killers of the Flower Moon). The elliptical drama sees Juan Preciado (Tenoch Huerta) return to his hometown in the Mexican countryside where his estranged father, the titular Pedro Páramo (Manuel García-Rulfo), once reigned as a ruthless land baron. When he arrives, he finds a literal ghost town that forces him to confront the shadows of his family’s past.

Underlining the breadth of the festival lineup, the Toronto roster includes The Shadow Strays, the latest hyper-violent masterpiece from Indonesian action auteur Timo Tjahjanto, known for such films as Headshot, May the Devil Take You, and The Night Comes for Us. This time out, the director brings his eye for epic martial arts and copious bloodshed to the tale of a young assassin (Aurora Ribero) who defies her mentor and the clandestine organization she works for in order to rescue a young boy who lost his mother to a powerful crime syndicate. The dizzying pace of the action onscreen surely mirrors the upcoming festival season for cinephiles. 

Just as soon as the major stateside events wrap, the BFI London Film Festival gets underway on October 9, with the same unique mix of screenings for devoted cinephiles and glamorous red carpet galas. 

Among the titles screening at the event is Joy, a historical drama that celebrates the pioneering trio of British researchers responsible for one of the biggest scientific innovations of the twentieth century: in vitro fertilization. Co-written by Jack Thorne (Enola Holmes) and Rachel Mason (Am I Being Unreasonable?) and directed by Ben Taylor (Sex Education, Catastrophe), the moving drama follows scientist Robert Edwards (James Norton), surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy), and nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie) as they navigate unsuccessful trials, a critical religious public, and a scrutinizing medical and science community that opposed the advancement at every turn.

“It’s the most extraordinary story,” Thorne told Queue. “When people think about scientific innovations, they have a vision of how it’s done: in a lab with lots of people in white coats, generally [in] Oxford. This story is entirely different from that.”

Also on the bill is what is sure to be a new holiday favorite — the first animated feature by Oscar-nominated Love Actually director Richard Curtis. Based on Curtis’s trilogy of children’s books, That Christmas follows a quaint British town in the days leading up to the beloved holiday where nothing goes as expected. “Christmas never goes to plan,” says executive producer Curtis, who wrote That Christmas alongside Peter Souter. “I hope the film will remind people of the joy and complexity of Christmas and some of the joys and comedy and heartbreak of childhood.”

From a stunning musical and thoughtful adaptations of classics to a heartwarming holiday film, this festival season truly holds something for everyone.