It’s mid-September, the point in the film calendar where we put away childish things (superheroes, video game adaptations, tiny Day-Glo trolls) and get stuck into some proper blue chip cinema. The Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals – where studios hawk their glossiest, most Oscar-worthy wares – have all either wrapped up or are about to, which means we are starting to get a sense of which films will be in the running this awards season.
Of course two heavyweight contenders have already been released – Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer will surely be there or thereabouts when the Academy Award nominations are announced in January. And likely joining them will be Celine Song’s Past Lives (in UK cinemas now), which has been raved about ever since it premiered at Sundance in January.
