9 Movies from This Fall’s Film Festivals to Watch For

Film festival season is packed with new — but not always noteworthy — movies. Here’s some of our favorites that are coming to theaters soon.

Fall is film festival crazy with both the Telluride Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Some of the films on display are indie efforts that may never hit your local cinemas, but there are plenty of big stars to be spotted on the film festival circuit.

Here are some of the most interesting to come out of Telluride and Toronto this year — all of which you’re likely to be seeing in theaters soon and many of which are already popping up in conversation about next year’s Oscar-winners.

Rosewater

Release date: November 7. Stars: Gael García Bernal, Shohreh Aghdashloo. Director: Jon Stewart.

Remember when John Oliver took over hosting duties for The Daily Show back in 2013? He did it so TDS regular Jon Stewart could go make Rosewater, a drama based on the real arrest of journalist Maziar Bahri in Iran. Part of the evidence used against Bahri? An interview he did with The Daily Show which was said to prove he was in contact with an American spy.

The Judge

Release date: October 10. Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Robert Duvall. Director: David Dobkin.

Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall co-star in this father and son drama where big city lawyer Hank Palmer (Downey) returns home after the death of his mother. The twist? His estrange father (Duvall) has been accused of murder, and of course, Hank steps in to defend him.

Whiplash

Release date: October 10. Stars: Miles Teller, J. K. Simmons. Director: Damien Chazelle.

Learning music isn’t all fun and games in Whiplash when Andrew (Teller) starts attending one of the top music schools in the country… only to be terrorized by fearsome teacher Terence Fletcher (Simmons). This film’s already won some big awards, taking home both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for drama at Sundance earlier this year.

Birdman

Release date: October 17. Stars: Michael Keton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton. Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu.

A washed-up actor (Keaton), best-known for playing superhero Birdman, is trying to put on a Boadway play to reclaim some of his former glory. But that hardly does the surreal nature of Birdman justice: you should watch the trailer to see what we mean.

St. Vincent

Release date: October 24. Stars: Bill Murray, Melissa McCarthy. Director: Theodore Melfi.

When single mom Maggie (McCarthy) moves in next to misanthropic Vincent (Murray), Vincent is roped into babysitting. It goes about as well as you’d expect Bill Murray babysitting to go — and, come on, you were already sold on this one with Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy.

Nightcrawler

Release date: October 31. Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed. Director: Dan Gilroy.

This creepy crime thriller stars Gyllenhaal, an earnest young man looking for work. Unfortunately, the work he stumbles into is tabloid-style crime journalism in which he tries to catch crime in progress on film to sell to the nightly news.

The Theory of Everything

Release date: November 7. Stars: Eddie Redmayne, Felicity Jones. Director: James Marsh.

It apparently took the producers of The Theory of Everything years to convince Jane Hawking — wife of Stephen Hawking — to adapt her book Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen into a film. But the results of this biopic on the famed scientist speak for themselves — it already picked up a Breakthrough in Film award at Toronto.

Foxcatcher

Release date: November 14. Stars: Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, Mark Ruffalo. Director: Bennett Miller.

Despite Steve Carell in a lead role, Foxcatcher is not a comedy. In fact, there’s no laughs to be found in this drama based on the true story of Olympic wrestler Mark Schultz.

The Imitation Game

Release date: November 21. Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley. Director: Morten Tyldum.

Another British biopic about about a scientific luminary, The Imitation Game features Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing… and if you know the story of Turing’s life, you already know this won’t have a happy ending.