After the Hunt, directed by Luca Guadagnino
Premiere: August 29 at the Venice Film Festival
What It Is: One of the buzziest entries in this year’s season, After the Hunt is a campus drama for the post-#MeToo moment that finds a university professor (Julia Roberts) confronting a dark secret from her past when her star pupil (Ayo Edebiri) levels a damning accusation against one of her chummy colleagues (Andrew Garfield).
Why It’s Worth a Look: Somehow amidst his Dior debut and running an eponymous label, Jonathan Anderson has made time to costume the last three Guadagnino films. The designer’s tongue-in-cheek preppy sensibilities feel cannily well-suited to After the Hunt’s mahogany university corridors—where power, sexuality, and betrayal simmer right beneath the surface. The trailer finds a blonde Roberts in power suit mode replete with oversized blazers and luxurious taupe trousers; meanwhile Edebiri sports cinema’s most shrewd septum piercing to date.
Father Mother Sister Brother, directed by Jim Jarmusch
Premiere: August 31 at the Venice Film Festival
What It Is: Spanning three locations—Paris, Dublin, and the northeastern U.S.—Jim Jarmusch brings his signature sensitivity to this cinematic triptych. Starring Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, Indya Moore, and Vicky Krieps, the film tackles parents, their adult children, and the spaces that grow between them.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Fashion and film have long shared a symbiosis, but the industries have become even more inextricable in recent years after Kering gained a majority stake in Hollywood’s biggest talent agency and LVMH announced a new entertainment branch of its own. Last year, Saint Laurent’s production studio made a bold foray into the world of films with three auteurs—Jacques Audiard, Paolo Sorrentino, and David Cronenberg—but none quite managed to hit it big (let’s just agree to let Emilia Perez lie.) Will Jarmusch be the house’s ticket to success?
Marc by Sofia, directed by Sofia Coppola
Premiere: September 1 at the Venice Film Festival
What It Is: A last-minute, surprise announcement, this film is the culmination of a decades-long friendship and creative partnership between two visionaries. It’s taken Coppola to Juergen Teller-shot Marc Jacobs adverts and behind the lens for a Daisy fragrance campaign. Now, it’s off to Venice.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Marc by Sofia finds Coppola trying her hand at documentary filmmaking for the first time. After tales of listless girlhood and gilded cages, Marc Jacobs may be just the subject reboot she needs. From a troubled Upper West Side childhood to Louis Vuitton’s first ready-to-wear collection (by an American to boot!) to the pioneering practice of packing runway front rows with every big star in sight, Marc Jacobs’s life is great fodder for Coppola’s confections.
Duse, directed by Pietro Marcello
Premiere: September 3 at the Venice Film Festival
What It Is: Here, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi stars as Eleanora Duse, a legendary 19th-century Italian actor returning to the stage while the rest of the country hovers on the brink of World War I. Like opera prima donna Maria Callas, who got her own Angelina Jolie-led feature last year, the actor was so widely revered that her name was reduced to one eponymous thrill: La Duse.
Why It’s Worth a Look: This one is for fans of The Gilded Age. Period pieces are always a hit in the costume categories during award season, and Duse, with its sumptuous wool traveling cloaks and boater hats is likely no exception.
Nouvelle Vague, directed by Richard Linklater
Premiere: This past May at Cannes. It will show on this side of the Atlantic September 4 at the Toronto International Film Festival.
What It Is: Nouvelle Vague is one of two films from Richard Linklater this season, with Blue Moon coming this October. But this look into the making of French New Wave classic Breathless is already getting awards season attention. Starring Zoey Deutch, it’s an ode to a world of filmmaking—and fashion—long passed.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Chanel had a hand in the film as both an onscreen and behind-the-scenes partner. The fashion house dressed Deutch, who plays midcentury film starlet Jean Seberg, known for her signature pixie and Gallic stripes. Eagle-eyed viewers can catch a beige striped taffeta and organza number pulled directly from the Gabrielle Chanel-designed Spring/Summer 1956 collection.
Chien 51, directed by Cédric Jimenez
Premiere: This past May at Cannes. It will have its North American premiere at TIFF on September 4 and will also show September 6 at the Venice Film Festival.
What It Is: Adapting Laurent Gaudé’s 2022 novel of the same name, Chien 51 finds its protagonists in the not-so-distant future of Paris, where a police state ruled by an artificial intelligence named ALMA keeps people confined and corralled. When the creator of ALMA is murdered, two cops—played by Adèle Exarchopoulos and Gilles Lellouche, two of France’s most bankable stars—search for the truth. It’s a contemporary French answer to Minority Report, buoyed by director Cédric Jimenez’s biggest budget yet.
Why It’s Worth a Look: Dystopian future action/adventure and high fashion don’t typically go hand-in-hand, but Chien 51 is in fact the first film venture from French sportswear brand Lacoste. Perhaps it has something to do with Exarchopoulous, who became a brand ambassador for Lacoste earlier this year. Keep your eyes out for little crocodiles, but if the trailer’s any indication, the film is packed to the brim with the true signifiers of dystopian dressing: lots of black puffer vests.
Couture, directed by Alice Winocour
When: September 7 at the Toronto International Film Festival
What It Is: Starring Angelina Jolie, who bares her tattoos for all to see, Couture follows three women over the course of Paris Fashion Week. Jolie’s character, a divorced film director without much regard for the fashion world, collides with a young South Sudanese model strutting the runways for the first time and a makeup artist working in the shadows, prompting all to make some major personal and career reevaluations.
Why It’s Worth a Look: This film has echos of beloved fashion world films—the makeup artist is working on a book about her experiences, echoing Anne Hathaway’s outsider-looking-in character in the Devil Wears Prada—but the question is whether or not Winocour’s film will sustain the fantasy of fashion or plunge into its tensions between beauty, status, and exclusion.
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