Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Toronto, Sundance. How the festival year actually works, and why a Sundance acquisition can matter more than a major studio deal.
For most audiences, films appear in cinemas as if from nowhere. The path that gets a serious film from a director's first draft to a multiplex screen runs, almost without exception, through a festival circuit that the general public is only vaguely aware of. The festival year is the structural infrastructure of contemporary international cinema.
This essay walks through the year as it actually operates.
The U.S. festival year opens in late January with the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Founded in 1978 (then known as the Utah/US Film Festival), Sundance is now the most-important American festival for independent acquisition. The festival's primary economic function is the marketplace: distributors arrive in Park City to bid on completed films looking for U.S. theatrical distribution.
The acquisition pattern that defines the modern American indie has been visible at Sundance since at least Steven Soderbergh's Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Recent peaks: Whiplash (acquired by Sony Pictures Classics, 2014). Get Out (Universal had it but Blumhouse, the production company, premiered at Sundance for buzz). Moonlight (acquired by A24, 2016). CODA (acquired by Apple TV+, 2021, for $25m — a record at the time). Several A24 acquisitions of recent years.
The structural argument for Sundance: a Sundance acquisition can take a $3m film and put it on 800 American screens by autumn. Without Sundance, almost none of these films would receive theatrical distribution.
The Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale), held in February, is the first major European festival of the year. The festival's top prize is the Golden Bear. Berlin has historically been the most-politically-engaged of the major festivals — the festival was founded in 1951 as a U.S.-occupation-zone counterpoint to the Eastern Bloc film culture of the early Cold War, and political subject matter has remained part of its identity.
Recent Golden Bear winners include 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007, Cristian Mungiu), Adieu au langage (2014, Godard), Synonyms (2019, Nadav Lapid). The festival also operates the European Film Market, the second-largest international film-rights marketplace after Cannes.
The Cannes Film Festival in May is the most-prestigious international festival. The top prize, the Palme d'Or, is widely considered the single most-significant film prize in international cinema. Cannes also hosts the Marché du Film, the largest international film-rights marketplace, where most major international distribution deals for art-house cinema are negotiated.
Cannes's structural function is, in addition to prize awarding, the launch platform for international art cinema. A film that premieres in the Cannes Main Competition can expect international distribution interest within days. Films that win at Cannes (Palme d'Or, Grand Prix, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress) typically receive international distribution at a scale they would not otherwise achieve.
Recent peaks: Parasite (Palme d'Or 2019), Triangle of Sadness (Palme 2022), Titane (Palme 2021), Anatomy of a Fall (Palme 2023). See our list of best Palme d'Or winners for the longer tradition.
Late August opens with the Venice Film Festival, the oldest film festival in the world (founded 1932). Venice's top prize is the Golden Lion. The festival has, in the past decade, become a major launchpad for awards-season prestige releases — Joker (Golden Lion 2019), Nomadland (Golden Lion 2020), Poor Things (Golden Lion 2023).
Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, held over Labor Day weekend, is a smaller, invitation-only festival that has become the unofficial start of the American awards-season campaign. Films that premiere at Telluride often receive significant buzz before formal distribution; Telluride's audience is heavily weighted toward critics, programmers, and industry voters.
Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), in early September, is the largest North American festival by audience size. TIFF's People's Choice Award has, in recent years, become a strong predictor of Best Picture nominations and wins. Recent TIFF People's Choice winners: 12 Years a Slave (2013), La La Land (2016), Three Billboards (2017), Green Book (2018), Jojo Rabbit (2019), Nomadland (2020), Belfast (2021), The Fabelmans (2022).
October is the New York Film Festival and BFI London Film Festival. Both are non-competitive curatorial festivals — they show films that have premiered elsewhere — but both are important for American and British awards-season visibility.
By November the festival year transitions into the awards-season campaign. Films released through the autumn — whether straight to theatres or as festival pickups — are now competing for the Golden Globes (early January), the SAG Awards, the BAFTAs, the PGA, the DGA, the WGA, and ultimately the Oscars in March.
The campaign is an industry within an industry. Distribution companies spend millions on for-your-consideration mailings, screenings, dinners, and trade-publication advertising. The campaign cost for a serious Best Picture push can exceed $20m. The expected return is the marketing-and-prestige value of the awards, which can extend the film's commercial life by months.
The festival year as a whole serves two functions. First, it is the discovery infrastructure for international and independent cinema — a film that does not premiere at a major festival has, in 2026, very little chance of reaching a non-festival audience. Second, it is the campaign infrastructure for serious mainstream releases — the Oscars race is won and lost over twelve months of festival appearances, press tours, and industry screenings.
The system is, in some sense, the only remaining route by which non-franchise serious cinema reaches audiences. The studios will not finance most of the films on our best of all time list at the budgets those films were made at. The festival circuit is the structure that allows the films to be made anyway. Whether the circuit can sustain itself across the streaming-and-theatrical bifurcation discussed in our streaming vs theatrical essay is the open question of the next decade.