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While there’s a few more fall film festivals popping up in the next month, the major ones are behind us, which means we have a strong sense of the films to have on your radar in the coming months and even through 2025. We’ve asked our writers from across the globe to weigh in on their favorite world premieres from Locarno Film Festival, Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and BFI London Film Festival.

Our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week, and far beyond as we provide updates on the journey of these selections, so continue to explore all of our festival coverage here. In the meantime, check out top picks from our writers below and return soon for our extensive year-end coverage.

Soham Gadre (@SohamGadre)

1. April (Dea Kulumbegashvili)

2 and 3. Youth (Homecoming and Hard Times) (Wang Bing...

Seth Worley makes his feature film directing debut with Sketch, a tale that brings wondrous creatures to life. Worley helms this odyssey about a family working through grief, finding creative inspiration from his own children along the way.

We meet siblings Amber and Jack Wyatt, still adjusting after the passing of their mother. Amber turns to artistic expression, filling a notebook with imaginative doodles. Her drawings serve as an outlet, though little does she know the magic that’s brewing.

The enigmatic pond by their home carries mysterious properties. When Amber’s sketchbook tumbles into its murky depths, her creations morph into something more. Monsters pulled straight from the pages soon wreaked havoc across their neighborhood.

Led by their father, Taylor, the Wyatts unite to undo Amber’s animated antics. They must face both the beasts without and the sadness within on this journey. Meanwhile, Sketch blends live action with...

Since the death of her mother, 10-year-old Amber Wyatt (Bianca Belle) has been bothered by all sorts of dark thoughts. Rather than act on those impulses, Amber commits her most monstrous ideas to a secret journal, purging anxieties from her subconscious though art. The process would be therapeutic, if not for a gnarly twist that releases Amber’s scary scribbles into the real world: marker-drawn hearts with insatiable appetites, a googly-eyed glitter monster on long bendy legs, and swarms of red, arachnid-like “Eyeders.”

With his stellar indie family adventure “Sketch,” commercials director Seth Worley has come up with a creative — and highly teachable — concept for his feature debut, using imaginative visual effects to impart a valuable lesson about dealing with grief and other strong feelings. The live-action/CG-animated hybrid channels the spirit of “Jumanji,” by way of “The Babadook,” but with something important to say. Once Amber’s doodles get...

If the upcoming film “Sketch” feels like a mashup of two of the most successful films ever made, that was exactly the point, according to star Tony Hale.

“Sketch” hit the Toronto International Film Festival on Sunday. The movie follows a father (Hale) and his children, who are left grieving in the wake of wife and mother Lis’s (D’Arcy Carden) death. His daughter is encouraged to draw to help cope with the loss — before her comically dark creations begin coming to life and wreaking havoc on their town.

Sitting down with TheWrap’s 2024 TIFF Studio sponsored by Moët & Chandon and Boss Design, Hale and writer-director Seth Worley explained the clear homages the film is making.

“We describe it like ‘Jurassic Park’ meets ‘Inside Out,'” Hale said.

Worley said that “Jurassic Park” in particular was a guiding star in how he wanted people to feel watching “Sketch.”

“The movie is,...

If you were to take the wide-eyed wonder of a Steven Spielberg, the impish mischief of a Joe Dante, plus the vibrant visuals of prime Pixar and somehow blitz them together in a Magic Bullet blender, the resulting concoction might well resemble Sketch, an audaciously gonzo first feature by Seth Worley.

Although the tween tale may be admittedly lacking in singular originality, it more than compensates for all its borrowed bits with a Skittles-hued sugar rush of a live-action romp, with an unusual take on family therapy in which a 10-year-old girl’s grief manifests in violent drawings come to life.

Working with an engaging, spirited cast and a talented visual effects crew, Worley, a VFX aficionado whose prior directorial output has been mainly in the field of corporate-branded videos, turns out a hard-to-resist, all-ages crowd tickler that seems certain to land distribution on the heels of its Toronto International Film Festival bow.

The Variety and Chanel Female Filmmakers Dinner brought together an A-list lineup of Hollywood stars and creatives including Andrew Garfield, Elizabeth Olsen, “Nightbitch” director Marielle Heller (who attended this event mere moments before her film’s premiere), Danielle Deadwyler, Barry Keoghan and more for a vibrant night amidst the Toronto Film Festival. The vibe was electric, with drinks flowing, delicious food on hand and a spontaneous game of “Two Truths and a Lie” breaking out.

The event, which took place at Soho House Toronto, featured a cocktail hour downstairs before a three-course dinner on the second floor of the social club. Inside, the hotly anticipated “Saturday Night” film cast Cory Michael Smith, Lamorne Morris, Ella Hunt and Dylan O’Brien stopped in before their Tuesday night premiere. The film, a hot title at TIFF, is set within the chaotic 90 minutes before the first episode of “SNL” aired in 1975. The group mingled...

One of the first films that made me fall in love with cinema was Steven Spielberg’s enduring “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” While I’m most certainly not alone in this, that it’s stuck with so many is just more of a testament to its greatness. With its ragtag group of scrappy, resourceful kids navigating the perils of growing up and the somehow equally relatable challenges of caring for a kindly otherworldly visitor that the government is after, it’s a film that soars every time you watch it.

There’s a good chance that Seth Worley, writer and director of the monster movie “Sketch,” was similarly impacted by Spielberg’s work. His rather fun feature debut offers its own compassionate and frequently clever romp that, while not as good as “E.T.” by any stretch of the imagination, has plenty of that same sense of charm hiding away.

The crowds of film sellers and buyers are still rolling into Toronto from Venice and Telluride, but the puck dropped Thursday night on the acquisitions marketplace with the premiere of Nutcrackers.

David Gordon Green has taken a detour from genre to serve up a Ben Stiller-starrer that proved a crowdpleaser in two opening-night showings.

That kind of movie — with promising premises with stars and directors with proven track records — is all over the schedule. There is a lot to like in this 2024 TIFF acquisitions market. But I’ve just come from an L.A. visit and cannot recall as bleak a black cloud hangover from the twin strikes of last year. It will take time for the business to recover, and this caution could factor into the dealmaking. Also on the minds of distributors is how elusive box office has become. Comparable films to the ones on sale here...

There’s never been a “normal” year in the independent film market, but this will be the first time in five years that Toronto and Venice don’t have to deal with active catastrophe. No massive labor strikes, pandemics, virtual screenings, or even overwhelming panic about the box office: Just movies seeking buyers.

Now, only one question remains: With this newfound sense of calm, will they show up? As one sales agent put it to IndieWire: If this year turns out to be slow for indie film sales, there are “no more excuses.”

A lot happened while everyone was busy fending off disaster. It’s unclear if theatrical viewing habits will ever return to the levels of 2019 and nowhere is that more apparent than the indie sector. Back in the day, Netflix and Amazon were major buyers; today, all streamers have scaled way, way back on their acquisitions. They...