Four festivals that play out over just seven weeks. Hundreds of films.  Some with distribution, some without. Some that are highly anticipated, others that will become surprise gems. It’s fall festival time and that just doesn’t mean the beginning of awards season. It means new films that will be fought over by competing distributors for acquisition and other movies that may end up going direct to VOD (if they are lucky). 

This year, HitFix’s Kristopher Tapley, Gregory Ellwood, Guy Lodge and Drew McWeeny will be attending the Venice, Telluride, Toronto and New York Film Festivals in one form or another.  With that in mind, we’ve compiled and ranked our 25 most anticipated films of the fall festival season. You can see who made the cut in the embedded gallery in this post.

Afterwards, vote in our poll and tell us which three films you’re most looking forward to hearing about.

It all begins with Guy Lodge’s “Gravity” review from the Venice Film Festival in just a few hours.