The race for the Oscars begins in Venice

ANYONE thinking of betting on February’s Academy Awards should keep an eye on the Venice Film Festival, which began on August 29th, and the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado, which starts two days later. There is a good chance that the next Best Picture will be publicly screened for the first time at one or both of those events. In the past decade, four of the films that won that Oscar were first shown at Venice, including “The Shape of Water” and “The Hurt Locker”, and five at Telluride, among them “Moonlight” and “Slumdog Millionaire”. Of the past ten Best Pictures, the remaining one, “The Artist”, was first seen at the festival in Cannes.