Werner Herzog’s ‘Bucking Fastard’ Is the Only Movie to Hit All Four Major Fall Film Festivals

So, with Toronto, New York, and Venice having announced their lineups, and more or less knowing what will be screened at Telluride, only one movie will be hitting all four major fall fests this year: Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard.”

It could have been three. Mike Leigh’s “Tender Loving Care” dropped out of its Venice out-of-competition slot at the last minute, while Andrew Haigh’s “The Long Winter” was in competition at Venice but had to bow out due to a scheduling conflict with Telluride. Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut” was not submitted to Venice.

Still, Herzog’s film—which is also set to screen at San Sebastian—being the only one to hit Venice, Telluride, TIFF, and NYFF must surely mean something, right? At the very least, it’s a good film? If you remember, it was originally supposed to screen at Cannes, but Herzog pulled the film after it failed to make the competition lineup.

Inspired by a true story, “Bucking Fastard” follows sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, played by Rooney and Kate Mara, in total sync, as they live by their own social and emotional standards and rules. The ensemble cast also includes Orlando Bloom and Domhnall Gleeson.

Here’s the synopsis, per NYFF:

They speak in unison, fall in love with the same man, and try to fulfill the same wild dreams and ambitions. Shot across the teeming city streets and the majestic underground caves of Ireland, “Bucking Fastard” features operatic imagery from the director’s longtime cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. It’s an uncanny, funny, properly eccentric film that moves from the comic to the grandly pastoral.

As far as we know, no U.S. distributor has acquired “Bucking Fastard,” which means there’s still no release date.

Usually, when a film hits all four fests, it’s met with acclaim. Past titles that hit a fall-fest home run include “First Reformed” (2017), “ROMA” (2018), “Marriage Story” (2019), “Nomadland” (2020), “The Power of the Dog” (2021), and “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” (2022). Three of those six films ended up winning the Golden Lion at Venice, while four went on to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture.

Looking at Herzog’s output over the last 20 years, it has been dominated by documentaries. He delivered above-average narrative features in 2006 (“Rescue Dawn”) and 2009 (“Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans”), but his last four narrative films have been fairly mediocre—and that’s coming from someone who absolutely bows down at the church of Herzog.