The same Friday in mid-July that the Screen Actors Guild declared its strike, the heads of some of the biggest film festivals of fall 2023 jumped on an emergency Zoom call.
It was a coming together of symbiotic rivals, a temporary truce among the four houses - Venice, Telluride, Toronto, New York - dialing in from three different time zones. Normally these festivals, which all take place in September and October and are seen as the first stop on the road to the Oscars, are fierce competitors, jockeying over world premieres and who will get the bragging rights of being the first place to show the next best-picture winner.