The Oscar race keeps getting messier. We break down the first reactions to Digger, the New York Film Festival relaunch of Paper Tiger, the growing momentum behind I Play Rocky, and the latest category-placement news around The Odyssey. Then we dive into what may be the most controversial Oscar category: Best Documentary.

We make our early documentary predictions and get into NAZA, Musk, 14th, You Can See Everything, The History of Concrete, Once Upon a Time in Harlem and more — plus the bizarre history of a category where Academy voters once reportedly used flashlights to signal when they wanted a movie eliminated.

And before we wrap up, we preview next week’s Oscars Outsider fantasy draft and some of the rule changes we’re making for year two.

The fall festival season is starting to reshape the Oscar race.We break down the surprising end of the Venice Film Festival, where Woman Unknown pulled off an unexpected Golden Lion win, before turning to one of the biggest questions coming out of Telluride and TIFF: is Fjord suddenly in trouble? After winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes, its North American reception has been much more divided—and the backlash could matter when awards season gets serious.We also get into the huge TIFF response to I Play Rocky, whether it could become this year’s crowd-pleasing Best Picture contender, the growing buzz around Artificial, Netflix finally giving some of its awards movies real theatrical windows, France’s latest International Feature dilemma, and some increasingly wild Oscar predictions.Oscars Outsider looks at the awards race, film festivals, Hollywood, and Oscar history from slightly outside the usual consensus.Subscribe for weekly Oscar predictions, reactions, and film history.I’d use “Is Fjord Starting to Fall?” rather than repeating “Is Fjord in Trouble?” verbatim—the thumbnail and title reinforce each other without saying exactly the same thing.