Both the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals ended in the last week. These two festivals, along with the currently running Toronto Film Festival, are some of the prime locations for major Oscar contenders to premiere their films. Here is a look at some of the films that opened to welcome applause at the two festivals, and that may be popping up more often come awards season.

Out of the award winners at Venice, only one seems to be a possible major Oscar contender: Michael Fassbinder in Shame. The Steve McQueen film, which might be too graphic for more conservative audiences, was recently picked up by Fox Searchlight for release near the end of the year. The film also took the FIPRESCI prize. Wuthering Heights, the new British adaptation of the classic novel, picked up the Best Cinematography award.

Michael Fassbinder is also one of the stars of A Dangerous Method, directed by Academy non-favorite David Cronenberg. The highly anticipated film, starring Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen, has gotten strong reviews but nothing as enthusiastic as the film hoped for. The use of words like “low-key” and “underwhelming” don’t signal that it will have a lot of support come awards time.

Roman Polanski’s Carnage got better word of mouth at Venice, even winning the Leoncini Prize, given by area students. The film got solid reviews, especially for the four leads (Oscar winners Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster and Christoph Waltz, along with Oscar nominee John C. Reilly). Foster seems to be getting the bulk of the kudos for the film, although Winslet gets the much talked about vomit scene, but there are still a lot of questions about how the cast will position themselves category-wise (on Broadway, all four roles were considered leads, an unlikely Oscar strategy).

Among the other films to open at Venice with strong reviews is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which many seem to think that the spy adaptation could bring Gary Oldman his first Oscar nomination, and Al Pacino’s Wilde Salome, which could be too nontraditional of a documentary to gain much steam.

The biggest hit to come out of Telluride was The Desdendants, which seems to be a welcome return to the big screen for Alexander Payne. The film stars George Clooney in what many critics are calling his best on-screen performance, with other acclaimed performances from Judy Greer and Beau Bridges. Another highly anticipated lead performance, Glenn Close in Albert Nobbs, garnered strong notices even if the film itself underwhelmed the critics quite a bit.

The other two biggest hits out of Telluride, We Should Talk About Kevin and especially The Artist, previously premiered at Cannes and garnered great buzz there.