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The month of September means different things to different people. To some, it heralds a return to school. To some, it means football season has begun. To even others, it means the Oscar season has, in some ways, begun. Why? Well, September is a month of a lot of film festivals. While one of the most notable film festivals, Sundance, is held in January, September makes up for it with the Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York Film Festivals. The quality of the festivals varies each year, but this month always means that some of the major Oscar contenders are being rolled out, either at festivals or in press screenings. For the former, look to the world premieres of such films as Black Swan and The King’s Speech, two Oscar hopefuls. For the latter, look to the recent online reviews of The Social Network. Most of us don’t get to go to big film festivals, but they matter, and they matter a lot.

This week’s A-List, in lieu of talking more about Emma Stone and Easy A (or, conversely, the hopes that Jon Hamm’s supporting role in this week’s new release, The Town, will help catapult him to film fame), let’s talk about five of the big film festival finds of the past 25 years. My guess is that you’ve heard of most of these films, if not all of them. Not all of them went much further than being big news from a film festival, but some are among the most well-known movies of past years. Nowadays, film festivals aren’t just for low-budget independent films, so who knows? Maybe we’ll be talking about movies like Black Swan and The King’s Speech decades from now. Hype isn’t everything, of course, as one of the films proves. Let’s get to the list.

sex, lies, and videotape

The movie that put film festivals on the map as something that could control content in Hollywood was sex, lies, and videotape. It notably premiered at the Sundance Film Festival back in 1989, and was a major shot in the arm for almost everyone involved. For Sundance, it made the festival more than just a nice hobby Robert Redford had as one of the festival’s backers. Here was a movie that would get seen by audiences worldwide because it was shown to the right people at Sundance. The film’s director and writer, Steven Soderbergh, became as big a star as the movie and the festival where it premiered. Of course, Soderbergh’s career wouldn’t be solidly upwards, but nowadays he’s still one of the most respected American filmmakers of his generation. It all started with sex, lies, and videotape.

Soderbergh has always been known as a do-it-yourself kind of filmmaker, but he managed to populate the personal, intentionally awkward, uncomfortable comedy-drama with names we know today: James Spader, Andie MacDowell, and Laura San Giacomo. No, none of them are the biggest stars in the world, but one of them won countless Emmys as a slightly less icky version of his character from the film. MacDowell was, for a time, one of the most charming It girls; San Giacomo…well, we all liked her on Just Shoot Me, right? Either way, sex, lies, and videotape is a movie known for its title, for its frank sexuality and explicit nature, for making Soderbergh something close to an indie household name, and for making Sundance more than just Redford’s name in a 1969 classic.

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