A sneak preview of the literary films currently dominating the festival circuit.

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It’s looking like a great year for indie cinema. Which is swell news for nerds. For those of us particularly loyal to print and celluloid, the late festival circuit—including the Venice Biennale, New York Film Fest (NYFF), and the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF)—is boasting a bumper crop.

From adaptations to biopics to docs, here are some of the key literary offerings to watch out for this festival season. Fingers crossed for distribution deals, where apropos.

Clarissa arrives at the New York Film Festival next week. A perfect Sophie Okonedo spearheads this buzzy adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway.

This take on the classic brings the drama to Nigeria, where the veteran Septimus is traumatized not by the trenches but his time spent fighting the Boko Haram insurgency. Ayo Edibiri costars, and is also rumored to be excellent.

Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter (TIFF) is adapted from the Colm Tóibín story of the same name. Set on the eve of the Korean war, this ruminative story follows a midwestern family that’s fractured by a mother’s sudden disappearance.

Ebon Moss-Bachrach plays the repressed coal-miner father. Which, honestly? Feels on the money.

The prolific Romanian satirist Radu Jude is back at NYFF with a new piece of sociological shrapnel. The Diary of a Chambermaid is (loosely!) adapted from a 1900 novel by Octave Mirbeau—a book that previously made the leap to the screen in 1946, thanks to Jean Renoir.

This project, like all of Jude’s others, considers modern day class dynamics in Europe.

And though it’s not technically an adaptation, Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland also deserves a place on the literary cinephile’s radar. This historical spec-fic soon coming to NYFF follows the novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika Mann (Sandra Hüller) on “a fictionalized 1949 road trip across a torn Germany.”

I’d climb a Magic Mountain to see Hüller do just about anything, so I’ll be seated for this one.

Once Upon a Time in Harlem.

This year’s NYFF is also host to a bevy of literary documentaries. The recovered William Greaves masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in Harlem, looks at luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. On other screens, new docs about Edward Said and Jorge Luis Borges reconstruct lives of the greats.

And for those on a highly particular Bingo quest, Pradip Krishen’s restored first film—also running at NYFF—boasts a screenplay by a writer you probably know best for her books: Arundhati Roy. 

In across the pond news, Nanni Moretti’s Succederà questa notte (English title: It Will Happen Tonight) played in competition at this year’s Biennale. And is making its international premiere in Toronto as we speak.

The time-bending romance, led by the charming Louis Garrel, is based on Hungry Heart, a book of shorts by Eshkol Nevo. (Which is, itself, a reference to the Bruce Springsteen song. Oh, the layers of art!)

Also on the interpretive biopic front, we have The Idiot(s) from Polish filmmaker Małgorzata Szumowska and DP Michał Englert.

This film—which just made its Canadian debut at TIFF—imagines the Dostoevskys on their honeymoon. The broodier one of the couple has writer’s block, but—spoiler, I guess?—finds inspiration by journey’s end. (Perhaps to write The Idiot.)

Also in Toronto, Anton Corbijn’s A Talent for Murder pulls a similar trick, re-imagining the late Patricia Highsmith as a scheming host played by Helen Mirren. (Find the trailer here.)

Still hungry for that sweet, sweet crossover IP but unmoored to a major city? Fret not! We’ve got you covered.