The high-stress world of the fashion industry, and the people who work within it, often makes for great entertainment or the perfect backdrop for film. 2026 has already seen the modern state of fashion journalism explored in the absolutely groundbreaking return of Runway and its staff in The Devil Wears Prada 2, as Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) and Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) fight to secure their place in an industry that has moved on from print magazines. This week, Boots Riley explores another angle with I Love Boosters, following Keke Palmer and her group of shoplifters as they target the high-powered fashion maven who stole their designs. However, one of the most dramatic and emotional explorations of the people who try to live in this world is yet to come next month.
Following its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year, Vertical is gearing up to release the drama Couture in theaters on June 26 in the U.S. Directed by César Award-winning director Alice Winocour, the film stars Oscar winner Angelina Jolie as an American filmmaker named Maxine as she heads to Paris to cover one of the world’s premier designer presentations — Fashion Week. Amid the hustle and bustle, her path intertwines with those of other women of varying ages and cultural backgrounds trying to carve out their own destinies within this cutthroat industry, all while she falls into a personal story of love and self-discovery that forces her to reflect on the choices that got her here. With one month left until release, a new trailer has arrived to tease the emotional twists Maxine’s journey is about to take in her trip to the City of Love.
Maxine’s whole purpose at Fashion Week is to direct the video that will kick off the event, capturing the styles, hopes, and dreams that will flourish under the Paris lights. As the trailer shows, though, she doesn’t think that highly of fashion and sees it more as a lucrative opportunity at a time when she could use the money. Her journey takes an unexpected turn, however, when she’s given a serious medical diagnosis that makes her contemplate her future, her family, and whether her choices have somehow caused all this. Navigating the world in tandem with her is a young pharmacy student named Ada (Anyier Anei), who was discovered as a model in Nairobi and given the opportunity of a lifetime, though she struggles with the pressures the industry places on her and the ridicule she feels from her colleagues. Finally, there’s Angèle (Ella Rumpf), a veteran makeup artist turning her years of experience into a work of fiction that nobody seems to quite understand. Together, they navigate a world of elegance, full of constant choices, small and life-changing.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Who Else Is Involved in ‘Couture’?
Winocour both wrote and directed Couture, with Jolie helping to produce alongside Charles Gillibert, Zhang Xin, and William Horberg. The French production also features Louis Garrel, Garance Marillier, and Vincent Lindon among its cast. The film was a return for Winocour to TIFF after debuting her previous effort, Paris Memories, at the festival back in 2022. Critics weren’t entirely sold on her deep-cutting, high-fashion-exposing new project, however, despite all the award-worthy talent involved. It currently owns a 59% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but Jolie’s emotionally complex performance as Maxine did earn high praise across the board for helping to ground the story.
Couture hits the runway on June 26. Check out the trailer in the player above.
