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Compared to larger, more prestigious film festivals like those in Venice or Toronto, the Telluride Film Festival, located in the heart of Telluride, Colorado, may not quite receive the same amount of attention as its international counterparts, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any merit as a significant kick-off of the fall film festival circuit. In fact, many cite the festival as one of the most important of such events, as many previous Telluride festivals have served as a showcase for a variety of features that would later go on to receive prominent awards buzz in the months to come, enough to actually be nominated or even win at the Academy Awards that would take place during the beginning of the following year. With this year’s Telluride Film Festival, which began on Thursday, August 31st and concluded on Monday, September 4th, commemorating its fiftieth anniversary, there seemed to have been more hype surrounding the festival than ever, and if the way it ended up playing out is any indication, there’s a very good chance that the films that were exhibited and awarded here will continue to gather recognition as awards season continues.
What makes the selection of films chosen for the Telluride Film Festival especially unique in comparison to other festivals is the surprise factor of the announcement, as it usually takes place only a few days prior to when the event is supposed to begin. In theory, this should leave most in the dark as to what they can look forward to seeing, but in practice, there are ways to figure out what will be screened ahead of time even before festival officials reveal the line-up to the public. For one thing, Telluride tends to take place right around the same time as the Venice Film Festival, which tends to exhibit many of the exact same films that the Colorado festival is fortunate enough to feature in its own line-up. Sure enough, the Telluride and Venice festivals are indeed taking place right alongside one another this year (even though Telluride has already come to an end of its comparatively short five-day period), and they do in fact have quite a few titles in common. There’s also the Cannes Film Festival, which, in the case of its most recent occurrence, took place a few months prior to the beginning of Telluride; it too tends to feature a decent handful of films that would later go on to be screened at the Colorado event, and when comparing the selections for this year, this too seems to be the case. Still, as easy as it can be to predict some titles, there are still the occasional surprises when it comes to finding out what will be seen at the Telluride Film Festival, and for the most part, this year’s surprises are nothing if not pleasant.
For those wondering how previous Academy Award winners will be able to follow up the success they had achieved with films they’d made just a few years prior, this year’s Telluride Film Festival may be able to answer those questions in an unexpected, but satisfactory manner. There are indeed quite a few previous Oscar winners who presented their most recent cinematic offerings at the festival this year. Among them are Alexander Payne, a writer/director who had previously won two Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay, one for 2004’s “Sideways” and 2011’s “The Descendants”. His latest film, a coming-of-age drama titled “The Holdovers” and starring Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, made its premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and was immediately met with immense critical acclaim, meaning it does have some potential to be a major awards contender should it continue to maintain such a momentum. Also premiering at Telluride this year was the psychological thriller “Saltburn”, written and directed by Emerald Fennell, who had previously won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for her 2020 film “Promising Young Woman”. The film, which stars Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, and Rosamund Pike, was also the recipient of mostly favorable critical reception and should hopefully remain such as awards season moves forward. Perhaps more surprising than any of these films is that which had been newly created by Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, who had previously won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for their 2018 film “Free Solo”. Rather than make another documentary, Vasarhelyi and Chin have instead opted to make the leap into fictional narrative filmmaking, teaming up with Netflix to create “Nyad”, a biographical sport drama based on the life of swinner Diane Nyad. The risk seems to be paying off so far though; not only has its premiere at Telluride resulted in mostly critical acclaim, but actors Annette Benning and Jodie Foster are already being talked about as possible contenders for major acting categories.
Those films aren’t the only ones to have benefited from a premiere at the Telluride Film Festival though; in fact, there are several more films that had been fortunate enough to make their big debut here. These include Searchlight’s “All of Us Strangers”, directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott; Netflix’s “Rustin”, directed by George C. Wolfe and starring Colman Domingo; “Wildcat”, directed by fame actor Ethan Hawke and starring his daughter Maya; “Fingernails”, directed by Chistos Nikou and starring Jessie Buckley and Riz Ahmed; Magnolia’s “The Promise Land”, a Danish film starring Mads Mikkelsen; “Tuesday”, distributed by A24 and starring Julia Louis-Dreyfuss; and “Janet Planet”, the directorial debut of Pulitzer winner Annie Baker that has also received the backing of A24. Most of these, however, may pale in comparison to “The Monk and the Gun”, which was directed by Pawo Choyning Dorji follow-up to “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom”, a film that hard garnered the Bhutanese filmmaker a great deal of international acclaim and even an Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature.
These are only just some of the titles that could be found on the line-up list for this year’s Telluride Film Festival, and many of them can also be found as part of the selections for various other major film festivals that either have happened, are happening, or are currently expected to happen. One can only speculate as to how much recognition each of these films will continue to receive as the fall film festival circuit continues to hop from one event to another, but with anything being possible, one can only feel excitement and curiosity in finding out what’s to come of these impeccably crafted feature films.
