Lately, movie festivals haven’t felt all that festive. Audiences have dwindled, streaming has upended viewing habits and the pandemic and Hollywood strikes have rattled the trade, leaving even essentially the most glamorous occasions to combat for his or her place on the cultural calendar.
Then there’s Telluride. For greater than a half-century, the tiny mountain gathering has thrived as a type of anti-festival: no crimson carpets, no prizes, no tuxedos, simply motion pictures. Perched 8,750 toes up in a field canyon within the Colorado Rockies, it’s reachable solely by twisting roads or a white-knuckle drop into one of many nation’s highest airports. Pageant passes are expensive and restricted in quantity, which makes Telluride really feel directly intimate and unique. With its mixture of trade insiders and devoted movie lovers, that isolation and tight-knit ambiance have change into a part of Telluride’s mystique, and the promise of early Oscar buzz retains filmmakers, stars and cinephiles making the pilgrimage. Since 2009, solely 5 finest image winners have skipped Telluride on their solution to the highest prize.
“It’s so exhausting to get to Telluride — you don’t find yourself right here by chance,” competition director Julie Huntsinger says by cellphone. “We’ve at all times felt it’s incumbent on us to point out both brand-new issues or extraordinary issues that make your time price it. You know the way cats will carry you a mouse? I at all times really feel like I’m bringing you a mouse or a hen, and I simply hope you’ll prefer it.”
Rolling out over Labor Day weekend, the 52nd Telluride Movie Pageant will provide a slate of contemporary choices, together with a handful of world premieres. Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Ship Me From Nowhere” drops Jeremy Allen White into the boots of the Boss, tracing the creation of his stark 1982 album, “Nebraska.” Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet” unites Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in a haunting portrait of grief. Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Participant” finds Colin Farrell wandering Macau as a gambler chasing luck and redemption. And Daniel Roher’s “Tuner” provides Dustin Hoffman a uncommon return to the display screen in against the law thriller a few piano tuner who discovers his ear is simply as efficient on safes as on Steinways.
Additionally within the combine are quite a lot of movies coming from Cannes and Venice: Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Richard Linklater with a double invoice, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Imprecise,” proof that Telluride stays a haven for auteurs.
Finally yr’s Telluride, politics dominated the dialog on- and off-screen. Sizzling-button points, from abortion entry to local weather change to the Israeli-Palestinian battle, ran by this system, whereas visitors corresponding to Hillary Clinton, James Carville and particular prosecutor Jack Smith joined the same old roster of actors and filmmakers. Ali Abbasi’s “The Apprentice,” a searing portrait of Donald Trump’s early years, was one of many buzziest titles.
This yr the lineup is broader, although politics nonetheless runs by it. Ivy Meeropol’s “Ask E. Jean” follows author E. Jean Carroll by her authorized battles with Trump, whereas Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” makes use of a Seventies-set thriller to revisit Brazil’s navy dictatorship, with Wagner Moura (“Narcos”) as a professor on the run. “This yr is fairly political too,” Huntsinger insists. “There are a few movies that, in case you’re paying consideration, have vital issues to say. I simply hope everyone feels a little bit braver after plenty of the issues we present.”
German-born director Edward Berger, who introduced his papal thriller “Conclave” to final yr’s version, returns with a strikingly totally different movie in “Ballad of a Small Participant.”
“I might defy anybody to stack up his movies and say they’re by the identical filmmaker,” Huntsinger says. “It is a stunning, very dreamlike, nonlinear train in spirituality and introspection. ‘Conclave’ felt disciplined — not that this movie is undisciplined nevertheless it exists on a completely totally different airplane.”
Zhao, who received the directing Oscar for 2020’s “Nomadland,” has tailored “Hamnet” from Maggie O’Farrell’s acclaimed novel concerning the loss of life of Shakespeare’s solely son in what Huntsinger describes as one of many competition’s most emotionally highly effective picks.
“Chloé is an individual of immense depth,” Huntsinger says. “She has such a deep really feel for human beings. It is a unhappy, mournful however stunning meditation on loss. Folks must be ready to cathartically cry. There isn’t a false word in it.”
One other competition favourite, Lanthimos makes his third journey to Telluride with “Bugonia,” a darkly comedian sci-fi satire that reunites him with Emma Stone following their earlier collaborations on “The Favorite” and “Poor Issues.” A remake of the 2003 Korean cult movie “Save the Inexperienced Planet!,” it follows a conspiracy-minded beekeeper (Jesse Plemons) who kidnaps a strong pharma govt (Stone) he believes is an alien bent on destroying Earth.
“Be ready to get your a— kicked,” Huntsinger says. “Emma is excellent, and we must always by no means take her as a right, however Jesse Plemons steals the present. He next-levels it on this one.”
Baumbach additionally marks his return to Telluride with the dramedy “Jay Kelly,” which facilities on an actor (George Clooney) and his longtime supervisor (Adam Sandler) as they journey throughout Europe, wanting again on the alternatives and relationships which have formed their lives. Huntsinger likens the movie to a cinematic negroni: “It’s substantial but additionally enjoyable, with an nearly summery really feel. It’s about the place you’re headed after a sure stage in life, instructed with out heavy-handedness.”
The filmmaker and screenwriter, who beforehand introduced “Margot on the Wedding ceremony,” “Frances Ha” and “Marriage Story” to the competition, can be honored this yr with a Silver Medallion. He shares the award with Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose drama “It Was Simply an Accident” received the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and Ethan Hawke, represented within the lineup with Linklater’s “Blue Moon” and his personal documentary about nation singer Merle Haggard, “Freeway 99: A Double Album.”
Few movies within the lineup can be extra carefully watched than Cooper’s Springsteen biopic, with Emmy-winning “The Bear” star White channeling the Boss throughout the making of certainly one of his most uncompromising albums. “Jeremy delivers in the identical method that Timothée Chalamet did in [the Bob Dylan biopic] ‘A Full Unknown,’ the place you simply suppose, Jesus, what can’t this child do?” Huntsinger says. “Scott’s an important filmmaker, and the film delivers on its promise.”
The music thread continues with Morgan Neville’s documentary “Man on the Run,” drawn from never-before-seen house motion pictures Paul McCartney shot within the early Seventies, not lengthy after the Beatles’ break up. The footage exhibits McCartney retreating to Scotland together with his household and affords what Huntsinger describes as a revelatory glimpse at a less-mythologized second. “You additionally perceive there wasn’t a villain within the Beatles breakup,” Huntsinger says. “It’s an growth on historical past that’s actually wanted.”
Elsewhere within the documentary lineup, Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras returns with “Cowl-Up” (co-directed by Mark Obenhaus), an exploration of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s profession that builds on her politically charged movies like “Citizenfour” and “All of the Magnificence and the Bloodshed.”
For all its flannel-and-jeans ethos, Telluride isn’t proof against the economics of 2025. Lodging and journey prices have soared, amplifying issues that the showcase has change into a competition largely for the well-off. Huntsinger concedes the expense however factors out move costs haven’t budged in additional than 15 years as she works to maintain it accessible.
“I used to be involved for some time as a result of our viewers was growing old, however we’ve actually labored on ensuring that youthful individuals and folks on mounted incomes can come,” she says. “I can see the distinction — it’s not simply individuals of means. And I promise you, I’ll hold combating for that. I hope the lodging individuals will notice they bought a little bit out of hand and begin decreasing costs too.”
For all of the turbulence and doomsaying that has rattled Hollywood in recent times, Telluride has managed to carry quick to its identification.
“The devotion individuals must this weekend makes me suppose there’s hope,” Huntsinger says. “They’re not coming right here for something however film-loving. To listen to individuals say, ‘I might not miss this for the world’ makes me actually proud and hopeful. After every part we’ve all been by, I feel we nonetheless have purpose to maintain doing this loopy little picnic.”
