The Telluride Film Festival, the unofficial launch of the Oscar race in North America, will kick off its 53rd edition on Friday and run through Monday. On Thursday morning, as festival regulars waited to depart from LAX for the Rockies, the fest unveiled its lineup.
Highlights include the world premieres of several major Oscar hopefuls, among them Elsinore, which stars Andrew Scott as the ill-fated Chariots of Fire actor Ian Charleson; Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut, a musical vehicle for Oscar winner Julianne Moore; Tender Loving Care, which Mike Leigh has indicated may be his final film; The Liberation, in which Carrie Coon plays a Holocaust survivor ensnared by a cult; and Tenzing, the story of the Sherpa who accompanied Edmund Hillary to the top of Mount Everest.
Also playing at the fest will be several contenders that previously were unveiled at the Sundance Film Festival (Once Upon a Time in Harlem and The Only Living Pickpocket in New York), Berlin Film Festival (Rose, for which Sandra Hüller was awarded the best actress prize) and the Cannes Film Festival (Palme d’Or winner Fjord, as well as grand prize winner Minotaur, directing co-winners Fatherland and La Bola Negra, plus Avedon, Club Kid, Gentle Monster and The Man I Love).
A select few other titles will arrive via the already-in-progress Venice Film Festival, including Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine, which boasts a formidable ensemble led by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell; Danny Boyle’s portrait of Rupert Murdoch’s first steps into media moguldom, Ink; Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard, which teams the Mara sisters, Kate and Rooney; and the documentary Everest: The Other Side from Free Solo Oscar winners Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi.
Telluride always welcomes a guest director, who this year will be actress Rebecca Hall, and always toasts a few artists with career tributes — this year’s recipients will be Malkovich, Hüller and the indie filmmaker Andrew Haigh, who is also debuting his latest film, A Long Winter, at the fest. The French actress Léa Seydoux is not receiving a tribute but is, in a sense, the MVP of this edition of the fest, with an unprecedented three films in the lineup: Gentle Monster, as well as Alpha Gang and The Unknown.
Julie Huntsinger, the fest director (who is celebrating her 20th year of working with the fest in one capacity or another), spoke with THR about this year’s lineup and honorees, as well as the condition of the recently flooded Palm Theatre, one of the fest’s marquee venues; the expected attendance of two Russian exile filmmakers; a 10th anniversary screening of Moonlight; and the current state of relations between the highly competitive fall film fests. A few excerpts of that conversation, lightly edited for clarity and brevity, appear below.
On this year’s world premieres at the fest…
“Mike Leigh’s film is terrific — I would be so proud if this was the film that I retired on, because it is up there with his absolute best. He will not be with us, sadly, because his health really is compromised. The Idiots is also a world premiere, and I love that movie. The Debut is fantastic — Jesse Eisenberg keeps getting better with every film. The Liberation, Guy Nattiv’s film, is exceptional, with another incredible Carrie Coon performance. Tenzing marks Jen Peedom moving from documentary into her scripted feature phase, with beautiful performances. What a revelation Andrew Scott is in Elsinore — he takes it to the next level and really gives a towering performance.”
On this year’s tributes…
“I kind of knew that we had to honor John Malkovich right after seeing Wild Horse Nine and Sandra Hüller after I’d seen Rose, then Fatherland, and then Project Hail Mary, which I love by the way — we’re going to show Project Hail Mary outside in the park on Wednesday night [for locals and fest workers] before everybody gets to town. I haven’t seen Digger, but I am sure that her performance will be fantastic in that too. And then Andrew [Haigh] is a superstar of emotion and delicate human interaction — and also this movie [A Long Winter] was shot in this area.”
On Léa Seydoux coming to the fest with three films…
“I said, ‘Let’s show all three of Léa’s movies because she’s so good in each of them. Each performance is so different, but they’re all brave. And you just can’t believe that that woman has any of this in her because she’s kind of quiet when you meet her in real life, but then she takes on these personalities! She’s really funny in Alpha Gang. I love her.”
On the expected attendance of two Russian exile filmmakers, Minotaur‘s Andrey Zvyagintsev and My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile‘s Julia Loktev, and political films generally…
“I personally think that Zvyagintsev is one of the greatest living filmmakers. And Julia Loktev is so perceptive and gifted — her films [the two parts of My Undesirable Friends] are so dense that I think you cannot do anything else but see them in theaters, because you cannot be distracted. [In addition to these films about Russia, we also have films that will provoke] conversations about AI and about what is happening in Minnesota. One of the films is by Sarah Gavron, and she’s talking about her grandmother and how she became exiled from Berlin in the ’30s. And another story of resilience is by a young filmmaker living in Berlin whose father was disappeared in Syria, and she tries desperately to locate him. I guess you could say that displacement is definitely a theme this year.”
On the Palm Theatre…
“Over the summer I had one little panicky, ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?!’ moment. But [the theater has been repaired]. Telluride had an EDM concert, like a teeny-tiny music festival, last Friday and Saturday nights, and some of it was in Town Park and then the other performances were in the Palm, and it went just fine. There’s no carpet in the lobby or in the aisles, so it will feel a little bit different. But for the most part, when it gets dark, nobody’s going to care. There will be comfortable seats and very good movies.”
On screening Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight again 10 years after its world premiere at the fest…
“Barry had been a festival family member for a long time — he had came up to our student program, then he worked in production, and he was a budding filmmaker. When we had 12 Years A Slave at the fest, I thought, ‘There’s no way I’m going to have anybody but somebody like Barry, a Black person, communicating with Steve [McQueen as the moderator at post-screening Q&As]. He had been doing some ringmastering for us — giving the introductions at the theater — so I knew he would do a great job with helping to contextualize the film, and he said yes. I didn’t tell until the last minute that Brad Pitt was coming. But they spent this time together and had the inevitable converation, ‘Oh, you’re a filmmaker? What are you working on?’ Barry had been working on Moonlight with Tarell [Alvin McCraney] for a while, and then Brad and Dede [Gardner] and Jeremy [Kleiner] got involved, and the rest was history. When we showed it 10 years ago, it was a dynamite electric experience. La La Land, of course, too. Both of them just caught on so beautifully. But Moonlight was extra special, with Barry being a family member. He’s still curating our shorts and he’ll present those, but he’s also going to present the 10-year anniversary of his movie.”
On whether or not Venice and Toronto — with which Telluride has had contentious dealings in recent years, often to do with attempts to block films that are screening at one fall film fest from screening at another — are playing nice with Telluride this year…
“No, they never will. I’m going to tell you that straight up. They don’t want to. A huge amount of their support comes from the government, and they, like Cannes, have an obligation to deliver for them. I have to deliver for you guys, the stakeholders and the audience and the community that I love with my whole heart, the people who come to Telluride. Those places have to make their sponsors happy and their government ministers happy, so the stakes, in a certain way, are higher for them, and they’re going to be a little more cutthroat about things. I would like for [all of our screenings] to be brand new [meaning premieres] — our requirement is, unofficially, North American or world premiere — but that’s only because we don’t announce our lineup in advance, and if you’re not going to announce, you’d better treat people [to a festival with a lineup of films that they haven’t already seen elsewhere].”
