The Telluride Film Festival may not have the glitz of Cannes, the glamour of Toronto, or the hipster quotient of Sundance, but that never stopped it from being one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world—not to mention the start of the six-month period known in the industry as film awards season.
Every year during Labor Day Weekend, Telluride, Colorado becomes the center of the cinematic universe, as producers, directors, A–list stars, critics, journalists and movie lovers descend upon the sleepy town for the four-day extravaganza. And every year brings an embarrassment of riches, as one movie after another turns into an Oscar contender that everyone will be talking about until the end of February. At least Telluride earns its bragging rights; nine out of the last 10 Oscar winners for Best Picture have screened there, including “12 Years a Slave,” “Spotlight,” “Moonlight,” and most recently, “The Shape of Water.”
Making the biggest impact performance-wise at this year’s fest was Focus Features’ “Boy Erased,” the second film directed by actor-turned-director Joel Edgerton and starring “Manchester by the Sea” Oscar nominee Lucas Hedges as a gay adolescent sent to conversion therapy by his devout parents, played by Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. Kidman, who made her first-ever trip to Telluride, was also on hand for Karyn Kusama’s gritty revenge thriller from Annapurna Pictures, “Destroyer,” in which she disappeared into the role of a police detective haunted by her past.
The 45th annual festival officially kicked off Aug. 31 and concluded Sept. 3, with a first-ever partnership announced with both the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the SAG-AFTRA Foundation. The fest screened a lineup of 60 feature films and shorts from 22 total countries, and included premieres such as Fox Searchlight Pictures’ “The Old Man & the Gun” starring Robert Redford as a career bank robber who doesn’t know when to quit, in what’s being billed as his last-ever acting role. During the post-screening Q&A, Redford stated that “my time had come” and he “couldn’t think of a better project to go out on.”
Also making their Telluride debuts were Columbia Pictures’ “The Front Runner,” starring Hugh Jackman as disgraced 1988 presidential hopeful Gary Hart, and Fox Searchlight’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” in which Melissa McCarthy embraces her dramatic side as a one-time bestselling author who falls on hard times in 1980s New York City.
And although they premiered just days beforehand at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, Universal Pictures’ “First Man,” director Damien Chazelle’s intense and visceral follow-up to “La La Land,” splashed down stateside, taking Ryan Gosling to even greater heights as Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong. Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón was awarded with the first of the festival’s Silver Medallion Awards—presented to artists in recognition for their significant contributions to the world of cinema—which was followed by the North American debut of “Roma,” his black-and-white autobiographical Netflix film about a diligent maid tending to a troubled family in Mexico City during the early 1970s.
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And two years after “La La Land” made its American debut at the 43rd Telluride Film Festival, Oscar winner Emma Stone was presented with the festival’s second Silver Medallion Award, followed by the U.S. premiere of Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest film from Fox Searchlight, “The Favourite,” in which she plays a conniving servant to Olivia Colman’s Queen Anne in 18th-century England. The third Silver Medallion was presented to Cambodian documentarian Rithy Panh, who was also on hand to screen his latest film about the Cambodian genocide, “Graves Without a Name.”
For more on film festivals and the upcoming film awards season frenzy, keep checking in at www.backstage.com/awards-season.
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