The 52nd Telluride Film Festival is now in the books. Margot Robbie, Ryan Coogler, Oprah Winfrey, David Oyelowo, Rian Johnson, Janet Yang, Kathy Kennedy and Frank Marshall were among those who came just to watch movies. Screenings were introduced with a group meditation (Chloé Zhao), a song (Jesse Plemons) and a wave (man of few words Bruce Springsteen). Adam Sandler and Emma Stone posed for photos in the streets with ecstatic local schoolkids. And the Oscar race came into clearer focus.
Below, you can read my biggest awards-related takeaways from the fest.
Four high-profile films that already have U.S. distribution had their world premieres in Telluride: Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix), Bugonia (Focus), Hamnet (Focus) and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (20th Century). How did they go over?
Focus has plenty of cause for celebration, as both Bugonia and Hamnet played like gangbusters and look almost certain to land Oscar noms for best picture and plenty else.
Zhao’s Hamnet, an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel of the same name, which centers on the Shakespeare family and its tragic loss that allegedly inspired the play Hamlet, garnered rave reviews (it’s at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and 95 percent on Metacritic), including particularly strong notices for leading lady Jessie Buckley, who plays William’s wife Agnes. Some are already proclaiming it to be the best picture Oscar frontrunner. I certainly think it will be a big factor in the season. I would just caution that numerous Academy members quietly expressed to me their feeling that the film has tonal issues — some called it “trauma porn” — and that it has been so hyped by critics that other Academy members will inevitably feel disappointed when they catch up with it. We’ll see.
As for Bugonia, which reunites filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and actress/producer Stone in a dark comedy about people who “do their own research,” reactions have been nearly as enthusiastic. It played, for me, like a high-end Black Mirror episode — I mean that as a major compliment — and it also has been likened to a prior off-the-wall Lanthimos/Stone collab, Poor Things. Like that 2023 film, it could land multiple acting noms (Stone and Plemons are great), if less recognition for below-the-line work.
Scott Cooper’s Springsteen, meanwhile, is not what a lot of people expected it to be — a jukebox musical in the vein of Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman or Elvis — but rather an examination of the causes and effects of a deep depression that engulfed The Boss (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) in the early 1980s and resulted in his iconoclastic 1982 album Nebraska. It remains to be seen if/how that will impact the film’s box office appeal, but reviews have been solid, and White and Jeremy Strong, who plays Springsteen’s manager, stand a real shot at lead and supporting actor Oscar noms, respectively.
Then there’s Edward Berger’s Ballad of a Small Player, which comes a year after Conclave and three years after All Quiet on the Western Front, Berger films that were of a large scale and about matters of social import (and landed a bunch of Oscar noms, including best picture). Ballad is neither of those things — it’s about a gambling addict in present-day Macao who grows increasingly desperate as his luck runs out — and the no-holds-barred performance of its lead actor, Colin Farrell, is its best bet for a nom.
Of films that came directly from world premiering in Venice to make their North American debut in the Rockies, did anything pop?
Yes, La Grazia (Mubi) and Jay Kelly (Netflix). And it was striking to me how differently people reacted to those two films in Telluride versus in Venice.
Ironically, La Grazia, the Italian film that opened both fests, was far better received in America. The seventh collab between filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino and actor Toni Servillo, it centers on an Italian president during the last six months of his term. (Maybe Americans were just happy to be reminded that dignified leaders still exist?) I suspect that Italy will eventually submit it for the best international feature Oscar, as it previously did two other Sorrentino films, 2013’s The Great Beauty (which won) and 2022’s The Hand of God, and also that Servillo could make a run at a long-overdue first Oscar nom.
A similar thing happened with Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, a film about a movie star (George Clooney) who experiences an existential crisis that forces him and his “team” to question their life choices. It was written off on the Lido, but rebounded in a major way — along with its Rotten Tomatoes score — in Telluride, where Baumbach was fêted with a career tribute, Billy Crudup’s big scene received mid-movie applause at each screening, Adam Sandler cemented his status as a frontrunner for the best supporting actor Oscar, and Clooney, who was absent due to illness, was talked up by his collaborators. I think the film is tailor-made for the Academy.
The reverse sort of happened with Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, which played through the roof in Venice — it got a 14-minute standing ovation — and then came to Telluride as a surprise late-night screening, and engendered a more muted response. It’s certainly well made, with a knockout score by the great Alexandre Desplat that the Academy’s music branch will surely nominate. But, even given how much people love del Toro, I think that the film’s bloated story and runtime (two-and-a-half hours, versus 70 minutes for the 1931 original) will make it hard for it to crack the top Oscar categories.
What about films from earlier fests, including Sundance, Berlin and Cannes?
In Telluride, as far as I could discern, only one film accumulated as many hardcore fans as Hamnet, and that was the Norwegian dramedy Sentimental Value (Neon), which reunites Oscar nominee The Worst Person in the World’s filmmaker Joachim Trier and actress Renate Reinsve, and which won Cannes’ Grand Prix (second-place award). Festival attendees ate it up, to the extent that I think it deserves to be grouped with Coogler’s Sinners (Warner Bros.) and Hamnet in the top tier of best picture contenders.
Like Jay Kelly, Sentimental Value is about a filmmaker who neglected his family in order to focus on his career — a character played by the veteran Swedish thespian Stellan Skarsgård, who will probably duke it out with Sandler for the best supporting actor Oscar. Unlike Jay Kelly, Sentimental Value also devotes a significant amount of attention to the filmmaker’s children, played by Reinsve (who I see as neck and neck with Buckley for best actress at the moment) and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas. Elle Fanning also stars.
Neon also had two other films — both political thrillers — that were celebrated at Cannes and then proved popular in Telluride, as well.
Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, which underscores how the brutality of Iran’s current regime haunts the republic’s citizens, won Cannes’ Palme d’Or over Sentimental Value, and was widely admired here as well. (Panahi, visiting the U.S. for the first time in nearly 20 years, enlisted the audience at one screening to join him in recording a video singing “Happy Birthday” to his script consultant, Mehdi Mahmoudian, who is currently incarcerated in Iran, as Panahi himself was until recently.) Obviously, Iran will not submit It Was Just an Accident for the best international feature Oscar, but France, from which the film drew much of its financing, might. More on that in a moment.
People also couldn’t stop raving about Wagner Moura, the Brazilian best known for TV’s Narcos, who was awarded Cannes’ best actor prize for his tour-de-force turn in Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent. Moura should not be underestimated in the best actor Oscar race, and Brazil, which won best international feature last year with I’m Still Here, might well make another run for it with this smart and funny epic.
The film that is probably an even bet with It Was Just an Accident to be the French entry is Nouvelle Vague (Netflix), Richard Linklater’s black-and-white homage to the French New Wave. Cineastes loved it in Cannes — I was shocked that it wasn’t awarded a single prize there — and again in Telluride, ahead of which I discussed it with Linklater.
Other titles that came to Telluride and held their own, even if they didn’t set the world on fire, were, via Cannes, The History of Sound (A24), The Mastermind (Mubi), A Private Life (Sony Classics), Pillion (A24) and Urchin (1-2 Special); via Berlin, Blue Moon (Sony Classics); and via Sundance, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (A24).
What about the sales titles?
THR exclusively broke the news of the two deals that have come out of the fest thus far: Netflix bought Oscar nominee Joshua Seftel’s All the Empty Rooms, a powerful doc short about an effort to memorialize children killed in school shootings; and Amazon/MGM nabbed Oscar winner Morgan Neville’s energizing doc feature about Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles life, Man on the Run.
Of the films that are still on the table, I’ve heard a lot of enthusiasm for Tuner, the narrative directorial debut of Navalny Oscar winner Daniel Roher, which stars Leo Woodall and Dustin Hoffman; one Academy member even likened it to Whiplash. Hamlet, Aneil Karia‘s reimagining of the Shakespeare play in present-day London, is all about Riz Ahmed’s compelling performance as the title character, and will probably find a buyer. And Philippa Lowthorpe’s H Is for Hawk features a committed turn by the great Claire Foy as a falconer, but is way too long at 130 minutes; I suspect that any potential partner will insist on tightening it up.
Among the distributorless documentaries that played at the fest, the most talked about was surely Ivy Meeropol’s Ask E. Jean, a portrait of the former advice columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused President Donald Trump of sexual assault and twice won legal judgments against him — but is any potential distributor willing to risk the wrath of Trump? I hope and suspect so.
Mark Obenhaus and Citizenfour Oscar winner Laura Poitras’ Cover-Up profiles another muckraker, Seymour Hersh, and won a lot of admirers both in Venice, where it debuted, and in Telluride. I heard a lot of chatter about The White Helmets Oscar winner Orlando von Einsiedel’s tearjerker The Cycle of Love. And if the turnout of doc branch Academy members at screenings of Robb Moss’ The Bend in the River is any indication, it, too, will soon find a home.
The bottom line
Much of the awards-industrial complex, including yours truly, has just returned home from Telluride, and is laying low today and tomorrow before decamping to Canada for the 50th Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday. There, many titles that played in Telluride will resurface. A few that debuted in Venice but then skipped Telluride will have their North American premieres, including The Smashing Machine (A24) and The Testament of Ann Lee (still seeking U.S. distribution). And most excitingly, the Canadians will host the world premieres of a bunch of potential awards contenders, including Rental Family (Searchlight), The Lost Bus (Apple), Hedda (Amazon/MGM), Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix), Roofman (Paramount) and Christy (still seeking U.S. distribution).
There are 194 days, or six months and 13 days, between now and the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday, March 15, 2026. A lot can still happen. Stay tuned.
