Heading into its 50th edition muted but unbowed, Telluride Film Festival reveals lineup

Telluride Film Festival director Julie Huntsinger was sitting in her office a few weeks ago thinking that this year’s program was going to be a repeat of the pandemic year, thanks to the ongoing actors’ and writers’ strikes.

But talking about the lineup for the 50th edition of the festival, beloved by movie lovers for its meticulously curated lineup that blends future best picture Oscar winners (“Argo,” “Moonlight” and “The Shape of Water”) with the best of international and independent cinema, Huntsinger boasts — with gratitude — that she didn’t lose a single film.

“As I said to a couple of filmmakers, we just keep making lemonade,” Huntsinger told me over the phone earlier this week.

This year’s festival, which begins Thursday, includes new movies from Oscar-winning filmmakers Alexander Payne (the wry, Christmas-set “The Holdovers,” which reunites him with “Sideways” star Paul Giamatti), Emerald Fennell (the dark comedy “Saltburn,” her follow-up to “Promising Young Woman”) and Steve McQueen (“Occupied City,” a four-and-a-half-hour documentary about Amsterdam that focuses on the city’s German occupation during World War II).

World premieres include “Rustin,” a biopic of gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin starring Colman Domingo, the sports drama “Nyad” with Annette Bening portraying the controversial long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad and “All of Us Strangers,” the latest from British filmmaker Andrew Haigh (“45 Years”) in which a middle-age man comes out to his parents — who just happen to be ghosts.

Colman Domingo as the activist Bayard Rustin in the movie “Rustin.”

(David Lee / Netflix)

The festival will present tributes to filmmakers Yorgos Lanthimos, Wim Wenders and Alice Rohrwacher, all of whom have movies at Telluride. Lanthimos’ latest, the surrealistic “Poor Things,” stars Emma Stone, an Oscar nominee from his last movie, “The Favourite.” Wenders has two films at the festival, a documentary, “Anselm,” about German artist Anselm Kiefer, and the beguiling drama “Perfect Days,” which earned strong reviews when it screened earlier this year at Cannes. Rohrwacher’s “La Chimera” also premiered at Cannes, an exquisite drama starring Josh O’Connor.

The all-director tribute lineup reflects one reality of the strikes that Telluride could not escape. Typically, the festival mixes in high-profile honors to actors — last year saw a Cate Blanchett celebration for her performance in “Tár.” This year, Bening had been in the mix for her turn in “Nyad” until the SAG-AFTRA strike scuttled such thoughts.

“It’s fun for the audience to have glimmering stars and their tributes, but given what’s going on, it felt good to go a little old-school,” Huntsinger says, adding that she was surprised that the festival had never feted Wenders. “You know, not a bad year to rectify that. And I think both of his films are remarkable. I love them.”

Huntsinger also expressed enthusiasm — and if you know her, you know the passion for filmmakers almost vibrates from her core — for Rohrwacher. “She kind of doesn’t seem real,” Huntsinger says. “She’s the earthiest ... smart, gentle, beautiful.” And Lanthimos? “I just don’t see how he ever doesn’t create something that’s mind-blowing.”

She reserves a special spot for Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves,” a bittersweet, reflective tale laced with deadpan humor.

“Even when you think of the title and what a fallen leaf is and how we’re all approaching fallen leaf-hood — that even a fallen leaf is beautiful,” Huntsinger says. “You can lose a little bit of color and vividness and still be a vibrant creature.”

A scene from Aki Kaurismäki’s “Fallen Leaves.”

(Cannes Film Festival)

Huntsinger’s wistful thoughts lead into the dedication of this year’s festival to the group of friends who founded the event a half-century ago: prominent archivist, producer and programmer Tom Luddy, Stella and Bill Pence, and film historian James Card. Luddy had been working through Parkinson’s the last six years, a disease that took his life in February. (Bill Pence died in December.)

Huntsinger, who has been Telluride’s director since 2007, met Luddy at Francis Ford Coppola’s company American Zoetrope in 1993. Their connection was immediate.

“Tom had this preternatural equanimity,” Huntsinger says. “He wanted everyone to love cinema as much as he did. And for that love to be contagious, he knew he had to talk about it in a certain way — which was his natural way. He could make people enthusiastic for really academic cinema and movies from bygone eras. And they’d always say, ‘How have we never seen that? That’s so fantastic.’ It was just a combination of good taste, kindness and charisma.... We miss them.”

Huntsinger says this year’s program sports several Easter eggs for people who knew and loved Pence and Luddy, mentioning the special medallion being given to Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation. (Iranian filmmaker Bahram Beyzaie’s “Downpour” which Film Foundation restored, was one of Luddy’s favorite movies.)

From left, Dominic Sessa, Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in the movie “The Holdovers.”

(Seacia Pavao / Focus Features)

Don’t know “Downpour”? Those kinds of discoveries are what makes Telluride something of a religious experience for longtime attendees. But the festival, held in a remote former mining town in a beautiful box canyon in the Colorado mountains, also can be prohibitively expensive to attend and all that talk of “cinema” can be a little off-putting to the unconverted.

“I do know there’s this preconception that the festival is a little more of a film nerd thing,” Huntsinger says. “But then I think: Some of the film nerds who adore Telluride are some really f— cool people.”

Huntsinger mentions Ethan Hawke, who is bringing his latest directorial effort, “Wildcat,” a drama about author Flannery O’Connor laboring to finish her first novel, to Telluride. He’s also serving as a guest director and will be presenting a screening of Bob Fosse’s “All That Jazz.”

“He legitimately loves movies and talks about them in a way that never feels like he’s putting on airs,” Huntsinger says. “And when you have someone like Ethan talking about this sexy, cool film like ‘All That Jazz,’ that’s how you keep the festival going. That’s how you keep it accessible.”

“You can hear people talk about Telluride, but until you’ve been here, it still doesn’t all the way make sense,” Huntsinger continues. “You get here and you go, ‘I get it. They really are just wearing jeans.’ We do sometimes have that rap of ‘ooh, the cinephiles festival.’ Well, let’s redefine what a cinephile is. Because there are a lot of fun, exciting, even sexy people who are cinephiles.”