The 2018 Telluride Film Festival will feature the world premieres of Joel Edgerton’s “Boy Erased,” starring Lucas Hedges and Nicole Kidman; David Lowery’s “The Old Man & the Gun,” featuring a performance that Robert Redford said will be his last; and Yann Demange’s “White Boy Rick,” with Matthew McConaughey and Bruce Dern.
On Thursday, Telluride organizers announced a lineup that includes those films, as well as a number of others that are premiering at the Venice Film Festival, including Damien Chazelle’s “First Man,” Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite.”
Other films at the festival will include Jason Reitman’s drama about presidential candidate Gary Hart, “The Front Runner”; Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” with Melissa McCarthy; Karyn Kusama’s “Destroyer,” with Kidman; Mike Leigh’s period drama “Peterloo”; and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or winner, “Shoplifters.”
Tributes will be presented to Cuaron in connection with a screening of “Roma,” to actress Emma Stone with “The Favourite,” and to Cambodian director Rithy Panh with “Graves Without a Name.”
Telluride’s Special Medallion Award will go to German film critic, researcher and Berlin Film Festival director Dieter Kosslick.
Guest director Jonathan Lethem will also present a selection of revival screenings, including Ernst Lubitsch’s “Angel” and “To Be or Not To Be,” Carroll Ballard’s “Never Cry Wolf” and Douglas Sirk’s “The Tarnished Angels.”
Unlike the other major fall festivals that kick off awards season, Venice and Toronto, Telluride doesn’t announce its lineup ahead of time. Instead, it sells tickets on faith and waits until the day before the festival begins to reveal the lineup.
But nobody who was paying attention to the Toronto lineup, which marks its Telluride-bound films as “Canadian premieres,” would be surprised by the slate of films headed to the Colorado mountain town.
And nobody would be surprised if a number of Telluride films end up in this year’s awards conversation. The last eight Best Picture winners have screened at Telluride, with last year’s lineup including three of the nine eventual Best Picture nominees – “Darkest Hour,” “Lady Bird” and the eventual winner, “The Shape of Water” – along with one Oscar doc nominee, “Faces Places,” and two foreign-language nominees, “Loveless” and the winning “A Fantastic Woman.”
The festival begins on Friday, Aug. 31 and runs through Monday, Sept. 3, with the premieres and tributes taking place on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
The lineup:
ANGELS ARE MADE OF LIGHT (d. James Longley, U.S.-Denmark-Norway, 2018)
BE NATURAL: THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ (d. Pamela E. Green, U.S., 2018)
BIRDS OF PASSAGE (d. Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, Colombia-Denmark-Mexico, 2018)
BORDER (d. Ali Abbasi, Sweden, 2018)
BOY ERASED (d. Joel Edgerton, U.S., 2018)
CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (d. Marielle Heller, U.S., 2018)
COLD WAR (d. Pawel Pawlikowski, Poland-France-U.K., 2018)
DESTROYER (d. Karyn Kusama, U.S., 2018)
DOGMAN (d. Matteo Garrone, Italy-France, 2018)
DOVLATOV (d. Aleksei German, Russia-Poland-Serbia, 2018)
FIRST MAN (d. Damien Chazelle, U.S., 2018)
FISTFUL OF DIRT (d. Sebastián Silva, U.S., 2018)
FREE SOLO (d. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, U.S., 2018)
GHOST FLEET (d. Shannon Service and Jeffrey Waldron, U.S., 2018)
GIRL (d. Lukas Dhont, Belgium-Netherlands, 2018)
GRAVES WITHOUT A NAME (d. Rithy Panh, France-Cambodia, 2018)
MEETING GORBACHEV (d. Werner Herzog and André Singer, U.K.-U.S.-Germany, 2018)
NON FICTION (d. Olivier Assayas, France, 2018)
PETERLOO (d. Mike Leigh, U.K., 2018)
REVERSING ROE (d. Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, U.S., 2018)
ROMA (d. Alfonso Cuarón, U.S.-Mexico, 2018)
SHOPLIFTERS (d. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2018)
THE BIGGEST LITTLE FARM (d. John Chester, U.S., 2018)
THE FAVOURITE (d. Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland-U.K.-U.S., 2018)
THE FRONT RUNNER (d. Jason Reitman, U.S., 2018)
THE GREAT BUSTER (d. Peter Bogdanovich, U.S., 2018)
THE OLD MAN & THE GUN (d. David Lowery, U.S., 2018)
THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND (d. Orson Welles, U.S., 1976/2018)
THE WHITE CROW (d. Ralph Fiennes, U.K., 2018)
THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD (d. Morgan Neville, U.S., 2018)
TRIAL BY FIRE (d. Ed Zwick, U.S., 2018)
WATERGATE – OR, HOW WE LEARNED TO STOP AN OUT-OF-CONTROL PRESIDENT (d. Charles Ferguson, U.S., 2018)
WHITE BOY RICK (d. Yann Demange, U.S., 2018)
Guest director Jonathan Lethem’s picks:
ANGEL (d. Ernst Lubitsch, U.S., 1937)
BIGGER THAN LIFE (d. Nicholas Ray, U.S., 1956)
NEVER CRY WOLF (d. Carroll Ballard, U.S., 1983)
THE TARNISHED ANGELS (d. Douglas Sirk, U.S., 1957)
THE WHITE MEADOWS (d. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2009)
TO BE OR NOT TO BE (d. Ernst Lubitsch, U.S., 1942)
Additional revival programs:
CHRISTIAN WAHNSCHAFFE, PARTS I & II (d. Urban Gad, Germany, 1920 – 1921)
FIEÈ̀VRE (d. Louis Delluc, France, 1921)
COEUR FID È̀̀LE (d. Louis Delluc, France, 1923)
REMOUS (d. Edmond T. Gréville, France, 1934)
Backlot program:
A FINAL CUT FOR ORSON: 40 YEARS IN THE MAKING (d. Ryan Suffern, U.S., 2018) + THE EYES OF ORSON WELLES (d. Mark Cousins, U.K., 2018)
HAL (d. Amy Scott, U.S., 2018)
HUGH HEFNER’S AFTER DARK: SPEAKING OUT IN AMERICA (d. Brigitte Berman, Canada, 2018)
IT MUST SCHWING! THE BLUE NOTE STORY (d. Eric Friedler, Germany, 2018)
THE GHOST OF PETER SELLERS (d. Peter Medak, U.K.-Cyprus, 2018)
WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL (d. Rob Garver, U.S., 2018)