The Telluride Film Festival took over the eponymous town in the Colorado Rockies for three days over the U.S.’ Labor Day weekend – this year, from Friday, September 4, to Sunday, September 6.
No prizes are awarded and attendance is mostly by invitation, but the compact, jam-packed festival has a very important role in the yearly gold rush that occupies Fall and Winter in Hollywood: it highlights titles and covers them with a special glow, either reinforcing prestige acquired in other venues or introducing them in the fray. Telluride’s magic touch has yielded golden results to films as diverse as Argo, Slumdog Millionaire, Birdman and Brazil’s Central Station.
This year, the selection included Cannes favorites Carol – directed by Todd Haynes and starring Cate Blanchett and Palm D’Or winner Rooney Mara – and Hungary’s Son of Saul, directed by multi-award winner László Nemes. A cluster of Venice and Toronto selections also climbed the Rockies this year, including Telluride veteran Danny Boyle with his Steve Jobs, starring Michael Fassbender as the tech tycoon; Scott Cooper with the crime drama Black Mass, with an unrecognizable Johnny Depp as über gangster Whithey Bulger; Cary Fukunaga and the Netflix acquisition Beasts of No Nation, starring Idris Elba as an African tyrant; and Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, brought Michael Keaton to Telluride once again.
Other interesting Telluride offerings were Sara Gavron’s Suffragette, with veritable A-list overload – Carey Mulligan, Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep –, Frank’s Lenny Abrahamsson’s Room, starring Brie Larson, and Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson’s stop-motion saga Anomalisa.
In spite of the usual anxiety over which titles would be touched by Telluride’s magic, festival co-director Julie Hutsinger wanted to make sure the event stayed within its own tracks as a salute to creative filmmaking. “The awards thing will do what it does.” Hutsinger told Indiewire. “We never discourage anything around it. But the best conversations in the restaurants are by people talking about movies.”
Ana Maria Bahiana The 42nd Telluride Film Festival Program
Steve Jobs (Directed by Danny Boyle)

Carol (Directed by Todd Haynes)

Ixcanul (Directed by Jayro Bustamante)

Bitter Lake (Directed by Adam Curtis)

Beasts of No Nation (Directed by Cary Fukunaga)

Anomalisa (Directed by Charlie Kauffman and Duke Johnson)

Room (Directed by Lenny Abrahamsson)

Black Mass (Directed by Scott Cooper)

Spotlight (Directed by Tom McCarthy)

Suffragette (Directed by Sara Gavron)

Retour de Flame (Curated by Serge Bromberg)

Rams (Directed by Grimur Hakonarson)

Viva (Directed by Paddy Breathnach)

Mom and Me (Directed by Ken Wardrop)

Taj Mahal (Directed by Nicolas Saada)

Sit + Cinema (Directed by Eddie Cahyono)

45 Years (Directed by Andrew Haigh)

Heart of a Dog (Directed by Laurie Anderson)

Restoring Napoleon (Presented by Georges Mourier)

Son of Saul (Directed by Lazlo Nemes)

Only the Dead See the End of War (Directed by Michael Ware and Bill Guttentag)

L’Inhumaine (Presented by Serge Bromberg)

Taxi (Directed by Jafar Panahi)

Hitchcock/Truffaut (Directed by Kent Jones)

Marguerite (Directed by Xavier Giannoli)

Time to Choose (Directed by Charles Ferguson)

Tikkun (Directed by Avishai Sivan)

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (Directed by Evgeny Afineevsky)