The 2024 Telluride lineup goes hard on musicals and political documentaries
Major premieres include Jason Reitman's Saturday Night, August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson, and Colson Whitehead adaptation Nickel Boys
It’s an election year, which means everyone and everything is focused on politics—even the season’s major festivals (in the U.S., at least). Colorado’s Telluride Film Festival just unveiled its 2024 lineup, and it has as much of an eye toward the White House as anything else this time of year.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hillary Clinton herself will be in attendance to promote Zurawski V Texas, a documentary she produced with Jennifer Lawrence about the fight for safe abortion and reproductive justice. (Amanda Zurawski, the subject of the documentary, just spoke at the DNC about her experience being refused life-saving care.) Matt Tyrnauer will also premiere his documentary Carville: Winning Is Everything Stupid!, which follows major Democratic consultant James Carville. Other timely films include Errol Morris’ Separated, which investigates Trump’s family-separation policy at the border, No Other Land, a joint project between a Palestinian activist and an Israeli journalist, Petra Costa’s Apocalypse In The Tropics, about the impact of evangelical Christians on Brazilian politics, and The White House Effect, a multi-decade investigation into climate change policy.
Most PopularMusicals are also getting a spotlight this year. The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey is premiering Better Man, a biopic about British star Robbie Williams. Neon is also joining the chorus with The End, a wild-sounding musical starring Tilda Swinton and Michael Shannon about, according to Deadline, a “wealthy family surviving the end of the world in an underground bunker.” Pharrell Williams’ Lego-themed autobiography Piece By Piece will also premiere, in addition to a documentary-biopic hybrid, The Easy Kind, about country music podcaster and singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cook. Jacques Audiard’s Selena Gomez-led musical crime comedy, Emilia Pérez, will also have its North American debut at the festival. It originally premiered at Cannes earlier this year.
Other major premieres include Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, Malcolm Washington’s (Denzel’s son) The Piano Lesson, adapted from the original August Wilson play, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel, Nickel Boys, and more.
Related ContentTelluride will run from this Friday, August 30, through Monday, September 2. Check out the full lineup below:
FEATURE FILM & EPISODIC WORKS
ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (d. Payal Kapadia, France-India-Netherlands-Luxembourg, 2024)
ANORA (d. Sean Baker, U.S., 2024)
APOCALYPSE IN THE TROPICS (d. Petra Costa, Brazil-U.S.-Denmark, 2024)
BETTER MAN (d. Michael Gracey, Australia, 2024)
BIRD (d. Andrea Arnold, U.K., 2024)
BLINK (d. Daniel Roher, Edmund Stenson, U.S.-Canada, 2024)
CARVILLE: WINNING IS EVERYTHING, STUPID! (d. Matt Tyrnauer, U.S., 2024)
CONCLAVE (d. Edward Berger, U.K., 2024)
DISCLAIMER (d. Alfonso Cuarón, U.K.-U.S., 2024)
DON’T LET’S GO TO THE DOGS TONIGHT (d. Embeth Davidtz, South Africa, 2024)
EMILIA PÉREZ (d. Jacques Audiard, France, 2024)
IN WAVES AND WAR (d. Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, U.S., 2024)
JEAN COCTEAU (d. Lisa Immordino Vreeland, U.S., 2024)
LEONARDO DA VINCI (d. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon, U.S., 2024)
MARIA (d. Pablo LarraÃn, Germany-Italy-U.S.-Hungary-France-Greece, 2024)
MARTHA (d. R.J. Cutler, U.S., 2024)
MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (d. Adam Elliot, Australia, 2024)
MISERICORDIA (d. Alain Guiraudie, France-Spain-Portugal, 2024)
NICKEL BOYS (d. RaMell Ross, U.S., 2024)
NO OTHER LAND (d. Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor, Palestine-Norway, 2024)
ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO (d. Kevin Macdonald, U.K., 2024)
PIECE BY PIECE (d. Morgan Neville, U.S., 2024)
SANTOSH (d. Sandhya Suri, U.K.-Germany-France, 2024)
SATURDAY NIGHT (d. Jason Reitman, U.S., 2024)
SEPARATED (d. Errol Morris, U.S., 2024)
SEPTEMBER 5 (d. Tim Fehlbaum, Germany, 2024)
SOCIAL STUDIES (d. Lauren Greenfield, U.S., 2024)
THE END (d. Joshua Oppenheimer, Ireland-Germany-Italy-Sweden-Denmark-U.K., 2024)
THE FRIEND (d. David Siegel, Scott McGehee, U.S., 2024)
THE OUTRUN (d. Nora Fingscheidt, U.K.-Germany, 2024)
THE PIANO LESSON (d. Malcolm Washington, U.S., 2024)
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (d. Mohammad Rasoulof, Germany-France-Iran, 2024)
THE WHITE HOUSE EFFECT (d. Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos, U.S., 2024)
WILL & HARPER (d. Josh Greenbaum, U.S., 2024)
ZURAWSKI V TEXAS (d. Maisie Crow, Abbie Perrault, U.S., 2024)
SHORT FILM IN MAIN PROGRAM
A SWIM LESSON (d. Rashida Jones, Will McCormack, U.S., 2024)
ALOK (d. Alex Hedison, U.S., 2024)
THE TURNAROUND (d. Kyle Thrash, Ben Proudfoot, U.S., 2024)
Kenneth Lonergan, this year’s festival Guest Director, presents the following film selections:
ARCH OF TRIUMPH (d. Lewis Milestone, U.S., 1948)
BARRY LYNDON (d. Stanley Kubrick, U.K.-U.S., 1975)
DOCTOR ZHIVAGO (d. David Lean, U.K.-Italy-U.S., 1965)
GRAND HOTEL (d. Edmund Goulding, U.S., 1932)
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (d. John Ford, U.S., 1946)
BACKLOT
A SUDDEN GLIMPSE TO DEEPER THINGS (d. Mark Cousins, U.K., 2024)
¡CASA BONITA MI AMOR! (d. Arthur Bradford, U.S., 2024)
CHAIN REACTIONS (d. Alexandre O. Philippe, U.S., 2024)
HER NAME WAS MOVIOLA (d. Howard Berry, U.K., 2024)
MADE IN ENGLAND: THE FILMS OF POWELL AND PRESSBURGER (d. David Hinton, U.K., 2024)
NOBU (d. Matt Tyrnauer, U.S., 2024)
RIEFENSTAHL (d. Andres Veiel, Germany, 2024)
THE EASY KIND (d. Katy Chevigny, U.S., 2024)
THE HEXAGONAL HIVE AND A MOUSE IN A MAZE (d. Tilda Swinton, Bartek Dziadosz, U.K., 2024)
THE SWALLOW (d. Tadhg O’Sullivan, Ireland, 2024)
More from A.V. Club