Telluride Film Festival Slate Includes The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, Downsizing, Lady Bird

The 44th Telluride Film Festival has announced its lineup, and in its tradition just a single day before the actual festival starts. Among the shortest festivals in the country, it will only run from September 1-4 but in those five days will pack in more awards season contenders than a two week festival.

The Shape of Water and Downsizing, both of which just debuted at the Venice Film Festival to mostly good to great reviews, will also hit Telluride. Best Actress hopefuls Annette Bening and Daniela Vega will show off Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool and A Fantastic Woman, respectively. Greta Gerwig will offer her directing debut, Lady Bird, starring Saoirse Ronan.

The festival’s Silver Medallion Awards will honor Christian Bale (Scott Cooper’s Hostiles) and Todd Haynes’ Wonderstruck cinematographer Ed Lachman.

The Telluride Film Festival has become the fest to for future Best Picture Oscar winners. From last year’s Moonlight to most of the last decade, you’ll likely find your winner in this lineup. At the moment, four films on the list are on the Gold Rush Gang’s Best Picture list: Darkest Hour, Downsizing, The Shape of Water and Wonderstruck.

• ARTHUR MILLER: WRITER (d. Rebecca Miller, U.S., 2017)
• BATTLE OF THE SEXES (d. Valerie Faris, Jonathan Dayton, U.S., 2017)
• DARKEST HOUR (d. Joe Wright, U.K., 2017)
• DOWNSIZING (d. Alexander Payne, U.S., 2017)
• EATING ANIMALS (d. Christopher Quinn, U.S., 2017)
• FACES PLACES (d. Agnes Varda, JR, France, 2017)
• A FANTASTIC WOMAN (d. Sebastián Lelio, Chile-U.S.-Germany-Spain, 2017)
• FILM STARS DON’T DIE IN LIVERPOOL (d. Paul McGuigan, U.K., 2017)
• FIRST REFORMED (d. Paul Schrader, U.S., 2017)
• FIRST THEY KILLED MY FATHER (d. Angelina Jolie, U.S.-Cambodia, 2017)
• FOXTROT (d. Samuel Maoz, Israel, 2017)
• HOSTAGES (d. Rezo Gigineishvili, Georgia-Russia-Poland, 2017)
• HOSTILES (d. Scott Cooper, U.S., 2017)
• HUMAN FLOW (d. Ai Weiwei, U.S.-Germany, 2017)
• THE INSULT (d. Ziad Doueiri, France-Lebanon, 2017)
• LADY BIRD (d. Greta Gerwig, U.S., 2017)
• LAND OF THE FREE (d. Camilla Magid, Denmark-Finland, 2017)
• LEAN ON PETE (d. Andrew Haigh, U.K.-U.S., 2017)
• LOVELESS (d. Andrey Zvyagintsev, Russia-France-Belgium-Germany, 2017)
• LOVE, CECIL (d. Lisa Immordino Vreeland, U.S., 2017)
• LOVING VINCENT (d. Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, U.K.-Poland, 2017)
• A MAN OF INTEGRITY (d. Mohammad Rasoulof, Iran, 2017)
• THE OTHER SIDE OF HOPE (d. Aki Kaurismäki, Finland, 2017)
• THE RIDER (d. Chloé Zhao, U.S., 2017)
• THE SHAPE OF WATER (d. Guillermo del Toro, U.S., 2017)
• TESNOTA (d. Kantemir Balagov, Russia, 2017)
• THE VENERABLE W. (d. Barbet Schroeder, France-Switzerland, 2017)
• THE VIETNAM WAR (d. Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, U.S., 2017)
• WORMWOOD (d. Errol Morris, U.S., 2017)
• WONDERSTRUCK (d. Todd Haynes, U.S., 2017)

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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