The Telluride Film Festival is set to begin on Wednesday, which is also when its entire 30-film lineup will be revealed. TIFF has become a major launching pad for Oscar contenders — 13 of the last 14 Best Picture winners have played there (“Green Book” being the sole exception).
The 29 films below are part of my final predictions for what the 2021 lineup will look like. I am confident that 99% of these titles will at “the big show.” Over the last few months I’ve relentlessly tried to gather up as much intel as I could to come up with these confident predictions. Why 29 films instead of 30? I’ll explain below.
The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion)
The Card Counter (Paul Schrader)
C'mon, C'mon (Mike Mills)
Spencer (Pablo Larrain)
The Hand of God (Paola Sorrentino)
Cyrano (Joe Wright)
King Richard (Marcus Reinald Green)
The Lost Daughter (Maggie Gyllenhaal)
The Electrical Life of Louis Wain (Will Sharpe)
Encounter (Michael Pearce)
The Rescue (Chin and Vasarhelyi)
Julia (Cohen and West)
Hallelujah-Leonard Cohen (Geller and Goldfine)
Muhammad Ali (Ken Burns)
Becoming Cousteau (Liz Garbus)
The French Dispatch (Wes Anderson)
A Hero (Asghar Farhadi)
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes)
Red Rocket (Sean Baker)
Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Love)
Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko)
A Chiara (Jonas Carpagnino)
Prayers for the Stolen (Tatiana Huezo)
Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)
The First 54 Years (Avi Mograbi)
Three Minutes-A Lengthening (Bianca Stigter)
Flee (Jonas Rasmussen)
The Story of Looking (Mark Cousins)
Last Exit: Space (Werner Herzog)
Bernstein’s Wall (Douglas Tirola)
There is one movie missing here and I can’t seem to pinpoint it. An in-the-know industry insider has told me that Film #30 is listed as a “world premiere” at the Toronto International Film Festival, but will actually be having its first screening at Telluride. I’ve narrowed it down to “Belfast,” “The Starling,” or “The Forgiven.”
Skipping Telluride this year, and going elsewhere, will be Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune,” Edgar Wright’s “Last Night in Soho,” Pedro Almodóvar’s “Madres Paralelas,” Michael Showalter’s “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” and Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”
See you at the show.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.