The Telluride Film Festival opened its 53rd edition in Colorado over Labor Day weekend with a lineup that pairs Mike Leigh's hushed family drama "Tender Loving Care," which the 83-year-old director has said is likely his final film, against Simon Stone's starrier "Elsinore," starring Andrew Scott and Olivia Colman. The festival runs through Monday at venues around the mountain town, including the Michael D. Palm Theatre, which organizers raced to reopen after a flash flood damaged the building roughly a month before opening night.
"Tender Loving Care," which had its world premiere Friday, stars Kate O'Flynn, Marion Bailey and Paul Jesson in a story built around a longtime friendship, an aging couple navigating dementia, and England's strained social-care system — familiar Leigh territory rendered, by early accounts, with unusual tenderness. Leigh has said health issues make this "most likely" his last feature. Early reviews have been warm: the film carries a description as "warm and inviting, filled with giggles and gossip and gentle gallows humor," while also "wrenching, with a topical urgency simmering just beneath the jovial surface," per The Hollywood Reporter's review out of the festival. Bleecker Street will release the film in U.S. theaters December 4, after further stops at the Toronto and New York festivals.
A Lineup Built for Awards Season
"Elsinore" casts Scott as Ian Charleson, the "Chariots of Fire" actor, in a UK production that joins Jesse Eisenberg's directorial effort "The Debut" and Andrew Haigh's "A Long Winter" among the festival's marquee world premieres. This year's Telluride also carries three Silver Medallion tributes, honoring John Malkovich alongside his new film "Wild Horse Nine," Sandra Hüller with "Rose," and Haigh himself for "A Long Winter" — each paired with an onstage interview and a screening, as is tradition for the festival's tribute program. Actor-director Rebecca Hall served as this year's guest director, selecting six classic films to screen alongside the new premieres.
Telluride has long positioned itself as an early proving ground for the fall awards circuit, and this year's slate — with Leigh's presumed swan song, a starry biographical drama in "Elsinore," and Haigh's follow-up to his acclaimed "All of Us Strangers" — is being read in the trade press as an early signal of where the best picture and acting conversations may head this winter, ahead of Telluride veterans' usual trip to Toronto the following week.
The festival continues through Monday, September 7, with public and industry screenings continuing across its Main Program, Backlot and Guest Director sections before its roughly 40 features scatter to the fall's remaining festivals and, eventually, theaters.
