We’re back from a whirlwind weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, where a slew of buzzy films—including Nickel Boys, The Piano Lesson, Saturday Night, and Conclave—had their world premieres along with a handful of holdovers from Cannes that are continuing on their awards season journeys. Telluride has been known to make or break awards hopefuls, so here Rebecca Ford and David Canfield debate what worked and what films may have a tougher road ahead. (Listen below to the most recent episode of Little Gold Men that also expands on this conversation and includes a report from Venice.)
Rebecca Ford: I’ll kick this off with my two favorite films that I saw on the ground this year: The Piano Lesson and Conclave. Both were world premieres, so I didn’t really know what to expect other than what I’d seen from both of our first looks. Both played incredibly well on the ground at the festivals. The Piano Lesson features a lot of fantastic performances, especially Danielle Deadwyler, who I feel very sure will be in the supporting-actress race. I hope that the other supporting performances of Ray Fisher and Corey Hawkins will also catch voters’ attention because they both deliver strong work. An adaptation of the 1987 play by August Wilson, The Piano Lesson is an exploration of generational trauma told through one family’s heirloom, a piano, and covers the history behind its acquisition. What really impressed me the most, however, was the directing—by Malcolm Washington. He’s the son of Denzel Washington (his brother John David Washington also stars in the movie), and it’s his directorial debut, so I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, but he is a confident director who makes a lot of smart choices to deliver a really cinematic experience. I look forward to seeing what he does next.
Conclave is also a performance bonanza, led by Ralph Fiennes’s incredible work as a cardinal who is in charge of finding the successor for the deceased pope. The film, directed by Edward Berger, has the pace of a political thriller, but is set at the Vatican, and features beautiful imagery and a tense score. The supporting cast of Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, and Isabella Rossellini could all be a part of the acting-Oscars conversation. And while the twist ending seems to have been controversial, I have to say it really worked for those who attended my screening at the festival. I see both these films also faring really well in the crafts races with strong costume and production design as well.
David Canfield: In a year that’s been a little light on slam-dunk contenders, Conclave felt like the biggest hit of Telluride to me, and one that worked for just about everyone on the ground. I saw it before getting to the mountains and was struck by the love not just for Berger, seeking his first directing nomination, and Fiennes, seeking his first nod in far too long, but also Rossellini, who gets one showstopper of a scene that—should this movie really take off—may just be enough to get her into the thick of a fluid supporting-actress race.
One movie that did not work for everyone, but that I still think comes out of Telluride as a winner, is Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’s ambitious adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel. The film’s avant-garde approach, in its strict POV-lensing of the story of two Black teenagers surviving in an abusive Jim Crow–era Florida reformatory school, makes this a tougher commercial sell. But in the vein of The Zone of Interest, it takes a weighty historical topic and examines it onscreen in radical fashion, compelling the audience to both grapple with what they are seeing and how they are seeing it. Bound to be polarizing, I still think it’s a movie that can meet an increasingly highbrow Academy where it’s at—of course, with the right campaign. Critics are already really lining up behind this one.
