The 52nd Telluride Film Festival kicked off on Friday with the annual Patrons Brunch, which brings together filmmakers, journalists and the fest’s highest-spending passholders for bacon, eggs and mingling at a private residence high above the center of town.
Among those present were Jafar Panahi, the Iranian dissident whose It Was Just an Accident (Neon) won Cannes’ Palme d’Or in May, and who the festival helped to bring to the U.S. for the first time in 20 years; E. Jean Carroll, the former advice columnist who later won legal judgments against Pres. Donald Trump, who took a train from New York to attend the world premiere of the documentary feature Ask E. Jean (still seeking U.S. distribution); and two Skarsgårds, Stellan, here with Sentimental Value (Neon), and Alexander, here with Pillion (Mubi), who told me they will be seeing each other’s movies for the first time here at the fest.
Topics of conversation ranged widely. There was speculation about what Friday afternoon’s Patrons Preview screening would be (it turned out to be the North American premiere of Paolo Sorrentino’s La Grazia, which played very well in the Werner Herzog Theater, led by a great Tony Servillo turn); whether or not Jay Kelly star George Clooney would make it to the fest even though a severe sinus infection caused him to miss festivities earlier this week at the Venice Film Festival (unfortunately he won’t, we have learned); and whether or not Bruce Springsteen, the inspiration for the film Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (Searchlight), would be on hand for that film’s world premiere later Friday evening (the festival confirms: he will!).
Elsewhere, Ballad of a Small Player (Netflix) star Colin Farrell charmed all comers; Fingernails costars Riz Ahmed, here with Hamlet (still seeking U.S. distribution), and Jessie Buckley, here with Hamnet (Focus), caught up; producer Teddy Schwarzman talked up the two movies he has at the fest, Train Dreams (Netflix) and Tuner (still seeking U.S. distribution); and the trio of Sentimental Value actresses, Elle Fanning, Renate Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, all first-time attendees of the fest, hung out together. Fanning said she would later attend the Merle Haggard documentary Highway 99 A Double Album (still seeking U.S. distribution), which her boyfriend worked on as a producer.
Meanwhile, two people on polar-opposite sides of the political spectrum chatted beside each other — longtime New Yorker editor David Remnick, who is featured in The New Yorker at 100 (Netflix), and CNBC’s Squawk Box host Joe Kernen, who attends the fest each year with his family. And Annette Insdorf, the Columbia University professor and author who has been attending the fest since 1979, told me that this year, for the first time, she has a film of her own in the fest — indeed, she served as a producer of the documentary Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire (still seeking U.S. distribution).
