Telluride Film Festival Reveals 2020 Selections: ‘Ammonite,’ ‘Nomadland,’ Werner Herzog, and More

By Ryan Lattanzio

There will be no Telluride Film Festival this year, but organizers have announced what the festival would've looked like.

There will be no Telluride Film Festival this Labor Day in Colorado, but the programmers have unveiled what this year’s selections would have been. Much like the Cannes Film Festival’s 2020 lineup, this year’s Telluride films can at least carry the imprimatur of the festival as we head into the fall circuit. The 47th edition of the Telluride Film Festival was scheduled for September 3-7. See the full lineup, as revealed on Monday, below.

The idea in presenting the Telluride selections is to recommend the best in film this year in hopes that audiences will seek out these movies at other fall festivals (or what remains of them) down the line. With the 2021 Academy Awards pushed way out to April 25, there’s at once less pressure on these films to perform for awards but also a crush of movies backlogged since quarantine hit, making for a competitive season.

The Toronto International Film Festival is happening this year, though with a greatly reduced mix of 50 films, as is the scaled-down Venice Film Festival in Italy. The New York Film Festival is currently shaping its lineup amid just announced that Chloé Zhao’s “Nomadland” would serve as the centerpiece film. The other major fall festival, AFI Fest, has not made any announcements about programming changes amid the pandemic. It’s expected that the majority of these festivals, as with all previous since March in the U.S., will have a virtual component for audiences to tune into.

See the full Telluride lineup below.

AFTER LOVE (dir. Aleem Khan, UK, 89 min)

ALL IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY (dir. Liz Garbus, Lisa Cortés, USA, 102 min)

THE ALPINIST (dir. Peter Mortimer, Nick Rosen, USA, 92 min)

AMMONITE (dir. Francis Lee, UK, 117 min)

ANDREY TARKOVSKY. A CINEMA PRAYER (dir. Andrey A. Tarkovsky, Italy-Russian Federation-Sweden, 97 min)

APPLES (dir. Christos Nikou, Greece-Poland-Slovenia, 90 min)

THE AUTOMAT (dir. Lisa Hurwitz, USA, 79 min)

THE BEE GEES: HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART (dir. Frank Marshall, USA, 111 min)

CHARLATAN (dir. Agnieszka Holland, Czech Republic-Ireland-Poland-Slovakia, 118 min)

CONCRETE COWBOY (dir. Ricky Staub, USA, 111 min)

DEAR MR. BRODY (dir. Keith Maitland, USA, 97 min)

THE DUKE (dir. Roger Michell, UK, 96 min)

THE FATHER (dir. Florian Zeller, UK-France, 97 min)

FIREBALL: VISITORS FROM DARKER WORLDS (dir. Werner Herzog, Clive Oppenheimer, UK-USA, 97 min)

IBRAHIM (dir. Samir Guesmi, France, 84 min)

MAINSTREAM (dir. Gia Coppola, USA, 94 min)

MANDIBULES (dir. Quentin Dupieux, France, 77 min)

MLK/FBI (dir. Sam Pollard, USA, 104 min)

THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WORLD (dir. Kristina Lindström, Kristian Petri, Sweden, 93 min)

NEVER GONNA SNOW AGAIN (dir. Małgorzata Szumowska, co-dir. Michał Englert, Poland-Germany, 113 min)

NOMADLAND (dir. Chloé Zhao, USA, 108 min)

NOTTURNO (dir. Gianfranco Rosi, Italy-France-Germany, 100 min)

PRAY AWAY (dir. Kristine Stolakis, USA, 101 min)

THERE IS NO EVIL (dir. Mohammad Rasoulof, Germany-Iran, 152 min)

TO THE MOON (dir. Tadhg O’Sullivan, Ireland, 76 min)

TORN (dir. Max Lowe, USA, 92 min)

THE TRUFFLE HUNTERS (dir. Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw, Italy-USA-Greece, 84 min)

TRUMAN & TENNESSEE: AN INTIMATE CONVERSATION (dir. Lisa Immordino Vreeland, USA, 86 min)

THE WAY I SEE IT (dir. Dawn Porter, USA, 100 min)

SILVER MEDALLION AWARDS

The honorees chosen for the 2020 Silver Medallion Awards, which recognize artists’ significant contributions to the world of cinema, are Academy Award-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins (THE FATHER), Academy Award-winning actress Kate Winslet (AMMONITE), and critically acclaimed director, screenwriter and producer Chloé Zhao(NOMADLAND).

Telluride Film Festival’s shorts program includes a long shorts program; Student Prints, curated by Academy Award nominated writer, director, producer Gregory Nava; Calling Cards; and Great Expectations, both curated by Academy Award-winning writer, director, producer Barry Jenkins.

LONG SHORTS

THE LETTER ROOM (dir. Elvira Lind, USA, 32 min)

LINDA AND THE MOCKINGBIRDS (dir. James Keach, USA, 40 min)

PAWS IN PRISON (dir. Bill Guttentag, USA, 31 min)

THE TOXIC PIGS OF FUKUSHIMA (dir. Otto Bell, Japan-USA, 35 min)

WHEN WE WERE BULLIES (dir. Jay Rosenblatt, USA, 36 min)

STUDENT PRINTS

BORDER (dir. Shu Zhu, Ino Yang Popper, AFI, USA, 4 min)

FOREVER (dir. Mitch McGlocklin, USC, USA, 7 min)

METAMORPHOSIS (dir. Xi Wang, USC, USA, 4 min)

PEEPS (dir. Sophie Somerville, Victorian College of the Arts, Australia, 17 min)

SILENTO (dir. Esteban García Vernaza, Columbia University, Colombia, 11 min)

SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN (dir. Fany de la Chica, Columbia University, Spain, 13 min)

UNDER THE HEAVENS (SEIVA BRUTA) (dir. Gustavo Milan, NYU, Brazil, 17 min)

VIKTOR ON THE MOON (dir. Christian Arhoff, National Film School of Denmark, Denmark, 28 min)

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

DA YIE (dir. Anthony Nti, Belgium-Ghana, 20 min)

GRAMERCY (dir. Jamil McGinnis, Pat Heywood, USA, 23 min)

UNFORGIVABLE (dir. Marlén Viñayo, El Salvador, 36 min)

CALLING CARDS

BENJAMIN, BENNY, BEN (dir. Paul Shkordoff, Canada, 7 min)

BITTU (dir. Karishma Dev Dube, India-USA, 17 min)

COMMUNITY GARDENS (dir. Vytautas Katkus, Lithuania, 15 min)

DAVID (dir. Zachary Woods, USA, 11 min)

I, JULIA (dir. Arvin Kananian, Sweden, 14 min)

LEAVE OF ABSENCE (dir. Anton Sazonov, Russian Federation, 12 min)

THE LOST ASTRONAUT (dir. Ben Proudfoot, USA, 13 min)