As the 51st edition of the Telluride Film Festival came to a close on Monday, the films seemed to sort themselves into two categories: experimental or topical. The documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville and the musical director Michael Gracey each took big, ambitious swings to tell the stories of Pharrell Williams and the British pop star Robbie Williams (no relation). One used Legos. The other a CGI monkey. Other filmmakers turned the lens on issues in the news like transgender-care laws, abortion restrictions and further matters facing voters in the November election.
And as always, conversations swirled around what will and will not go the distance to the Oscars in March.
The director of Telluride, Julie Huntsinger, told the media at the start of the festival on Friday to prepare themselves for some crazy movies (though she used a more colorful term). It was less a warning than a promise, and it was followed by Neville’s film “Piece by Piece,” which was filmed entirely with Legos, depicting pop and rap superstars like Jay-Z, Missy Elliott and Pharrell Williams.
“What if nothing is new?” Williams says in the glossy depiction of his life, due in theaters Oct. 11. “What if life is like a Lego set and you’re just borrowing from everyone else?”
Later that evening Gracey (“The Greatest Showman”) relied on the magicians at Weta FX to depict Robbie Williams as a monkey, an approach that allowed the audience to “see Robbie as he sees himself,” the director told the crowd. Robbie Williams compared the experience of debuting his story to being “like an 11-year-old who’s having the best day possible.”
The experimentation continued with “Nickel Boys,” in which the director RaMell Ross played with perspective in adapting Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name.
And that was just opening day. Saturday seemed reserved for political awareness and “Saturday Night Live.”
The Netflix documentary “Will & Harper” had both. The film tracks a road trip undertaken by Will Ferrell and Harper Steele, a former “S.N.L.” head writer and Ferrell’s friend of 30 years. Steele, a trans woman, wants to see if she can traverse the country as she once loved to do.
The film, which played at Sundance in January, drew a wide swath of the Telluride audience, including Martha Stewart (in town for her documentary, “Martha”) and Bill Murray (“The Friend”). It also earned a standing ovation for Steele, which she was quick to point out to Ferrell, when the two took the stage.
The movie, directed by Josh Greenbaum, gives viewers an intimate look at a friendship that’s made deeper by the momentous change to one friend and the other’s authentic response to it. Ferrell comes across as both an audience surrogate trying to better understanding the transition and as an empathetic mensch. Steele noted that Ferrell’s willingness to participate could come at a great cost to him and his professional image. “This is a brand that will get hurt by it,” Steele said at the screening.
Audiences then packed the theater for “Zurawski v Texas,” about women who are suing the state over the loss of abortion rights. Festivalgoers were there in part to see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, an executive producer on the documentary, participate in the post-screening panel. “I don’t think we can underestimate how important this film is in order to break through the eye rolling, the denial, the dismissiveness, the cruelty that has affected so many women’s lives,” Clinton said.
Later that afternoon, a crowd of 500 gathered in Elks Park, in the center of Telluride, to hear the film’s subjects and Chelsea Clinton, another executive producer on the film, discuss suing the state of Texas over maternal health care. (The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the 20 plaintiffs in May.)
Saturday night at the festival was one of nerves. Director Jason Reitman paced the theater ahead of his film “Saturday Night.” It takes place in the 90 minutes leading up to the first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” which begins its 50th-anniversary season this fall.
“This is a level of adrenaline reserved for test pilots and heroin addicts,” Reitman said in his opening remarks, which featured a guest appearance from Murray, a former “S.N.L.” cast member and a longtime collaborator with Reitman’s father, Ivan.
The director Ali Abbasi was also nervous about the first U.S. showing of his controversial movie “The Apprentice,” which chronicles the rise of former President Donald J. Trump (Sebastian Stan) and his relationship with the lawyer Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Abbasi told a packed 10 p.m. screening just how worried he was about its premiere here. “This was some years in the making and now it’s coming back home to you guys,” he said.
The fate of the film, which debuted in Cannes to strong reviews in May, was uncertain as recently as last week when the producers were still trying to finalize a deal to buy out the financier Kinematics, one of whose backers is the Trump ally Dan Snyder. That deal is now done, and the film will officially open in theaters on Oct. 11 from the distributor Briarcliff Entertainment despite Trump’s threats to sue the filmmakers. “This is not a political hit piece,” Abbasi said of his film. “This is a mirror intended to show you an image of yourselves, you as a community.”
Perhaps as a companion piece to “The Apprentice,” Telluride scheduled Errol Morris’s “Separated,” a documentary chronicling the Trump administration policy of separating immigrant families trying to cross the southern border, at the same time.
It is one of several titles looking for distribution, which is unusual for movies debuting at Telluride. Others include “Zurawski v Texas”; “The Friend,” starring Naomi Watts and a Great Dane; the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage drama “September 5,” starring Peter Sarsgaard; and Petra Costa’s documentary “Apocalypse in the Tropics,” about evangelical Christians’ effect on a Brazilian election. Telluride seems amenable to helping with the sales. “The filmmakers are hoping that people can get excited about the movies and drive the price up,” Huntsinger said.
Studios also brought Oscar hopefuls that premiered at other festivals. Netflix brought the cast of “Emilia Perez,” including Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofía Gascón, here after buying it in Cannes. Neon wanted festivalgoers to take a look at “Anora,” the Cannes Palme d’or-winning film about a Brooklyn sex worker played by Mikey Madison. And Searchlight sent Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin to Colorado to show “A Real Pain,” which it bought in Sundance.
Read More: At Telluride, Experimental, Topical and Sometimes Crazy Movies
