Venice Schedule Revealed / Saturday Night Poster and Trailer / Will Cuaron Return to Telluride? / Grand Tour Like Oh Canada? / Will Rasoulof Make It to Telluride?

VENICE SCHDULE REVEALED

The Venice Film Festival revealed its official screening schedule this morning.  That's of note to Telluride watchers as films scheduled early in that fest could potentially be able to cross the Atlantic and get to the Rockies in time for screenings at TFF.  Films scheduled after the first three days of Venice are essentially off the table.

Scheduled early enough to come to Telluride and that seem likely are:

Separated/Morris (8/29)

Disclaimer/Cuaron (8/29)

Maria/Larrain (8/29)

One to One: John and Yoko/Macdoanld and Rice-Edwards (8/30)

Babygirl/Reijn (8/30)

Notable films that look like they're scheduled too late to make T-ride:

The Order/Kurzel

The Brutalist/Corbet

The Room Next Door/Almodovar

Queer/Guadagnino

Joker: Foile A Deux

The complete Venice schedule is linked here.

SATURDAY NIGHT LOOKS TO PLAY TELLURIDE

Matt Belloni writing in his "What I'm Hearing" newsletter for Puck.com dropped this on Friday:

"...today’s trailer for Jason Reitman’s SNL origin story, Saturday Night, got me unexpectedly excited for fall festival movies. It’s playing Telluride, which I don’t attend, and TIFF..."

There's no sourcing on the statement but it seems pretty definitive.  I'm looking for it to be confirmed as soon as Toronto announces its last set of titles this week.

Reitman's catalogue is replete with films that played T-ride starting with Juno in 2007.  Also at Telluride: Up in the Air (2009), Labor Day (2013) and The Front Runner (2018).  

Here's the poster and trailer:

WILL CUARON RETURN TO TELLURIDE?

Last Friday Toronto announced its Primetime Section devoted to television series that they will feature as a part of TIFF 2024.  Among those listed was Alfonso Cuaron's mini-series for Apple+ titled Disclaimer.  Why we note it here is that the show is listed as a Canadian premiere.  That raised some eyebrows.  Could that mean a play of some of the series at TFF #51?

It's possible.  TFF has programmed television/series in the past famously including Twin Peaks in 1989, Red Riding in 2009 and recently (TFF #49) Russia 1985-1999.  So it's not unprecedented that Telluride might be programming it.  Also, Cuaron having screened both Gravity and Roma at past TFFs doesn't hurt its chances.

Here's the description from IMDb:

"Blanchett plays Catherine Ravenscroft, a successful and respected television documentary journalist whose work has been built on revealing the concealed transgressions of long-respected institutions. When an intriguing novel written by a widower, played by Kline, appears on her bedside table, she is horrified to realize she is a key character in a story that she had hoped was long buried in the past. A story that reveals her darkest secret. A secret she thought was hers alone."

Disclaimer is set to debut on Apple TV+ on Oct. 11th.  Here's the teaser from YouTube:

GRAND TOUR LIKE OH, CANADA?

It's another one of those.  Grand Tour was announced by New York without a premiere status leading me and others to believe that it would be a TFF selection.  But then, Toronto announced it as a North  American Premiere which indicates no Telluride play.  Paul Schrader's Oh, Canada is also in that same situation and I'm inclined, at least at this point, to think that both play TIFF and neither plays Telluride.

Of course, I could be wrong.

WILL RASOULOF MAKE IT TO TELLURIDE?

We're pretty sure that Mohammad Rasoulof's The Seed of the Sacred Fig will be playing at TFF #51.  What we don't know is if its writer/director will be present for the screenings.  Variety reporting on Saturday that the Iranian filmmaker who successfully fled Iran isn't sure that he'll be able to travel outside of Europe.

In the interview (linked here) Rasoulof tells Variety reporter Nick Vivarelli:

"I plan to travel to the United States for film screenings. However, since I still don’t have a passport and have to travel with the documents provided with the help of the city of Hamburg, I wonder if I’ll be able to travel outside of Europe."

I'm no expert at international travel protocols but this sounds like a serious impediment.  Nevertheless, I'll be crossing my fingers that he'll be able to find a way to make it .

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Time to Look at Distributors: A24 / Pics from The Bikeriders / So, About Anora

TIME TO LOOK AT DISTRBUTORS: A24

We're in early June which means that Cannes is done; Venice announcing its lineup is on the horizon and the first "Ten Bets:" for TFF #51 is two weeks away.  That means our annual summer review of what frequent TFF distribution companies have in the various film larders is nigh and we try to get a sense, from that perspective, about films that could be at Telluride on Labor Day weekend.

This year we start with A24.  I might not start there most years but I'm prodded by an article posted from Deadline.com that points to A24's fall crop of films making it an easy place to begin.

Last year A24 had four films make the TFF grade:

The Zone of Interest

Occupied City

Tuesday

Janet Planet

Previous years at TFF for A24:

2015-Room

2016-Moonlight

2017-First Reformed, Lady Bird, Lean on Pete

2019-Uncut Gems, Waves, First Cow

2021-C'mon C'mon, Red Rocket, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

2022-Aftersun, Close

In order of mention, these are the seven films that Deadline's Anthony D'Alessandro's piece:

The Front Room/Eggers Brothers

A Different Man/Aaron Shimberg

We Live in Time/John Crowley

Heretic/Scott Beck and Bryan Wood

Babygirl/Halona Reijn

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl/Rungano Nyoni

Parthenope/Paolo Sorrentino

My assessment of these film's chances of playing TFF:

Parthenope 50%

We Live in Time 45%

Babygirl 40%

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl 35%

Heretic 5%

The Front Room 5%

A Different Man 5%

An outside shot might be David Lowery's Mother Mary which has been in post-production since July of 2023.

Of the list, We Live in Time would be at the top of my list of these titles to actually see with my own eyeballs in T-ride.

Here's the complete Deadline piecenull.

PICS FROM THE BIKERIDERS

A late breaking entry from TFF #50 is Jeff Nichols The Bikeriders.  The film is set for release on June 21st.  Back when it screened at Telluride it looked like it would be a fall release but those plans changed.

Nevertheless, I was a moderately big fan of the film back at TFF and am looking forward to its release.  When it screened at Telluride there was a good deal of buzz about Jodie Comer's performance especially.  It'll be interesting to see if she can get some buzz going here at the beginning of summer.

Anywho...The Hollywood Reporter has some new pics from the film.

You can see them here.

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SO, ABOUT ANORA

Yes, the Sean Baker film won the Plame d'Or at Cannes a couple of weeks back.  Discerning MTFB readers may have noticed that I had sort of edged away from including it as a TFF possibility because I was sure that I had seen somewhere that a summer release was going to happen.

After it won the Palme, I saw some speculation that if could play Telluride.  I reached out to a couple of friends who told me no such summer release was happening.  

As if to bolster that point, Variety and other sources reported Tuesday that Anora will be released on Oct. 18th.  That puts it in good shape to be a TFF selection and actually will likely make it among the 10 films in MTFB's initial "Ten Bets" for TFF #51 coming in two weeks on June 20th.

Here's the Variety story on the release date:null 

And...turns out I didn't make the summer release date story up.  A now deleted post on X from The Film Stage from April 24th said that:

 

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