Another View of Cannes / A New Date Spurs Speculation

 ANOTHER VIEW OF CANNES

Here's another look at films that could play Cannes in May and then Telluride in June.  This rumination comes from Jordan Ruimy of World of Reel.  He's been steadily tracking Cannes title possibilities for months.  

Die, My Love/No Distribution/Lynne Ramsay

The Disappearance of Joseph Mengele/No Distribution/Kirill Serebrennikov

In the Hand(s) of Dante/No Distribution/Julian Schnabel

The Love That Remains/No Distribution/Hylnur Palmason

The Magnificent Life of Marcel Pagnol/Sony Pictures Classics/Sylvain Chomet

The Mastermind/Mubi/Kelly Reichardt

Orphan/No Distribution/Laszlo Nemes 

The Way of the Wind/No Distribution/Terrence Malick

The Young Mother's Home/No Distribution/The Dardennes Brothers

Here's Ruimy's extensive list.

A NEW DATE SPURS SPECULATION

Warner Brothers dropped a stunner of a piece pf news yesterday that Paul Thomas Anderson's latest, One Battle After Another has been re-dated from August 8th to September 26th.  The announcement opened a door to speculation about the reasons for the move including the possibility of a fall film festival premiere.

Anderson attended TFF in 2007 for the tribute to Daniel Day-Lewis which included a screening of a few minutes of There Will Be Blood.  His track record with fests shows no favoritism regarding any particular fest.  Here's the track record:

Hard Eight-Sundance

Boogie Nights-Toronto

Magnolia-No fest

Punch Drunk Love-Cannes

There Will Be Blood-Telluride (sort of) then Fantastic Fest

The Master-Venice

Inherent Vice-New York Film Fest

Phantom Thread-Premiered in New York then the Palm Springs Film Fest

Licorice Pizza-Premiered in Los Angeles then the Santa Barbara International Film festival

Gold Derby name checked T-ride specifically as a possible film fest destination for the new film saying:

"It (the new date) also positions Anderson’s highly anticipated movie in the heart of awards season and opens up the possibility of a fall festival launch at either the Venice Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, or Toronto International Film Festival."

Both World of Reel and The Film Stage suggest the possibility of an appearance at a "fall film festival".

As you might expect, I'll be keeping up with developments in this matter.  Frankly, I think it's a long shot at best, but...

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More Venice Musings / Sundance Theory

MORE MUSINGS ON VENICE

We're still several weeks away from any announcement concerning the films which will be chosen for this year's Venice Film Festival but already there's some serious speculation about what those may be.

In my last post I started to look at that with an overview of World of Reel's first stab at figuring out the Venice lineup.  Today I look at a Variety article by Nick Vivarelli that was posted last Thursday.  among the films Vivarelli predicts there are five that feel like possibilities for TFF #51:

Maria/Pablo Larrain

Queer/Luca Guadagnino

In the Hands of Dante/Julian Schnabel

Hard Truths/Mike Leigh

I'm Still Here/Walter Salles

All five of these directors have had at least one film make a Telluride lineup in the past.  These five films also were included on the WOR list I posted last Thursday.

See the complete article from Variety here.

SUNDANCE THEORY

Seems like I do one of these every year now.  This is the post where I suggest that there might be a Sundance feature film that cracks the TFF lineup.  

Telluride history and commentary suggest that TFF has a standard that films that play Labor Day weekend must be either a World or North American premiere.  But there have been exceptions:

An Education in 2009

Manchester by the Sea in 2016

The Report in 2019

The Father (would have screened had TFF happened) in 2020

Living in 2022

There are others.

In some of these cases a TFF Tribute was involved:  Casey Affleck in 2016, Adam Driver in 2019 and Anthony Hopkins would have been a Tribute recipient in 2020.

Last year I was all over A Little Prayer doing the Sundance/Telluride thing.  As you know that didn't happen.  BUT...I have a candidate for this happening again in 2024!

Readers...I give you Nora Fingscheidt's The Outrun starring Saorise Ronan.

Here's the case.  Ronan was rumored to have been set to get a Tribute in 2017 with Lady Bird's screening put that purportedly fell through.  I have often thought that Telluride would look for a way to make a Ronan tribute happen.  This could be that opportunity especially if the fest invites Blitz, which also features Ronan.  Perhaps Ronan would pull double duty as Driver did in 2019 with both The Report and Marriage Story making the TFF #46 lineup.

How confident am I about this...not that much but, like I said, it's happened before.

For hoots, here's the trailer for The Outrun:

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More Cannes Speculation / Orlando Has a Date

 MORE CANNES SPECULATION

Over the weekend I checked in on Jordan Ruimy /World of Reel's evolving list of possible films that will be invited to the Cannes Film Festival in less than two weeks (April 11th).  As always, I look to Cannes for the emergence of films that could World Premiere there in May and then emerge at Telluride as North American premieres.

Looking at Ruimy's list, it seems like there is a lot of agreement with films that I included from Screen Daily's Cannes list last week.  Here are the films from Ruimy's post that I feel like have the most likely chance of playing TFF:

Megalopolis-Dir: Frances Ford Coppola (although there's a good deal of buzz that it may NOT appear at Cannes after all.  It seems that Coppola wants a distribution deal in place before the film screens anywhere and if that doesn't happen, the focus for its first public screening might switch to a fall festival scenario-stay tuned).

Anora- Dir: Sean Baker

Bird- Dir: Andrea Arnold

Emilia Perez- Dir: Jacques Audiard

Hard Truths- Dir: Mike Leigh

Parthenope- Dir: Paolo Sorrentino

The End- Dir: Joshua Oppenheimer

The Apprentice- Dir: Ali Abbasi

In the Hands of Dante- Dir: Julian Schnabel

Rumors- Dir: Guy Maddin

WOR's complete list is linked here.

ORLANDO HAS A DATE

Janus Films has announced a release date for physical media sales of Paul B. Preciado's Orlando: My Political Biography.  Blu-Ray and DVD sales of the documentary will begin on June 25th.

Here's the IMDb description of the film:

"Academic virtuoso turned filmmaker Paul B. Preciado's Berlin Film Festival award-winning doc tells his and others' stories of transition through unique reenactments and visual interpretations of Virginia Woolf's Orlando: A Biography."

And here is the announcement from Janus Films.

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