The Telluride Film Festival had what some might describe as an “off year,” it really depends on your perspective. What was clear this year, was some subtle but perceptible changes. The festival lead by Tom Luddy and Julie Huntsinger doubled-down on “serious” advocacy programming, going so far as to talk up smaller gems when they talked to press, figuring that bigger prestige and studio pictures could do the talking for themselves. So to that end, Telluride shied away from surprises like “Argo” and “Frances Ha” — two films that weren’t announced in the 2012 line-up, but appeared suddenly and secretly (to some extent anyhow) in the line-up.
In fact, other than some restorations announced after the fact, Telluride 2015 had really zero surprise screenings — all the TBAs in the schedule were just slottings of already-announced films aside from two restorations. Perhaps to demonstrate how serious the festival organizers were in trying to honor the spirit of TFF — films before awards...
