The Telluride Film Festival lineup for 2023 was announced last week, one day before the screenings began. Some of the films included Saltburn, Rustin, The Bikeriders, and The Holdovers. Several documentaries were screened at the festival. 

Variety discusses many of the documentaries that were shown at this festival. Errol Morris’s The Pigeon Tunnel follows writer and spy David Cornwell, better known as John le Carré, and his life throughout six decades. Madeline Gavin’s Beyond Utopia is about families who, as stated by IMDb, “attempt to escape oppression in North Korea, revealing a world most of us have never seen.” American Symphony, by Matthew Heineman, follows the life of musician Jon Batiste over a year. Paul B. Preciado created Orlando, My Political Biography, which premiered in Berlinale earlier this year and uses Virginia Woolf’s Orlando to tell his and others’ stories of transitioning. 

Variety in another article mentions Apple’s Fingernails and Netflix’s Nyad as the “major premieres” for the festival. Along with this, some Venice Film Festival releases were also present at Telluride, such as El Conde, The Promised Land, and Finally Dawn. 

The Telluride Film Festival was founded by Tom Luddy, Bill Pence, Stella Pence, and James Card in 1974. This year’s festival screened over 80 features, short films, and revival programs. The program for the festival can be found here.