The Tea Tea: reflections and salient facts of the Telluride Film Festival 2025 | Festivals and awards

For the fourth consecutive year, I hike in Telluride for a weekend of the prolonged Labor Day. A ride of a loved one at the airport, two flights, a 90 -minute shuttle, a 20 -minute gondola trip and a 15 -minute walk – it’s always a miracle for me when this travel day takes place gently. There is a reason why they say that tellurid cuts you off, and it is not only because of the landscape of another world and phenomenal programming; I blow and breathe when I arrive at my seat. Midwest film buff like me needs a moment to acclimatize to the cinema in the mountains.

Unlike years before, this year’s programming was less secret. The age of the Internet has enabled the cross reference to other film festivals programs to deduce what will eventually take a first or a screen from Telluride. Anyway, it is always an act of faith that many of us take; The director of the Julie Huntsinger festival and the programming team have such a strong impetus on the stories that deserve to be shared. Despite the sharp drop in the racial diversity of this year’s calendar, the stories that shake the genre seen on the screen have provided a semblance of artistic variation and affect. In five sites, including transformed high school auditoriums and an old opera, powered by 13 cups of tea, I was able to take a total of 16 films.

It is not new that a majority of tellurid programming is looking at the heavier or complex side of the themes studied and exposed. This year, the thread has made its way through a myriad of ways that loneliness can manifest and throw the plan of our lives. To tell the truth, I do not think that we always fully recognize the charge that our brains wear when we look at such a devastation or a consecutive sorrow (-To-back-to-back). It is such a great privilege to be able to attend and the current through so many films in a short time (and in one of the most beautiful places); In addition to this loneliness, I look on the screen and I feel leaving the theater, relaxing myself online and trying to connect with others in the industry, now, now I wear guilt by feeling everything that is not pure joy and astonishment. It is funny how often and easily I am influenced by the emotional integrity of a work or a film. Sue me, I’m sensitive.

Saturday evening, the Festival favorites, the flops and the essentials are starting to get into the gondola and descend the vine. I quickly heard many praises for “The Secret Agent”, a Brazilian film taking place in 1977 by Kleber Mendonça Filho, and I exchanged my Sunday plans to press it. Thanks to my itching for having found compassion in any image, each daring and saturated scene has strengthened our perception and our connection to each character. It was soft to hear Mendonça Filho professer during his Q & r that he urges us all to “insert love wherever you can”.

It was my last screening on the last day of the festival which cemented solitude as the key theme that connected to each film to each other. Joachim Trier’s “sentimental value” has made silent tears in my eyes. Although his films constantly have a development of quality characters, there is such a strong visual language which allows so many things to say without being total dependence on the script. Renate Reinsve and Stellan Skarsgård marry perfectly as a broken father duo; Their characters are a mirror of each other. Their personal and collective transgressions are a show seen through two objectives, giving the public several entry points for the compassionate understanding of the history and the depth of its characters.

Kelly Reichardt’s new slowburner, “The Mastermind”, looked a bit like a Hemingway novel: a slice of life focused on a man who is not very friendly. Josh O’Connor hates his skills in art-lips that he sharpened so very well in “La Chimera” to offer a less glamorous and Americanized version of being a lost spirit, only anchored by art. Although JB Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is the cause of his own solitude and his disappearance, to the point where he somewhat admits that he only thinks himself, we root for him. While we see his family and friends withdraw one by one, he always becomes more lonely. The juxtaposition of being lonely with others and lonely when only reinforces how the feeling persists as a stench that no number of long showers can wash.

Although the other films that explore what it means to feel and be alone are not so finished, I found value in them retrospectively, despite not feeling completely resolved when the credits rolled. “Frankenstein” by Guillermo Del Toro, a surprise addition to the programming, went directly to the first in Venice. Based on the novel by Mary Shelley, Del Toro never quite calls the creation of Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac); He is never known as the creature (Jacob Elordi). The creature later developed a feeling of agency and autonomy which seems refreshing. Despite the sunset, after having forgiven its manufacturer, I am left in question and worried about the future of this attentive monster which will continue to live, alone, forever. The creative inclusion of Del Toro of Catholic ideology and iconography has created a beautiful and great spectacle, and, of course, there is the imminent guilt that accompanies it.

Guilt and loneliness, which are characteristic of a morally questionable man, also serve as the main intrigue devices of the new film by Edward Berger, “Ballad of a Small-player”. Seeing this brilliant and early film as my Saturday breakfast film gave an interesting tone for the day, and the way it plays with morality and mortality like the putty is perhaps the reason why I have repeatedly called the film “Ballad for a Small Prayer” one of too much throughout the weekend. Colin Farrell plays a fabulous crook, but the rest of the film vacillates because the support characters and the side plots are only used to lead the improvement of his character. As a rule, this would be appreciated as a coherent story. But that made a superficial exploration of what it means to be affected by and following someone else’s dependence.

Likewise, I was a little shocked when “Springsteen: Delived Me de Nowhere” by Scott Cooper ends with a closing card which reveals that Springsteen continues to fight with his depression. The film clearly shows that Rockstar is struggling with a feeling of self, a real sense of the house and the difficulties of its childhood. However, it is visually and narrative of the substance which allows the public to resonate at a deeper level. The hypothesis that the public knows how depression can manifest itself in a million different symptoms (such as irritability and distancing) is too tangled with the involvement that these are necessary for creativity. Maybe if I was more familiar with the Springsteen catalog (in particular the album Nebraska, On which the film is concentrated), I would have rebuilt the puzzle earlier that this film was a Petri box for emotional reflection rather than a vehicle to share the history of Springsteen’s career.

My personal programming also included the “La Grazia” by Yorgos Lanthimos, “La Grazia” by Paulo Sorrentino, the “privacy” of Rebecca Zlotowski, “If I if I had Harris Dickinson legs, which made me feel many things that I developed here. I was also quite charmed by “New Wave” by Richard Linklater, where he fictionalizes and fantasy about the creation of Jean-Luc Godard’s first film, “Breathless”. To base myself in reality, I also saw a handful of documentaries and I always revel in the energy of the writer and icon E. Jean Carroll. “Ask E. Jean”, “Lost in the Jungle” and “Everywhere Man: The Lives and Times of Peter Asher” were also part of my festival cover and can be read here.

I embark on my trip to several legs at home, oozing to have been part of the community which contributes to the continuation and evolution of cinematographic and cinematographic criticism. Although the landscape of the two industries changes, I am reassured and catalyzed by those with whom I am in line; Telluride is really a heritage of which I want to be part of always.