2025 Telluride Film Festival Report – The Films: Sound and Shakespeare Signifying … Telluride?

The list of films being shown at this year’s Telluride Film Festival have been announced a mere hours before the Show begins in earnest on Friday. As with all previous years, the field is packed with highly anticipated world premieres and restored classics, as well as surprises and completely unexpected gems. What can we discern in the few hours since the whole lot has been revealed? I like to look for unintended (or intended) themes and threads, surprise resonance, and an overabundance of “Only in Telluride,” fare. I am not yet disappointed.

Scanning the offerings isn’t difficult to find a Shakespearean note being played. There are THREE features that revolve around the Bard. Chloé Zhao’s world premiere of the adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s book, Hamnet, starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. Then there is Riz Ahmed starring and producing director Aneil Karia’s re-envisioning of Hamlet itself. And then there’s the real-life turned into documentary King Hamlet where documentarian Elvira Lind turns the camera on her partner Oscar-nominated Oscar Isaac ostensibly to document his being cast as the famous Dane at the Public Theater in New York, but real-life intervenes, with camera rolling. 

This is the kind of unplanned serendipity that is difficult to prepare for, but the Telluride programmers are keen to pick up on.

A more expected but no less unplanned convergence comes with the strong showing of music and sound that usually graces the screens up here. There’s always music-centered documentaries and narratives. For example this year includes Highway 99: A Double Album, the Merle Haggard doc directed by Ethan Hawk; Blue Moon, Richard Linklater’s period piece about the pivotal moments in the lyricist Lorenz Hart’s career and life; Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Scott Cooper’s bio pic; and the Beatles world films, Everywhere Man: Lives and Times of Peter Asher and Man on the Run. I’m sure I’ve missed something else that would fall into the music box.

But there are also films that focus on sound itself. Director Oliver Hermanus’ The History of Sound, a narrative about the love story between two people who are tasked with preserving for posterity the folk ballads throughout the country. Juxtapose that approach to sound with documentarian turned feature director Daniel Roher’s Tuner, where the way an apprentice piano tuner’s hyperacusis – an intense sensitivity to sound – drives the plot as we hear through his ears to experience his world as it turns to crime.

Of course, even if I try to follow either of these themes or any others, I’ll never get to see all the films. No one could. But at least we now have a list of great films to find and enjoy in the future. Which of these below will you be looking forward to seeing?

Straight from the press release:

The 52nd Telluride Film Festival is proud to present the following new feature films and episodic works to play in its main program, the SHOW: 

The following short films will screen in the main program:

Emmy- and Academy Award–winning producer and filmmaker Guest Director Ezra Edelman has selected these classics for his section:

At the Backlot, Telluride’s intimate screening room featuring behind-the-scenes movies and portraits of artists, musicians and filmmakers will screen the following programs, all free and open to the public:

As well as the always fabulous Short Film Programs Filmmakers of Tomorrow and Student Prints, as well as Special Screenings, Festivities, Talking Head programs and all the other fare that you can only find in Telluride.

Telluride Film Festival runs August 29 - September 1