The question every attendee asks at the Telluride Film Festival is the same every year: what is the Friday Patron Screening? This year, the answer was Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, a Searchlight Pictures film that is already being called an inevitable Oscar contender.
According to IndieWire, McDonagh told reporters at the annual Patron Brunch that the film started as a father-son story set on Easter Island before evolving into something more geopolitically complicated. The finished film weaves in CIA activity in South America, built around the dynamic between two spies played by John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell.
Malkovich, 72, has the showier role. Rockwell, in a supporting part, is being praised for his generosity toward his co-star on screen. Both actors are said to speak highly of each other. Early word suggests Malkovich could be a Best Actor contender.
The Brunch also brought together many of the weekend's other key players. Andrew Scott is drawing early praise for Elsinore, a Focus Features film about Ian Charleson, the Chariots of Fire actor who played Hamlet in 1990 while suffering from HIV/AIDS complications. The film premiered Friday night.
Carrie Coon attended the brunch with her husband and co-star Tracy Letts. She is generating early buzz for her role in Guy Nattiv's The Liberation, a Bleecker Street film in which she plays an unhappy banker and Holocaust survivor drawn into an all-female cult. Coon said she had not yet seen the finished film when she arrived at the brunch. She was scheduled to watch it Friday night for the first time. She noticed Sandra Hüller across the room and did not approach her. "I'm in awe," she said.
Danny Boyle's Ink, a Netflix film starring Jack O'Connell as a tabloid editor and Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch, also arrived at the festival from Venice. The film is described as a Fleet Street two-hander covering how the two men changed media history. It is set for a 30-day theatrical release.
Jesse Eisenberg was also at the brunch ahead of the Saturday premiere of The Debut, an A24 film starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti.
Sofia Coppola returned to Telluride for the first time since Lost in Translation, bringing a documentary about the making of Marie Antoinette. The film was started by her mother, Eleanor Coppola, and Sofia finished it in the editing room.
The festival continues through the Labor Day weekend with a Sunday TBA screening still unannounced at the time of the brunch.
