The 2026 Telluride kicked off Friday, September 5, in Colorado and runs through Labor Day. The 53rd edition of the fest kicks off with first-day films including seven-time Oscar nominee Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care and the Andrew Scott-led Elsinore. See the full lineup here.
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The event features a number of world premieres — including Tender Loving Care — and other U.S. premieres of pics that bowed on the Lido at this month’s Venice Film Festival. It doesn’t boast any major studios releases, but Universal and Disney’s respective specialty units — Telluride regulars Focus Features and Searchlight Pictures — are in town with one movie apiece. Focus has the world premiere of Simon Stone’s Elsinore, and Searchlight is representing with its big Oscar hope, writer-director Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell, which first screened in Venice.
Also being introduced to the world in the Rockies are films including Jesse Eisenberg’s A24 pic The Debut, starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti; 2026 Telluride honoree Andrew Haigh’s A Long Winter; Oscar winner Guy Nattiv’s The Liberation, with Carrie Coon; Tenzing, starring Genden Phuntsok as the climber who, along with Edmund Hillary (Tom Hiddleston), became the first to summit Mount Everest; and Alpha Gang, led by Chris Pine, Cate Blanchett, and Lea Seydoux.
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Other pics making their North American debuts in rural Colorado after bowing at Venice include Danny Boyle’s Ink, starring Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy; Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard with Kate and Rooney Mara; and documentaries including Burgundy; Everest: The Other Side; My Undesirable Friends Part II; and Sumo.
Check out Deadline’s reviews out of Telluride, and keep checking back as we add more. Click on each headline to read our full review.
‘Elsinore’
Focus Features
Director: Simon Stone
Distributor: Focus Features
Cast: Andrew Scott, Olivia Colman, Billie Piper, Johnny Flynn, Peter Mullen, Juliet Stevenson, Matthew Beard, David Dawson, Joe Locke, Luke Thomson
Deadline’s takeaway: This heartbreaking film is anchored by a performance for the ages by Andrew Scott as ill-fated Chariots of Fire star Ian Charleson. It sees an actor fully embodying the heart and soul of another actor and finding the emotional center and determination to take this last chance no matter what the cost. The portrayal is thrilling. There is no other word for it.
‘Tender Loving Care’
Thin Man Films
Director: Mike Leigh
Distributor: Bleecker Street
Cast: Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Kate O’Flynn, Alice Bailey Johnson
Deadline’s takeaway: After some of the harsher sides of family life displayed in 2024’s Hard Knocks, Leigh has gone for a smaller slice of life — a more leisurely, less plot-driven look at family. There are no twists and turns, no real melodrama, simply a time well spent with recognizable characters we grow to care about and root for. You might know these people. You might be these people.
