Denver Film Festival Selections Include ‘The Piano Lesson,’ ‘September 5’ and ‘The Brutalist’
With one month to go before showtime at the 47th Denver Film Festival, festival organizers have peeled back the curtain to reveal this year’s official selections, honorees and jurors.
Presented by Denver Film, the festival will kick off with the opening night presentation of Malcolm Washington’s directorial debut The Piano Lesson from Netflix on Nov. 1. Hitting the screen at the MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, The Piano Lesson is an August Wilson adaptation starring Samuel L. Jackson, Danielle Deadwyler, John David Washington, Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins, Stephan James, Erykah Badu and more.
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The festival runs Nov. 1-10, and during that time 185 features, documentaries and shorts will screen in the Colorado capital. Justin Kurzel’s The Order starring Jude Law as an FBI agent on the trail of a white supremacist group in the Pacific Northwest will serve as a centerpiece presentation on Nov. 8. The film, which also stars Nicholas Hoult and Jurnee Smollett, has Colorado roots as its based on the nonfiction book co-written by Kevin Flynn, The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground. He served as a reporter at Rocky Mountain News and is now a current Denver City council member.
DFF will close with Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 starring Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch. The Paramount title centers on the terrorist attack that occurred at the 1972 Munich Olympics while telling the story from inside the Munich production hub of ABC Sports as the outlet is covering the 1972 Summer Olympics.
Also included in this year’s lineup are a slew of high-profile titles that have been screening in recent weeks at film festivals from Telluride and Toronto to Venice and New York. DFF selections include Better Man, the experimental biopic about British pop superstar Robbie Williams, Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce and Joe Alwyn, Pedro Almodovár’s English language debut The Room Next Door starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez starring Zoe Salda?a, Karla Sofia Gascon and Selena Gomez; Steve McQueen’s Blitz starring Saorise Ronan, Paul Schrader’s Oh Canada starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman and Jacob Elordi, Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch starring Amy Adams and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson, Dave Bautista, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kiernan Shipka, Jason Schwartzman, Brenda Song and Billie Lourd. Other high profile selections include Andrea Arnold’s Bird starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here, and Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain starring the filmmaker alongside Kieran Culkin.
DFF has zeroed in on a roster of creatives to receive special honors during the 2024 event. Among them Patricia Clarkson will receive a Cassavetes Award for her contributions to cinema. The veteran actress will receive the shine following a gala screening of Lilly at the MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater. Marianne Jean-Baptiste will be feted with an excellence in acting trophy after a screening of her latest collaboration with Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths. Modern Family star and Tony Award-winner Jesse Tyler Ferguson will take home the third CinemaQ LaBahn Ikon Film Award, an honor created to recognize talent’s creative excellence and outstanding impact and representation for the LGBTQ community. The fest will showcase Ferguson’s work in All That We Love and the short film It’s Okay. Another one: Nickel Boys helmer RaMell Ross will be feted with the fest’s excellence in directing award and his film will hit the big-screen at DFF.
Jason Reitman has been making the rounds with his latest film, Saturday Night, which will head to Denver for a special screening at which members of his cast and creative team will be honored with DFF’s 5280 Award for their work. Saturday Night, directed by Reitman from a script he co-wrote with Gil Kenan, is based on the true story of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of the iconic sketch comedy series.
Other honorees: Actor-turned-filmmaker Nnamdi Asomugha will receive a Breakthrough Director Award following a screening of his debut The Knife; Ryan Destiny will receive a Rising Star Award following a gala presentation of Rachel Morrison’s The Fire Inside; Cristiana Dell’Anna will be honored with the Maria and Tomasso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award following a screening of Cabrini; and video artist Cecelia Condit will receive a Brakhage Vision Award.
“Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Patricia Clarkson and Marianne Jean-Baptiste make everything they are in better, and we expect they will do the same for this year’s festival,” said Denver Film artistic director Matthew Campbell. “At the same time, this has always been a filmmaker forward festival, so we’re very proud to be able to celebrate the work of RaMell Ross, who has such a fresh and exciting take on filmmaking, as well as Jason Reitman, who’s been delivering what audiences want for the better part of two decades.”
The festival’s roster of 2024 jurors includes The Bear showrunner Joanna Calo, Variety’s Daniel D’Addario, IndieWire’s Marcus Jones, actor Taylor John Smith (Where the Crawdads Sing), Berlanti Prods.’ Carl Ogawa, filmmaker Gabriela Ortega (Huella), Backstage Magazine’s Briana Rodriguez, acting coach Jean-Louis Rodrigue, Jeopardy! star Amy Schneider, Palm Springs ShortFest programmer Rachel Walker, Sing Sing producer Monique Walton, and The Hollywood Reporter’s Abbey White.
Tickets go on sale to the general public on Oct. 4.
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