In the Fall of every year, three film festivals prove to be the launching pad for many of Oscar nominees – Venice, Telluride and Toronto.
Earlier today came the news that the Telluride Film Festival for this year has been straight up cancelled. Unlike Venice or Toronto which seem to be trying to go the digital route, Telluride is straight up not going to happen over this year’s Labor Day weekend.
The festival, which launched such best picture Oscar winners as “Moonlight,” “12 Years a Slave” and “The King’s Speech,” had already sold out passes for the year back in late February.
However Telluride executive director Julie Huntsinger tells Variety that a combination of both a number of this year’s potential attendees having gotten cold feet and skyrocketing numbers of COVID-19 cases in Arizona and Texas have forced Telluride planners to scrap it.
Why not cancel earlier? Huntsinger says: “On Friday, I was at a facility that was manufacturing tests for us, thousands of 15-minute turnaround tests that we could use. We had everything in place to have a safe festival.”
That includes filmmakers who were lining up to attend despite the conditions. Huntsinger says she now hopes to make the lineup public later this month in order to support the films they would have invited.
