Denver Film Festival Selections Include ‘The Piano Lesson,’ ‘September 5’ and ‘The Brutalist’

With one month to go earlier than showtime on the forty seventh Denver Movie Pageant, competition organizers have peeled again the curtain to disclose this 12 months’s official picks, honorees and jurors.

Introduced by Denver Movie, the competition will kick off with the opening evening presentation of Malcolm Washington’s directorial debut The Piano Lesson from Netflix on Nov. 1. Hitting the display screen on the MCA Denver on the Vacation 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 extra.

The competition runs Nov. 1-10, and through that point 185 options, documentaries and shorts will display screen within the Colorado capital. Justin Kurzel’s The Order starring Jude Regulation as an FBI agent on the path of a white supremacist group within the Pacific Northwest will function a centerpiece presentation on Nov. 8. The movie, which additionally stars Nicholas Hoult and Jurnee Smollett, has Colorado roots as its based mostly on the nonfiction e-book co-written by Kevin Flynn, The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground. He served as a reporter at Rocky Mountain Information and is now a present Denver Metropolis council member.

DFF will shut with Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 starring Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin and Leonie Benesch. The Paramount title facilities on the terrorist assault that occurred on the 1972 Munich Olympics whereas telling the story from contained in the Munich manufacturing hub of ABC Sports activities because the outlet is masking the 1972 Summer season Olympics.

Additionally included on this 12 months’s lineup are a slew of high-profile titles which were screening in latest weeks at movie festivals from Telluride and Toronto to Venice and New York. DFF picks embody Higher Man, the experimental biopic about British pop famous person Robbie Williams, Brady Corbet’s epic The Brutalist starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Man Pearce and Joe Alwyn, Pedro Almodovár’s English language debut The Room Subsequent Door starring Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, Jacques Audiard’s Emilia Perez starring Zoe Saldaña, 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 Final Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson, Dave Bautista, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kiernan Shipka, Jason Schwartzman, Brenda Music and Billie Lourd. Different excessive profile picks embody Andrea Arnold’s Fowl starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski, Walter Salles’ I’m Nonetheless Right here, and Jesse Eisenberg’s A Actual Ache starring the filmmaker alongside Kieran Culkin.

DFF has zeroed in on a roster of creatives to obtain particular honors throughout the 2024 occasion. Amongst them Patricia Clarkson will obtain a Cassavetes Award for her contributions to cinema. The veteran actress will obtain the shine following a gala screening of Lilly on the MCA Denver on the Vacation Theater. Marianne Jean-Baptiste can be feted with an excellence in performing trophy after a screening of her newest collaboration with Mike Leigh’s Arduous Truths. Fashionable Household star and Tony Award-winner Jesse Tyler Ferguson will take dwelling the third CinemaQ LaBahn Ikon Movie Award, an honor created to acknowledge expertise’s inventive excellence and excellent impression and illustration for the LGBTQ group. The fest will showcase Ferguson’s work in All That We Love and the brief movie It’s Okay. One other one: Nickel Boys helmer RaMell Ross can be feted with the fest’s excellence in directing award and his movie will hit the big-screen at DFF.

Jason Reitman has been making the rounds together with his newest movie, Saturday Night time, which can head to Denver for a particular screening at which members of his forged and inventive workforce can be honored with DFF’s 5280 Award for his or her work. Saturday Night time, directed by Reitman from a script he co-wrote with Gil Kenan, is predicated on the true story of what occurred behind the scenes within the 90 minutes main as much as the primary broadcast of the enduring sketch comedy sequence.

Different honorees: Actor-turned-filmmaker Nnamdi Asomugha will obtain a Breakthrough Director Award following a screening of his debut The Knife; Ryan Future will obtain a Rising Star Award following a gala presentation of Rachel Morrison’s The Hearth Inside; Cristiana Dell’Anna can be honored with the Maria and Tomasso Maglione Italian Filmmaker Award following a screening of Cabrini; and video artist Cecelia Condit will obtain a Brakhage Imaginative and prescient Award.

“Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Patricia Clarkson and Marianne Jean-Baptiste make the whole lot they’re in higher, and we anticipate they’ll do the identical for this 12 months’s competition,” mentioned Denver Movie inventive director Matthew Campbell. “On the similar time, this has at all times been a filmmaker ahead competition, so we’re very proud to have the ability to have a good time the work of RaMell Ross, who has such a recent and thrilling tackle filmmaking, in addition to Jason Reitman, who’s been delivering what audiences need for the higher a part of twenty years.”

The competition’s roster of 2024 jurors contains The Bear showrunner Joanna Calo, Selection’s Daniel D’Addario, IndieWire’s Marcus Jones, actor Taylor John Smith (The place the Crawdads Sing), Berlanti Prods.’ Carl Ogawa, filmmaker Gabriela Ortega (Huella), Backstage Journal’s Briana Rodriguez, performing 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 most of the people on Oct. 4.