But when the 44th Telluride Film Festival kicks off Friday, scores of filmmakers, stars and movie executives will make their way to the isolated town in the mountains of Colorado, where miners once dug for silver and gold, to hunt for another precious commodity: Oscar buzz. “Downsizing,” which debuted to strong reviews at the Venice Film Festival this week, is a skewed sci-fi fairy tale set in a near-future in which scientists have figured out how to shrink humans down to 6 inches in size. “There are a lot of really unusual, surreal, stylized films,” Huntsinger said. This year’s Venice Film Festival, by contrast, features just one film directed by a woman out of 21 in competition, a fact that Bening, who is serving as jury president, reflected on in remarks on Wednesday to journalists there. In a way, Telluride as a festival is about that — it’s about using cinema and empathy to grapple with the most urgent things we as human beings need to address.”

Source: Los Angeles Times August 31, 2017 13:05 UTC