The 53rd festival packs 83 film titles into four days, with new work from Martin McDonagh, Werner Herzog, Danny Boyle and more.

One day before the first projectors start rolling for the Telluride Film Festival, the secret is out.

John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell are playing veteran CIA operatives in Martin McDonagh’s Wild Horse Nine. Rami Malek is heading into late-1980s New York for Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love. Kate and Rooney Mara share the screen in Werner Herzog’s Bucking Fastard. Andrew Scott takes on Hamlet and the final years of actor Ian Charleson in Elsinore. And Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti collide in Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut.

Those are only a few of the names converging on the San Juan Mountains when the 53rd Telluride Film Festival runs Friday, Sept. 4, through Monday, Sept. 7.

The famously secretive festival released its 2026 program Thursday, revealing a slate of more than 60 feature films, shorts and revival programs. The official guide indexes 83 individual film titles, alongside tributes, conversations, panels and other events. This year’s festival is dedicated to production designer Dean Tavoularis, who died earlier this year at 93.

Andrew Haigh, Sandra Hüller and Malkovich will receive Telluride’s Silver Medallion. Haigh arrives with A Long Winter, his adaptation of Colm Tóibín’s novella starring Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Caitríona Balfe, Kit Connor and Fred Hechinger. Hüller leads Markus Schleinzer’s Rose and also appears in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland. Malkovich’s Wild Horse Nine pairs him with Rockwell as CIA agents in Chile in 1973, with Parker Posey, Steve Buscemi and Tom Waits also in the cast.

Elsewhere, Danny Boyle chronicles the rise of Rupert Murdoch’s tabloid empire in Ink, starring Guy Pearce, Jack O’Connell and Claire Foy. Jesse Eisenberg directs Moore and Giamatti in The Debut, about a New Jersey homemaker who throws herself into a community-theatre musical. David and Nathan Zellner go considerably stranger with Alpha Gang, whose invading extraterrestrial biker gang is played by Léa Seydoux, Dave Bautista, Lily-Rose Depp, Bae Doona, Chris Pine, Kelvin Harrison Jr. and Riley Keough.

The nonfiction lineup is nearly as loaded. Ron Howard profiles photographer Richard Avedon in Avedon. Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin return to the mountains for Everest: The Other Side. Frank Marshall and Nigel Sinclair turn their attention to The Who guitarist Pete Townshend in Pete Townshend: Behind Blue Eyes. Nanette Burstein tackles the astronomer behind Cosmos in Carl Sagan: We Are Made of Star Stuff.

Then there is Mark Cousins, who has apparently decided a conventional running time is for cowards: The Story of Documentary Film runs 960 minutes — 16 hours — and will screen in four parts.

“There are films in this year’s program that I know audiences will be talking about long after they leave the theater, and there are others that may completely surprise them,” Festival Director Julie Huntsinger said in announcing the lineup.

Every film playing the 2026 Telluride Film Festival

The complete 2026 lineup includes:

  • The SHOW — new features and long-form works: A Long Winter; Act 3; Alpha Gang; Avedon; Bucking Fastard; Burgundy; Carl Sagan: We Are Made of Star Stuff; Club Kid; The Debut; The Disciple; Elsinore; Everest: The Other Side; Fatherland; Fjord; Gentle Monster; The Idiot(s); Ink; La Bola Negra; The Liberation; Making Marie Antoinette; The Man I Love; Minotaur; My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile; Once Upon a Time in Harlem; The Only Living Pickpocket in New York; Pete Townshend: Behind Blue Eyes; Rehearsals for a Revolution; Rose; The Row; The Story of Documentary Film; Sumo: Spirit Weighs Nothing; Tender Loving Care; Tenzing; The Unknown; Wild Horse Nine.
  • Restored features in the SHOW: Begotten and Beau Geste.
  • Shorts in the main program: A Song for the Snow Lion; A Dance Through Time; Maybe Tomorrow; Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon; Love, Rendered; The Revolution Against Death; The Buffalo Miracle; Witt v. Air Force.
  • Rebecca Hall’s Guest Director selections: Akenfield; Margaret; Portrait of Jason; The Servant; Synecdoche, New York; What’s Up, Doc?
  • Backlot: The Golden Age; The Stars Watch From Long Ago; House of Criticism; The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer; Into the Breach; Maverick: The Epic Adventures of David Lean; To Escape; The Natural State; One More Time; Zero Intention of Living Quietly.
  • Special and revival screenings: The Intruder; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Across the Universe; The Bridge on the River Kwai; Christine; Marie Antoinette; Moonlight; Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.
  • Filmmakers of Tomorrow: Crisis Actor; Farmacias; I Want to Live; Coconut; Stem; Para Los Contrincantes (For the Opponents); La Hora de Irse (Time to Go); Acid City; Class Photo; It Lives Under the Snow; Rock Springs: 1885; Triangle; In Search of the Grey Bird with Green Stripes; Yawman Ma Walad (Someday, a Child).

That gives Telluride audiences the festival’s perennial Labor Day problem: four days, 83 films and no possible way to see them all.

“What makes the weekend special is the very simple act of sitting down together, turning off the lights and seeing what happens on the screen,” she said. “We can’t wait to share this year’s Festival with everyone who makes the trip to Telluride.”