RogerEbert.com

It’s that time of year again! We’re back with a big team at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which starts tomorrow with one of the biggest programs in the festival’s history. Like every other year, TIFF is a mix of North American, International, Canadian, and World Premieres.

The 53rd annual Telluride Film Festival runs from September 4th-7th in Telluride, Colorado. Every year, the RogerEbert.com team returns to the fest to cover some of the festival’s most notable releases, as well as some under-the-radar curiosities we feel deserve to be discussed. Below is our compiled writing from the fest, courtesy of Associate Editor Robert Daniels and contributors Cortlyn Kelly and Tomris Laffly. Keep checking this space as our coverage continues.

In its 53rd edition, the Telluride Film Festival continues to be an industry leader in exhibiting strong, technically excellent stories. While its documentary slate gained a copious amount of attention because of the world premiere of the secret A24 documentary, “You Can See Everything,” there are several other titles worth paying attention to. Compared to previous years, the 2026 festival’s documentary curation is quite diverse in both subject matter and style.

I have left the mountainous confines of Telluride and am currently winding down mountainous roads to Grand Junction. But I am also unspooling much of what I saw at a festival that included far more laughs than I anticipated. Some of those zingers are in two of these films, though one is decidedly not (you’ll know when you get there).

“Hope,” from director Na Hong-jin, is weirder and wilder than any simple plot description could ever hope to convey. So the best thing to share is that it’s thrilling to see such an unvarnished vision executed with the highest level of technical prowess and sincere love.

One of Apple TV’s best shows, “Slow Horses,” bounces back after a relatively down fifth season to deliver to fans what might be its best outing to date. More than anything, this adaptation of two Mick Herron books (Joe Country and Slough House) counters the current epidemic of streaming television wherein so many limited series feel like they should have just been a movie. How many times lately have you seen two hours of plot in an 8-episode box?

“Primetime” is a media satire, a thriller, and a horror movie. It’s also about the meaning of the word evil—whether it is best understood as a description of thought and behavior, or a malevolent force. In the end, it makes a stronger case for the second meaning. The characters all fall into one of two categories: the corruptors and the corrupted. Evil seems to be passed from one character to another like a sickness. Sometimes it hides in the dark, waiting for the next vessel to arrive.

In a relatively short span of time, we’ve become so accustomed to streaming mini-series that live and die on the WTF nature of their twists. In just this year, “His & Hers,” “Run Away,” and “I Will Find You” have become Netflix hits in part because of the shocked social responses to their non-stop plot machinations. Credit (or blame) Harlan Coben, but seeing a mystery/thriller in 2026 that anchors itself to the traumas of their characters, instead of just the secrets they keep, feels different.

With great care, the heroic tale of mountain climber Tenzing Norgay is fictionalized for the first time. Based on true events and inspired by a book, “Tenzing” is crafted by director Jennifer Peedom and screenwriter Luke Davies with oversight from Tenzing’s son, Tenzing Norbu. On the surface, it’s an adventure flick, but the story has spiritual and emotional depth that gives Tenzing’s life mission universal resonance.

The Telluride Film Festival has always liked a level of surprise and secrecy, not officially announcing its full line-up until the day before its kick-off. Over the years, it’s added much-speculated-upon but ultimately unconfirmed titles to its schedule on a “last-minute” basis. Even by the festival’s own standards, the mystery that surrounded Sunday’s TBA screening was unusual.