ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

Female Film Critics 24/375

telluride film festival

Festivals Reviews 

MAKING MARIE ANTOINETTE (Telluride FF 2026) – Review by Diane Carson

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Already celebrated for her dazzling, incisive Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse (1991) documenting the filmmaking trials of husband Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Eleanor Coppola’s Making Marie Antoinette (2026) confirms and enhances her reputation as an accomplished filmmaker in her own right. Early in the documentary, in excerpts from her journal spoken by Diane Lane, Eleanor acknowledges that she much prefers to stand back and observe, that “it is against my personality to shoot a documentary, and yet I continue to do so.”

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News 

WEEK IN WOMEN: Rebecca Hall is Guest Director at Telluride Film Fest 2026 – Brandy McDonnell reports

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Acclaimed British-American actress, writer and director Rebecca Hall is serving as guest director for the 2026 Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. Hall is selecting a series of films to present at the 53rd festival, running Sept. 4-7. Festival organizers annually select a top film enthusiast to join in the creation of the festival’s program lineup. The guest director serves as a key collaborator in Telluride Film Festival’s programming decisions, bringing new ideas, unique perspectives and overlooked films to the festival. In keeping with Telluride Film Festival tradition, Hall’s film selections, along with the rest of the festival lineup, will remain a secret until just before opening day.

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SPOTLIGHT 

SPOTLIGHT September 2024: Debbi L. Klopman, “additional crew”

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Debbi Klopman’s IMDb page credits her as “additional crew” on more than 30 films, including Moonlight, Fremont and Booger, among others. But “additional crew” doesn’t accurately or adequately describe the special form of magic that Debbi Klopman conjures to make movies happen. Her services are, in fact, essential. Without them, the movies mentioned above and a wide range of other films that we love mightily might have turned out very differently — or not at all. Yes, Debbi’s services are that essential. So, what exactly does Debbi do as “additional crew?”

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Reviews 

THE ZONE OF INTEREST – Review by Diane Carson

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It is a daunting challenge to present a cinematic experience that does justice to the Holocaust without repeating previous worthy considerations of the unfathomable horrors. Stretching back to Alain Resnais’ 1956 Night and Fog, important fiction and nonfiction works have honored the victims’ memories amidst various dramatizations of Nazi inhumanity. Writer/director Jonathan Glazer has forged a new approach in The Zone of Interest, a narrative of overwhelming, astonishing restraint. Loosely based on Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, Glazer’s narrative enters the pantheon of unforgettable films on the Holocaust, adding another chapter to our understanding of the banality of evil.

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Festivals 

Telluride FF 2023: Celebrates Diversity for its 50th Year – Diane Carson reports

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The Telluride Film Festival, always held over Labor Day Weekend in that gorgeous Colorado town, celebrated fifty years with a dazzling diversity. The twenty films I squeezed into five days ranged from director Tod Browning’s 1927 The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford, to writer/director Justine Triet’s intriguing Anatomy of a Fall, this year’s prestigious Cannes Palme d’Or winner.

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Reviews 

GODLAND – Review by Diane Carson

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Godland follows a priest’s misguided mission in 19th century Iceland. If ever a film ironically invoked its title, Icelandic director Hlynur Pálmason’s Godland certainly does. Set in the late nineteenth century, young, initially idyllic Danish priest Lucas travels across Iceland’s gorgeous, remote, forbidding landscapes, intent on building a church, establishing a Christian community around it, and, incidentally, documenting it all with photographs taken on his large-format camera.

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Festivals 

Telluride Film Fest 2022: A Woman’s Wrap – Diane Carson reports

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Over Labor Day weekend, the 49th Telluride Film Festival presented thought-provoking films to its full complement of attendees, a nice rebound from the all-mask 2021 event. As always, no one could come close to seeing all the enticing films on offer, so tough choices and constant second guessing rules. This year women directed and dominated exceptionally strong selections that tell stories of quite different time periods and subjects. Intelligently and insightfully observing internal and external struggles, revealing the specificity of contemporary and historical pressures (so remarkably relevant today), the fest’s films reached out and inspired as they informed. We are, indeed, a global community.

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Festivals 

Telluride Film Festival 2021 Wrap – Diane Carson reports

Diane Carson ,

As always, the Telluride Film Festival offered an awe-inspiring, diverse selection of contemporary and historically notable films, too many to see even with the extra day added to the 2021 Labor Day weekend. Of the thirty-eight main selections, the six chosen by guest director Barry Jenkins, the compilation programs of Student Prints, Calling Cards, and Great Expectations programs, I managed sixteen screenings. It’s a feast that always leaves me, now in my twenty-fifth year of attendance, ecstatic for the medium and frustrated that I can’t see every offering.

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Reviews 

MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN – Review by Diane Carson

Diane Carson 0 Comments , ,

Motherless Brooklyn captures film noir style and story. As he acknowledged at the Telluride premiere for Motherless Brooklyn, actor/director Edward Norton loves film noir—narrative complexity, lighting keeping characters and motives in the dark, and a jazz score expressing and evoking strong emotions. Adding that he wanted to treat the characters “like Chandler detectives,” Norton revisits 1950s New York, that shadowy city of nefarious deeds and racist attitudes.

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