TELLURIDE BY THE SEA 2022 ALL-STARS
Cate Blanchett; Florence Pugh; Grigory Rodchenkov; Rooney Mara; Claire Foy; Jessie Buckley; Sheila McCarthy; Judith Ivey; Daniel Giménez Cacho; Kíla Lord Cassidy; Pablo Schils; Joely Mbundu
NEW WORKS FROM ACCLAIMED DIRECTORS
Todd Field (In The Bedroom, Little Children); Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant, Birdman, Babel); Sarah Polley; Sebastián Lelio (Gloria, A Fantastic Woman); Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne; Bryan Fogel (Icarus); Trevor Beck Frost and Melissa Lesh.
The secret is out: six diverse, original films with international casts of both seasoned actors and fresh new faces, directed by some of the world’s most acclaimed filmmakers, are coming to The Music Hall’s Telluride by the Sea Film Festival in Portsmouth, New Hampshire—transforming the charming Seacoast town into a destination for cinephiles for three exciting days, Friday, September 16 – Sunday, September 18, 2022. This year, a seventh film, Icarus: The Aftermath, is available to Passholders only.
For its 23rd anniversary, Telluride by the Sea 2022 is filled with all-stars: Cate Blanchett; Florence Pugh; Grigory Rodchenkov; Rooney Mara; and Claire Foy; and new work from directors Todd Field (In The Bedroom, Little Children); Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant, Birdman, Babel); Sebastián Lelio (Gloria, A Fantastic Woman); Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne; and Bryan Fogel (Icarus).
“To be able to bring one of the top North American film festivals to the Seacoast for another year is such a treat for cinema buffs and for occasional moviegoers,” says Mark Pruett, The Music Hall’s Cinema Curator. “From Cate Blanchett and Florence Pugh to powerful documentaries set in jungles both physical and political, there is proof Telluride by the Sea has something for everyone!”
In keeping with the tradition, a limited number of individual film tickets go on sale online (themusichall.org) at 10am Friday, September 2; 12pm Friday, September 2 for walk-up and phone orders. Weekend passes and a limited number of Patron passes are already on sale.
2022 Telluride by the Sea Schedule
Friday, September 16
6pm: Doors open for Patron Passholders
7pm: TÁR
Patron Passholder Party at The Music Hall Lounge following film
Saturday, September 17
12pm: Bardo
4pm: Women Talking
7:30pm: The Wonder
Passholder Festival Party on Chestnut Street following film
Sunday, September 18
10am-11:30am: Patron Passholder Brunch at The Music Hall Lounge
12pm: Wildcat
3pm: Tori and Lokita
6pm: Icarus: The Aftermath (for passholders only)
2022 Telluride by the Sea Film Descriptions
TÁR
USA, 2h 37m, Courtesy of Focus Features
Writer-director Todd Field (In The Bedroom, Little Children) returns with his first film in 16 years, focusing his lens on Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett), the first chief female conductor of a major symphony orchestra and an essential interpreter of classical music in the 21st century. Splitting her time between professorial duties at Juilliard and Berlin, where she’s about to record a major Mahler work, Tár rules her personal and professional worlds with an iron fist. When a young cellist (Sophie Kauer) joins the ensemble, however, the conductor begins pulling strings for the strings player—and a slow unraveling morphs into a perfect storm of scandal. A take-no-prisoners showcase for Blanchett that’s aided by amazing supporting turns from Nina Hoss and Noémie Merlant, Field’s scathing character study turns the maxim “whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad with power” into the foundation for a portrait of a precipitous downfall.
Bardo: A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths
Mexico-USA, 2h 54m, Courtesy of Netflix (subtitles)
When Silverio (Daniel Giménez Cacho), a renowned journalist and documentary filmmaker, returns home to Mexico City after years away, he finds himself caught between worlds. He’s raised his family abroad, the mythologies of his birthplace have become tangled with those of his chosen home, and the present moment feels unfamiliar and volatile. Alejandro González Iñárritu (The Revenant, Birdman, Babel) taps his own experiences as he makes his first Mexican film in years, creating a work that’s alternately rapturously epic and stirringly intimate. Cacho carries the film’s sophisticated tonal shifts—from wildly funny to arrestingly poignant to sublimely surreal—as Iñárritu recalibrates cinema, seeking to capture the complexity of one life, with its heart-piercing intensity and tragicomic drift. Bardo (subtitled “A False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”) is a transcendent experience: it grapples with the nature of time and place and explores the turbulent landscapes of the mind.
Women Talking
Canada, 1h 44m, Courtesy of United Artists Releasing
In a hayloft on a prairie far away, a group of Mennonite women gathers to conspire. They have choices, just like us: they could do nothing; they could stay and fight; or they can leave. The metaphor is as clear as the light, for they need to outlast the abuse they endure from men. We never see these men, but we gather their power in the women’s eyes. This is a movie that reminds us of Carl Dreyer, but this adaptation of Miriam Toews’ novel has women’s survival as its faith, and its look, its light, and its sound emerge through the writing and direction of Sarah Polley. Lit up by radiantly fierce performances (Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Sheila McCarthy, and Judith Ivey) this is, to quote the film, “an act of female imagination,” yet another Polley masterpiece, and, unequivocally, the film for now.
The Wonder
UK-Ireland, 1h 48m, Courtesy of Netflix
In famine-ravaged Ireland, Lib (Florence Pugh), a young English nurse, is hired to uncover the mystery of a peasant girl named Anna (Kíla Lord Cassidy), who miraculously seems to survive without eating. Director Sebastián Lelio (Gloria, A Fantastic Woman) crafts a riveting Gothic suspense-thriller of often-shocking emotional power and complexity, questioning the reliability of faith, both religious and scientific. The superlative script by Lelio, Alice Birch, and Emma Donoghue (adapted from Donoghue’s novel) turns starvation into a focal point where powerful religious devotion, sexual guilt, and sheer survival intersect, with suggestive echoes of Hawthorne, James, and the Brontës, and aided by Ari Wegner’s lustrous Dutch master-style cinematography. Pugh and the supporting cast (Tom Burke, Toby Jones, and Elaine Cassidy) bring powerful performances, and Kíla Lord Cassidy is a true wonder as the enigmatic Anna.
Wildcat
USA, 1h 46m, Courtesy of Amazon
Harry, a British Afghan war vet crippled by depression and PTSD, arrives at an animal rescue program deep in the Peruvian jungle and finds solace while nurturing an orphaned baby ocelot whom he is preparing for reentry into the wild. He’s assisted by the project’s creator Samantha—a brilliant, academically trained conservationist with her own anguished family history. As Harry begins taking steps toward emotional health, he finds the jungle a brutal proving ground, with poachers, clear-cutters, and non-human predators all around, with loneliness stalking his psyche. Harry needs the animals as desperately as the animals need him, and even they may not be enough. Along with supplying ravishing landscape and wildlife imagery and a taut story, producer-directors Trevor Beck Frost and Melissa Lesh have created something more impressive: a compelling and sometimes harrowing psychological documentary of two people who are living, in every conceivable sense, on the edge.
Tori and Lokita
Belgium, 1h 28m, Courtesy of Sideshow (subtitles)
The refugees Tori (Pablo Schils) and Lokita (Joely Mbundu), a little boy and adolescent girl, have fled religious violence in Africa. After pretending to Belgian authorities they are brother and sister, in the hope of increasing their odds for legal working papers, their lie becomes the truth, as they fiercely protect each other while navigating a host of dangers. For 30 years, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, former Telluride tributees and eight-time prize winners at Cannes, have sustained and revitalized the cinematic tradition of humanistic, politically engaged neorealist filmmaking. Here, with rigor and without a trace of sentimentality, the Dardennes portray a society that ruthlessly exploits children while, simultaneously, inspiring us with the indisputable power of unconditional love. Through their careful direction, and the brilliant performances of Schils and Mbundu, we begin to believe that love can conquer all.
Icarus: The Aftermath
USA, 1h 51m, Courtesy of Independent
In his Oscar-winning documentary Icarus, Bryan Fogel helped the Russian scientist Grigory Rodchenkov blow the whistle on Russia’s unsavory and illegal use of performance-enhancing drugs in training Olympic athletes. Fogel’s follow-up provides a hair-raising mixture of Kafkaesque nightmare and Le Carré-type suspense as, over the course of three years, Rodchenkov is a nomad refugee, continuously moving residences, protected by his heard-but-never-seen security detail. Why? Vladimir Putin has publicly stated his determination to kill Rodchenkov, leading to a virtual fatwa supported by Russia’s entire political and cultural apparatus. Fogel’s astonishing story includes Rodchenkov’s daring attempts to counter Putin’s charges, and his painful efforts to obtain U.S. citizenship. Though sometimes hilariously narcissistic, Rodchenkov is more a hero than any Marvel character: brilliantly articulate and audaciously brave, he serves as a devastatingly complex tragicomic symbol of the Russian people’s anguished endurance under Putin’s vicious rule.
ABOUT THE TELLURIDE FILM FESTIVAL
The Telluride Film Festival has been, for the last 49 years, a celebration of the art of film: honoring the great masters of the cinema, discovering the rare and unknown, bringing new works by the world’s greatest directors and the latest in American independent film to a small mountain town in Colorado. The New York Times called Telluride “the smallest, most original, and most stimulating of the major festivals,” while Entertainment Tonight simply said it was “the world’s best festival.”
ABOUT TELLURIDE BY THE SEA
The Music Hall and the Telluride Film Festival collaborate on an exclusive presentation of six new features, brought directly from their Colorado debuts. This unique and intimate Portsmouth event treats audience members from across the Northeast to an exclusive peek into the Telluride experience—packing one September weekend in Portsmouth with the latest international cinema, private parties, great music, delicious food, and inspired conversations with other cinephiles of all ages, tastes, and backgrounds.
Ticket Information
Benefits for Passholders: Preferred seating for all films, Festival Party on Chestnut Street, access to Icarus: The Aftermath screening.
PATRON PASS – $220 – ENTITLES THE BEARER TO:
• Primary seating for all films
• Opening night post-show party at The Music Hall Lounge
• VIP access to Founders Lobby all weekend, no lines
• Festival Party on Chestnut St.
• Sunday Brunch at The Lounge
• Patron Pass Seat Saver
• Access to the 7th film, Icarus: The Aftermath, on Sunday
WEEKEND PASS – $105 – ENTITLES THE BEARER TO:
• Preferred seating for all films
• Festival Party on Chestnut St.
• Access to the 7th film, Icarus: The Aftermath, on Sunday
Please note: Seating is General Admission. Patron Passholders are admitted first, Weekend Passholders second, and Individual ticket holders third. Show up early for the best seating options. Saving of seats or places in line is prohibited, except for Patron Passholders using designated seat-savers. Use of photographic, video, recording, or broadcast equipment is strictly prohibited.
INDIVIDUAL FILM TICKETS – $20
A limited number of individual tickets will be available on Friday, September 2 (10am online orders, 12pm for walk-up and phone).
Passes are on sale now at the B2W Box Office at the Historic Theater located at 28 Chestnut Street in downtown Portsmouth, by phone at 603.436.2400, or online at TheMusicHall.org.