The Telluride Film Festival has selected documentary filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer as its guest director for its 44th festival, which will take place in Telluride, Colorado, on Sept. 1-4 2017.
Oppenheimer received two Academy Award nominations for best documentary for his 2012 film “The Act of Killing” and 2014’s “The Look of Silence” — both produced by Signe Byrge Sørensen for Final Cut for Real, and both screened at Telluride Film Festival.
Joshua Oppenheimer will select a series of films to be presented at the festival.
“The Guest Director program is one of the most essential and wonderful parts of our festival,” says Telluride Film Festival executive director Julie Huntsinger. “Joshua has been a part of the SHOW with several of the incredible films he has made in the past, and now as our Guest Director. His rare combination of intelligence and down-to-earth understanding of humanity will make for a remarkable presentation of films our audience will not want to miss. Further gilding the lily, FilmStruck has joined us as the sponsor of this selection. We are beyond fortunate with this terrific combination of cinematic genius.”
“You stumble from a cinema into Telluride’s thin air, touched in ways you never imagined possible,” Joshua Oppenheimer comments. “You turn to a total stranger to share a thought unthinkable only two hours before. What happened? In the mirror of a great film, you confronted truths from which you normally avert your eyes. You recognised yourself in those delicate, mysterious moments that defy words yet make us human. Telluride's movies are empathy machines, inviting us to find ourselves in people we’d never otherwise know. Julie Huntsinger and Tom Luddy’s annual selection is driven by such curiosity and humanity that you cannot leave Telluride without feeling the responsibility and pain and love that comes with compassion. We emerge connected, reminded that self-absorption ultimately leaves us isolated and fearful. There is no greater privilege than joining Tom and Julie as this year’s guest director, sharing with Telluride’s audience the films that give me the greatest courage, and teach me to practice the widest empathy.”
For more on Telluride Film Festival visit the official website here.