Gay Filmmakers Featured at Telluride

Haigh (left), photo by JUCO | Haynes, photo by David Shankbone

It may just be Labor Day to most of us, but this weekend marks the kick off of the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. In recent years, Telluride has signaled the real start of the Oscar race, with movies premiering there and sustaining their momentum all the way to Oscar nominations in January.

This year among the movie lineup, two gay filmmakers are showcasing their films, and we're hoping American audiences will be as enraptured as European audiences have been.

Andrew Haigh, who directed the indie gem Weekend and wrote and directed various episodes of the HBO series Looking, returns to film with his martial drama, 45 Years. The film, starring Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, already won Best Actor and Best Actress awards at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year, in addition to Rampling scooping up Best Performance in a British Film and Andrew Haigh being awarded the Michael Powell Award for Best British Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Todd Haynes, who directed Far From Heaven and Velvet Goldmine among other Queer Cinema staples, is presenting his film Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara. Adapted from a Patricia Highsmith novel, Carol presents a rarely seen look into two women falling in love during 1950s New York. Rooney Mara won the coveted Best Actress award at Cannes this past summer (where just a year earlier, our cover star Julianne Moore won the same award for Maps to the Stars) while the film also picked up the Queer Palm.

Carol will be released Nov. 20, 2015. 45 Years is available on VOD. Watch the trailer below: