Telluride premieres include The Way Back, Never Let Me Go

The annual pre-Toronto elite gathering in the Rockies traditionally features unofficial world premieres of some of the most eagerly awaited awards season contenders.

Weir’s long awaited gulag escape adventure The Way Back stars Colin Farrell, Saoirse Ronan, Mark Strong, Jim Sturgess and Ed Harris. Newmarket announced today [2] that it will distribute the film in the US on January 21 2011, the first film produced by parent company Exclusive Films to be released by Newmarket. National Geographic Entertainment and Imagenation Abu Dhabi co-produced.

Toronto-bound Romanek’s Kazuo Ishiguro adaptation Never Let Me Go stars Keira Knightley, Carey Mulligan and Andrew Garfield. The line-up includes Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones’ A Letter To Elia, Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies, and Cannes entries Another Year from Mike Leigh, Stephen Frear’s Tamara Drewe, Charles Ferguson’s InsideJob, and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Biutiful.

Ferguson is one of three notable documentarians with new work screening at Telluride, the other two being Ken Burns with The Tenth Inning and Errol Morris with Tabloid.

For the first time, Telluride is presenting digital in all its venues and sneak previews will screen throughout the festival.

The full line-up so far is as follows.

A Letter To Elia (US, 2010), Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones

Another Year(UK, 2010), Mike Leigh

Biutiful (Mexico, 2010) Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Mexico, 2010)

Carlos (France, 2010) Olivier Assayas

Chico And Rita (Spain-Cuba, 2010), Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal

The First Grader (UK, 2010), Justin Chadwick

The First Movie (UK, 2009), Mark Cousins

Happy People: A Year In The Taiga (Germany, 2010), Dmitry Vasyukov with Werner Herzog

If I Want To Whistle, I Whistle (Romania, 2010), Florin Serban

The Illusionist (UK, France 2010), Sylvain Chomet

Incendies (Canada, 2010), Denis Villeneuve

Inside Job (US, 2010), Charles Ferguson

The Kings Speech (UK, 2010), Tom Hooper

Le Quattro Volte (Italy, 2010), Michelangelo Frammartino

Never Let Me Go (UK-US, 2010), Mark Romanek

Of Gods And Men (France, 2010), Xavier Beauvois

Oka! Amerikee (US-Central African Republic, 2010), Lavinia Currier

Poetry (South Korea, 2010), Lee Chang-dong

Precious Life (Israel, 2010), Shlomi Eldar

The Princess Of Montpensier (France, 2010), Bertrand Tavernier

Tabloid (US, 2010), Errol Morris

Tamara Drewe(UK, 2010), Stephen Frears

The Tenth Inning (US, 2010), Ken Burns, Lynn Novick

The Way Back (UK, 2010), Peter Weir

Silver Medallion awards recognising “an artist’s significant contribution to the world of cinema” will be presented to Italian film star Claudia Cardinale, The King’s Speechstar Colin Firth, and Peter Weir.

UCLA Film & Television Archive will receive this year’s Special Medallion award in honour of “a hero of cinema - an organisation or individual - that preserves, honours and presents great movies.”

Previously announced guest director Michael Ondaatje presents six films spanning the last four decades of the 20th century: Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent (USSR, 1977); Istvan Szabo’s Confidence (Hungary, 1980); John Huston’s Fat City (US, 1972); Jan Troell’s Here’s Your Life (Sweden, 1966); Robert Rossen’s The Hustler (US, 1961); and Vincent Monnikendam’s Mother Dao, The Turtlelike(Netherlands, 1995).

The full programme will be posted on September 3 on the official website at www.telluridefilmfestival.org

The full programme will be posted on September 3 on the official website.