Greta Gerwig in Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha

The annual trek to “The Show,” as organizers call the Telluride Film Festival, begins unofficially each year in line at LAX for the chartered flight to Montrose, Colorado.  New faces among the veterans who reunite each year to make a pilgrimage to the mountain shrine for movies reveal what will be shown at the festival, much of which will also appear in the 50th New York Film Festival.

Spotted in line were Noah Baumbach (Margot at the Wedding, Squid and the Whale) with Greta Gerwig (Damsels in Distress, Greenberg) who re-teamed after Greenberg (and together with Scott Rudin) to create this fall's anticipated indie film Frances Ha (NYFF '12), a humorous look at life in New York seen through the eyes of a young dancer who navigates the challenges (and lack of) work, friends, and ambition.

The presence of Alessandro Nivola signaled the selection of Ginger and Rosa (NYFF '12), directed by Sally Potter, about a young woman's coming of age in London in the sixties. Unfamiliar to U.S. audiences (but not for long) were Dror Morek, who made the startling documentary The Gatekeepers (NYFF '12) about Israel's highly secret intelligence force Shin Bet, and Margarete Tiesel, whose portrayal of a middle-aged woman on a sex vacation in Kenya in Ulrich Seidl's Paradise: Love was one of the most talked-about performances in Cannes this year.


Olivia Williams, Laura Linney and Bill Murray in Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson

The festival, which opens today and runs through Monday, September 3 will present a robust 100-film lineup of new features, short films and revivals. Among the 25 new films are seven which will repeat in the New York Film Festival. In addition to Frances Ha, Ginger and Rosa, and The Gatekeepers, these include:

Michael Haneke's Amour The Cannes Palme d'Or winner is an unflinching look at an aging couple grappling with issues of life and death featuring two superb performances by Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva.

Christian Petzold's Barbara – The Berlinale Silver Bear winner (Best Director) centers on a woman doctor exiled to a provincial backwater in East Germany who makes unexpected discoveries about her life.

Pablo Larrain's No – The Cannes Directors' Fortnight top prizewinner starring Gael Garcia Bernal is an original and riveting period procedural about those in Chile who deployed modern TV commercial techniques to frame their ideological political struggle with the Pinochet regime.

Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson – An intimate portrait of FDR (Bill Murray) and his distant cousin Daisy (Laura Linney) while they play host to the Queen and King of England as Roosevelt was trying to bring the two countries closer together on the eve of WWII.