Sep 8, 2026 · 1h 53m
Festival films turn awards buzz into a high-wire act
The 10 Best Movies at the Telluride and Venice Film Festivals. Plus: Nathan Fielder’s Stunning Elizabeth Holmes Doc.
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins show how Telluride and Venice transform films, performances, and documentaries into competing Oscar narratives.
- 1Telluride’s intimacy and Venice’s spectacle shape how films are discovered, discussed, and positioned for awards.
- 2Primetime becomes the festivals’ defining conversation through Nathan Fielder, Elizabeth Holmes, and Robert Pattinson’s volatile performance.
- 3The strongest films balance artistic ambition with questions about media power, historical responsibility, and the ethics of spectacle.
Don't miss
The hosts explain why Primetime became Telluride’s dominant conversation, connecting its documentary form and festival setting to its extraordinary impact.
The brief
Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins report from Telluride and Venice, comparing a compact mountain festival with a glamorous but logistically punishing island event.
Their festival guide doubles as an awards-season anatomy lesson: secret screenings, crowded boats, parties, and audience reactions quickly become part of a film’s story.
Primetime dominates the conversation, first through its documentary portrait of Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes, then through Robert Pattinson’s startling performance in a separate narrative film.
The hosts weigh films including Oasis: Don’t Look Back in Anger, Possible Love, Wild Horse 9, and Musk against questions of craft, politics, ethics, and Oscar potential.
The episode’s sharpest tension is between festival excitement and critical judgment: buzz can reveal a film’s power, but it can also manufacture an awards narrative before audiences settle on its merits.
Featuring
Julianne Moore
Netflix
Musk
Rupert Murdoch
La Bola NegraListen to the full episode and explore every guest, topic, and moment on PodLume.