The Jewish Take on the Telluride Film Festival

The Telluride Film Festival is always an embarrassment of riches, and the 52nd edition, held Labor Day weekend 2025, was no exception.

Since I love a really depressing Holocaust film, I began the annual movie marathon with a new documentary about the making of “Shoah,” with the suitably depressing title “All I Had Was Nothingness.”  Annette Insdorf, the festival’s moderator of 45 years and the author of “Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust,” conducted the post-screening Q&A with French filmmaker Guillaume Robit. Professor Insdorf, who teaches in Columbia’s Graduate Film Program, is also a producer on the excellent new documentary “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire,” which also screened at Telluride.

“All I Had Was Nothingness” is an insightful look at Claude Lanzmann’s agonizing 12-year ordeal as he struggled to make sense of the Holocaust without sensationalizing or using archival material. His 9-hour plus opus, which remains the definitive Holocaust documentary, took a huge personal toll on the director. I was reminded of Elie Weisel’s comment about the Holocaust: “How can we talk about it? How can we not talk about it.” Such was the dilemma Lanzmann faced as he stared into the abyss.

Released as “Shoah” celebrates its 40^th anniversary,  the new documentary was a similar labor of not exactly love, but of moral imperative. Robit scoured 220 hours of outtakes from “Shoah” to produce a moving testament to Lanzmann, an eccentric and exacting journalist, writer and filmmaker who died in 2018 at the age of 92.

The second film of my first day was also a portrait of an accomplished Jewish artist, but one whose demons were entirely of his own making. The festival’s tribute to actor extraordinaire Ethan Hawke included his new film, “Blue Moon,” in which the esteemed actor plays Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who teamed with Jewish composer Richard Rodgers to create such memorable songs as “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Manhattan,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” and “My Funny Valentine.”

Richard Linklater’s intense drama takes place on opening night of  “Oklahoma!,” written by Rodgers and his new Jewish partner Oscar Hammerstein. Spurned because his alcoholism has made the partnership untenable, Hart is a desperate soul, a brilliant man and huge talent who is his own worst enemy. Hawke, delivering what amounts to a wittily caustic monologue, gives a searing Oscar-worthy performance as the tortured artist teetering on the brink of self-destruction.

The next day I attended the tribute to filmmaker Noah Baumbach, who is one of the most overtly Jewish directors working today (“Marriage Story, “The Squid and the Whale,” “Frances Ha,” “Greenberg,” “The Meyerowitz Stories”). He is also married to Greta (“Barbie”) Gerwig. His new comic drama, “Jay Kelly” stars George Clooney as an aging, egotistical action star. Adam Sandler, who plays his long-suffering manager, took the stage to pay tribute to the director. Seeing Sandler’s impromptu performance was a festival highlight.

Carol Kane, another Jewish comic gem, appeared in the documentary “Carol and Joy,” which focuses on her elderly vivacious and eccentric mother. Director Nathan Silver, who appeared with the affectionate film, got to know Carol after casting her in his 2024 odd-couple dramedy “Between the Temples,” the story of a cantor in crisis (Jason Schwartzman), who forms an attachment to his former music teacher and current Bat Mitzvah student (Kane).

I also saw Jodie Foster’s new film, “A Private Life” in which the actress plays a Jewish therapist having a meltdown as she attempts to solve a potential murder. The French quasi-comedy, which has very little Jewish content, is delightfully quirky, enlivened by Foster’s bright and bold performance. Foster, who took the stage to discuss the film, is both funny and perceptive.

When I heard that “Everywhere Man: The Lives and Times of Peter Asher” was being shown, I hoped the Beatles expert and major musical talent would appear with this long-overdue tribute. The musician first achieved fame in the duo Peter and Gordon (Does “I don’t care what you say, I won’t stay in a world without love!” ring a bell?). Asher, who had had an incredible career as a musical producer, manager, performer, and discoverer of new talent, is also a close friend of Paul McCartney, who dated Peter’s sister Jane Asher for five years.

Asher, who serves as a jocular DJ on Sirius XM’s The Beatles channel, was sadly not in attendance. Out on tour, at 80! I did get to talk to the directors Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller, who also directed “Hallelujah,” which opened our festival three years ago. The reason I was hoping to talk to Asher is that our upcoming festival’s opening night film is “Midas Man,” a British drama about Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager and mentor. Asher knew Epstein well and inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2014. Since I could not ply him for inside insight into “the fifth Beatle,” I will have to content myself with his speech from the induction.

I will close this tale of my Telluride adventures with a small-Jewish-world anecdote. I happened to see a documentary, “Earth to Michael,” made by the son of an astronaut. The film was excellent. But what made the screening such a gratifying Telluride experience was that the filmmakers, all very young, were so incredibly excited to have their film shown at the prestigious festival.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved standing in line for coffee next to Jodie Foster. I loved seeing the impossibly handsome Colin Farrell cross the street in front of me.  I loved hearing Iranian dissident (and twice jailed) filmmaker Jafar Panahi discuss his new film, “It Was Just an Accident,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in May. I loved sitting ten feet from Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong as they discussed the new Bruce Springsteen biopic with director Scott Cooper.

But seeing these young filmmakers, who brought friends and family with them, reminded me of the important role festivals play in nurturing new talent. The director, listed in the program and introduced as ZZ, was clearly bursting with pride.

Back home, I happened to be chatting with a woman in Denver who was has invited me to give a talk on Jewish film comedy at Temple Sinai. When I mentioned I was just back from Telluride, she said a friend’s son has a film there. His last name was Zuckerman, which didn’t ring a bell. But when a quick Google search gave me his first name, Zachary, it clicked. Of course, ZZ was Jewish!