A24's Secret Telluride Screening: Phones Locked, Title Under Wraps
A 174-minute A24 film — part documentary, entirely mysterious — is set to screen as the surprise attraction at the 53rd Telluride Film Festival, and nobody outside a tight circle knows what it is.
Deadline reported the exclusive on 6 September 2026, confirming that A24 had recently acquired worldwide rights to the film in a competitive situation rather than developing and producing it in-house. The studio declined to comment further.
The Herzog theatre, Telluride's largest venue, will host the screening. Electronic devices will be bagged and locked using the Yondr system — the same pouch-based lockdown technology deployed at comedy shows and confidential test screenings to prevent piracy and leaks. After the credits roll on the near-three-hour runtime, a Q&A with undisclosed participants is scheduled to follow.
Festivalgoers love a guessing game, and this one has produced plenty. The film is a hybrid project, at least partly documentary, which narrows the field — but not by much. Among the A24 titles that can be ruled out: Ethan Hawke's Highway 99: A Double Album, a three-hour Merle Haggard documentary-travelogue featuring Dolly Parton and Bob Dylan, debuted at Telluride the previous year. A24's comedy Goblin, starring Ken Branagh and Skyler Gisondo, has not yet started shooting. Zac Efron's Famous still awaits a release date on the slate. Ruben Östlund's The Entertainment System Is Down was intended for Cannes and still had work remaining.
The wider 2026 Telluride lineup, announced 3 September, is already strong on its own terms. Jesse Eisenberg's The Debut, an A24 musical comedy starring Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti about a timid middle-aged woman, premieres alongside Elsinore and Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care — possibly the British director's final film. The festival is paying tributes to Sandra Hüller, John Malkovich, and Andrew Haigh.
What makes the mystery potent is the acquisition angle. A24 buying a finished film at a festival is not unusual — at Sundance in January 2026, the studio was among buyers in talks for titles whose offers exceeded $10 million. At Cannes in May, a studio buyer told Deadline that Jordan Firstman's Club Kid was widely assumed to be heading to A24 before it drew eight-figure offers and fierce competition. A decade earlier, at Telluride 2016, Amy Adams' Arrival was among a handful of films seeking distribution, with Fox Searchlight, A24, the Orchard, Sony Classics, and Open Road all circling.
The surprise-slot tradition at Telluride has launched films into the awards conversation before. This one arrives with an unusual package: a three-hour hybrid, a newly acquired worldwide-rights deal, locked-down phones, and a Q&A to follow. Whatever it is, the audience inside the Herzog will know first.
