Telluride 2026: Stars, Songs, and a Secret Holmes Documentary Shake Up the Oscar Race
The Telluride Film Festival closed its 2026 edition with three films pulling the early awards conversation in different directions — a starry backstage comedy, a documentary about the National Theatre, and a secret screening about Elizabeth Holmes that had audiences surrendering their phones at the door.
Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim's documentary "You Can See Everything" was the festival's surprise secret screening, revealed to ticketholders only as they arrived at Telluride's Werner Herzog Theatre for a mystery Sunday slot. Phones were locked away. The film documents Elizabeth Holmes during the 34 days before she reported to prison, a shoot that, according to Variety, spiraled into a three-year descent. NBC News, the Los Angeles Times, and IndieWire all confirmed the world premiere (IndieWire). IndieWire reports the documentary is scheduled to hit theaters in October 2026. The Hollywood Reporter's Telluride awards analysis suggested the film could earn Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and acting categories — a rare prospect for a documentary (Hollywood Reporter).
Jesse Eisenberg's third feature as director, "The Debut," premiered at the festival with a cast led by Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti. Moore plays Mona, a meek suburban homemaker who lands a bit part in a community theatre musical; Giamatti plays the tyrant director who shapes her. Eisenberg wrote seven original songs for the fictional show-within-the-film, and one of them — "This City May Have Chewed Me Up (But It Hasn't Spit Me Out)," performed by Moore — is headed for a best original song Oscar campaign, according to Variety (Variety). Deadline's review described the film as an affectionate comedy about local theatre (Deadline).
The casting carries its own Oscar backstory. Moore won an Academy Award for "Still Alice." Giamatti has been nominated twice — for "Cinderella Man" and "The Holdovers" — and has never won. That gap is the kind of narrative awards voters tend to notice.
Kenneth Branagh produced "Into the Breach," a documentary portrait of the National Theatre that screened at Telluride's Conference Center on Sunday morning. Gold Derby describes it as a detailed account of the creation myth of modern British theatre (Gold Derby). Deadline reports the film features Judi Dench, Anthony Hopkins, Ian McKellen, Gary Oldman, and Helen Mirren (Deadline).
Branagh also delivered the festival's most-quoted anecdote. He told Variety he rode a Telluride gondola with Willem Dafoe, Tom Hiddleston, and Andrew Scott — each of whom had a film at the festival. Hiddleston independently corroborated the story with the same Variety reporter at Montrose airport, the kind of detail that confirms both the incident and the small-town geography of a festival where Oscar contenders and the people who vote on them share the same gondola lift (Variety).
For context, Variety's 2025 Golden Globes analysis discussed Demi Moore and Netflix's Oscar prospects, and the publication's anonymous 2025 Oscar ballots featured Julianne Moore among the most prominent stateside voters, with her film deemed the most polarizing. Moore's presence at Telluride this year puts her on the other side of that conversation.
Christopher Nolan's "The Odyssey" remains the film to beat in the Oscar race after Telluride, according to Variety. None of the festival's premieres displaced it at the top of the conversation — but several just widened the field beneath it.
