Denver Film Festival 2024: New red-carpet venue, movies, and celebs for 47th year

The 47th Denver Film Festival is moving all but one its red-carpet screenings to a new venue this year, alongside Colorado premieres of buzzy indies such as “The Piano Lesson” and “The Brutalist,” and in-person guests including Patricia Clarkson, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Jesse Tyler Ferguson.

The festival, Nov. 1-10 at multiple venues, will offer 185 narrative features, shorts, and documentaries, as well as parties, panels, workshops and a gala, according to nonprofit producer Denver Film.

Single tickets to screenings, plus special and gala presentations and Red Carpets, are on sale to Denver Film members on Thursday, Oct. 3, and the public on Friday, Oct. 4, at denverfilm.org/denverfilmfestival.

For the first time this year, the festival‘s opening and closing-night red carpet screenings will be at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver’s Holiday Theater, a historic building the museum restored in the Highland neighborhood that has lately hosted screenings, panels and musical performances. The Red Carpets are moving there from downtown’s Ellie Caulkins Opera House, a favored and prestigious venue that Denver Film has in recent years struggled to fill — even before the pandemic.

However, the Centerpiece presentation of “The Order” still will be at the Ellie. The film is an adaptation of a nonfiction book co-written by former Rocky Mountain News reporter and current Denver City Councilman Kevin Flynn, which looks at a violent, far-right group of neo-Nazis that operated in Washington in the 1980s. It stars Jude Law and Nicholas Holt and plays the Ellie on Nov. 8.

Bookending it are opening and closing-night red carpets at MCA’s Holiday Theater, with the first being the Nov. 1 screening of “The Piano Lesson.” The August Wilson adaptation stars Samuel L. Jackson and John David Washington; writer Virgil Williams will appear in person to receive Denver Film’s Excellence in Writing award.

The festival will close with “September 5,” which stars Peter Sarsgaard and John Magaro in its dramatization of the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis. It plays the MCA Holiday Theater on Nov. 9.

Several Denver premieres are also slated, including “The Brutalist,” “Better Man,” “The Room Next Door,” “Emilia Perez,” “Blitz,” “Oh, Canada,” “The Last Showgirl” and “Nightbitch” — that last one starring Colorado native Amy Adams.

Fest producers also said they’ll host celebs this year such as Patricia Clarkson (“Sharp Objects,” “Six Feet Under”), who will receive the Cassavetes Award at a screening of “Lilly” at MCA Denver Holiday Theater. Marianne Jean-Baptiste will receive Denver Film’s Excellence in Acting Award following a screening of “Hard Truths,” Denver Film said. Jesse Tyler Ferguson (“Modern Family”), will be on-hand for his CinemaQ LaBahn Ikon Film Award, following a screening of “All That We Love” and short film “It’s Okay.”

Directors RaMell Ross (“The Nickel Boys”), Jason Reitman (“Saturday Night”), Nnamdi Asomugha (“The Knife”), Cristiana Dell’Anna (“Cabrini”) and others will appear in person alongside their screenings.

Denver Film’s Sie FilmCenter will serve as the festival anchor, with additional screenings at the Ellie, Denver Botanic Gardens, AMC 9 + CO 10, and the MCA Holiday Theater.

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