Fun, Fans and Flicks: What to Expect From the 48th Denver Film Festival

Each year of the Denver Film Festival brings changes — and the 48th annual version, which runs from Friday, October 31, to Sunday, November 9, at a variety of locations in the greater Mile High, is set to deliver plenty of them. This time around, one major venue is out, another is stepping more boldly into the spotlight, screenings are getting an earlier start, and the celebrity-friendly tribute lineup has been supplemented with a sassy new addition: the Outlaw Award, which salutes “excellence in antagonistic performances.”

“Hopefully, that’ll be a fun one,” says DFF artistic director Matt Campbell of the inaugural Outlaw Award, which will be given to actor Ben Foster at a November 5 MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater screening of Christy, a boxing biopic in which he plays the abusive husband and trainer of the title character, played by Sydney Sweeney. “The idea is to honor the actor’s performance and the craft that goes into it, but not the actual individual the character is based on. Their behavior is not something we’re endorsing.”

Foster is hardly the only familiar face who’ll be on view at the festival. Indeed, DFF48 may be the starriest edition in recent memory.

Also on the roster is hometown hero John Elway, who’ll stop by to eyeball Elway, a new Netflix documentary from Omaha Productions, fellow Denver Broncos great Peyton Manning’s film-and-television side hustle. Campbell can’t say for sure that the November 8 presentation at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House will be the sole opportunity to check out the flick on a screen bigger than the one in a typical living room. But he’s confident that “it’s the only chance you’ll have to see it and have Mr. John Elway there in person, which we’re ecstatic about.”

Out-of-towners are led by Lucy Liu, who’ll be handed the 2025 John Cassavetes Award, which recognizes an artist’s entire oeuvre, amid the MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater‘s unspooling of Rosemead on November 8. Campbell calls Rosemead “a really impactful film — a hard-hitting drama that’s really connecting with audiences, despite having some challenging subject matter. And Lucy Liu’s performance is extremely stirring — definitely one not to miss.”

The same can be said about the appearance of Gus Van Sant, creator of My Own Private Idaho and Good Will Hunting, who’ll receive the Excellence in Directing Award at the unveiling of his latest effort, Dead Man’s Wire, at the MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater on November 4; Van Sant will be interviewed by Katey Rich for future airing as part of her popular Prestige Junkie podcast. Other notables include Niecey Nash-Bridges, of Claws and Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story fame, who’s set to collect the fourth CinemaQ LaBahn Ikon Award for her contributions to LGBTQIA+ representation on November 2 at the Denver Botanic Gardens; Zoey Deutch, who’s getting the Rising Star Award nod in conjunction with the November 4 Sie FilmCenter showing of Nouvelle Vague, director Richard Linklater’s look back at the creation of Jean-Luc Godard’s classic Breathless; and Delroy Lindo, who’ll accept Denver Film’s Next50 Career Achievement Award after a November 1 Sie FilmCenter screening of the blockbuster Sinners.

Of course, Sinners isn’t fresh out of the film lab; it debuted back in April. As a result, Lindo’s visit seems like part of an Academy Awards campaign on behalf of Warner Bros., the studio behind the movie. “I don’t know with utmost authority that this is the case,” Campbell says. “But I would imagine, yes.”

There’s no shortage of other Oscar bait on the DFF menu: Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?, Cannes Film Festival Grand Prix winner Sentimental Value, Cannes best actor awardee Wagner Moura’s The Secret Agent, the Rami Malek-Russell Crowe historical drama Nuremberg, Park Chan-wook’s thriller No Other Choice, the Shakespeare-inflected Hamnet, the Shakers religious sect musical The Testament of Ann Lee, and Jay Kelly, headlined by George Clooney.

A slew of retrospectives are also part of the mix, with most of them keyed to performers and filmmakers who’ve recently passed: Robert Redford’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Gene Hackman’s The French Connection, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Diane Keaton’s Something’s Got to Give, Shelley Duvall’s 3 Women, and (curveball) Val Kilmer’s Top Secret!, a zany sendup from the guys who piloted Airplane!

“We realize there’s a whole new generation of people just starting to attend the festival who haven’t seen a lot of these films, much less getting a chance to see them on the big screen,” Campbell maintains.

Opening the festival on October 31at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House is what looks to be another crowd-pleaser: Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, from writer-director Rian Johnson. This time around, Daniel Craig, as bizarrely accented detective Benoit Blanc, is joined by Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington and more, and it’s no surprise that Denver is being gifted with an early look. Johnson, who grew up in Denver, obviously loves the DFF; he brought The Brothers Bloom to the fest in 2008, and the first Knives Out opened the 2019 edition.

The fest’s Halloween kick-off will get another treat that same evening via the Late Night Showcase Opening Night presentation of Primate, a horror film from writer-director Johannes Roberts that features Johnny Sequoyah, Jessica Alexander and Troy Kotsur. “Prestige horror is really having a moment,” Campbell points out.

These are only a modest slice of the titles that Campbell and his associates have assembled; he puts the total, including short films, at around 144 for the ten-day event. Yet this year, the AMC 9+CO 10 multiplex, which the DFF has kept very busy over recent years, isn’t part of the mix, for reasons that have everything to do with dollars and cents.

“When we looked at the economics of renting out an additional space, we found that we could achieve similar results by supporting our year-round home, the Sie FilmCenter, as well as our community partners: Denver Arts & Venues with the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, but also the MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater and the Denver Botanic Gardens,” Campbell explains. “We were able to use more community-oriented spaces, which is something we wanted to continue and strengthen, while also doing more to highlight the Sie FilmCenter.”

To accommodate so many films in fewer rooms, however, some creative thinking was required: “What we’ve done is put more screenings at the FilmCenter starting earlier in the day,” Campbell says. In the past, we haven’t done morning screenings. But this year, we’re starting at around 10 a.m., and we’re doing more screenings at the Holiday Theater. Last year was kind of a test case utilizing the Holiday, and it went so well that it let us have a full, robust offering over there. And we hope it will generate more audience on the westside and the northside — movie lovers who may not make their way to the other side of town as much.”

Concludes Campbell: “It’s been a fun challenge, but a challenge nonetheless, to put the festival together with fewer venues and not utilizing an additional multiplex. But it’s great that we’re going back to celebrating cinema in all its forms and fashions.”

Find ticketing information and the complete schedule for the 48th annual Denver Film Festival, October 31-November 9, at denverfilmfestival.eventive.org.