Denver Film Festival Sets 49th Edition Lineup and Honorees

Denver Film has unveiled the lineup and honorees for the 49th Denver Film Festival, set to run Oct. 22-Nov. 1. The festival will screen 129 features, documentaries and shorts across the Sie FilmCenter, Ellie Caulkins Opera House, MCA Denver at the Holiday Theater, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The festival opens with Peter Farrelly's I Play Rocky, starring Anthony Ippolito as Sylvester Stallone, and closes with James Gray's Paper Tiger, led by Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller. Centerpiece selections include Danny Boyle's Ink and Tony Gilroy's Behemoth!, starring Pedro Pascal.

Awards and tributes

Carrie Coon will receive an excellence in acting award for The Liberation, while John Cho takes home an Outlaw Award for Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother. Liz Sargent earns a breakthrough director award for Take Me Home, and Fred Hechinger receives a rising star prize following a screening of A Long Winter.

Benedetta Porcaroli will be honored with a Maglione Italian Film Award for The Kidnapping of Arabella, and David Acord receives an excellence in sound design award for Behemoth!. Michael Gitlin will accept the annual Stan Brakhage Award, presented alongside a retrospective of his work.

The showings of Josephine and Take Me Home are co-presented with the Sundance Film Festival. In October 2025, it was announced that the Sundance Film Festival is heading to Boulder, Colorado in 2027. Take Me Home was based on Sargent's short film of the same name about a woman caring for her aging parents, and Hechinger previously broke out in The White Lotus and Gladiator II.