Each Labor Day weekend, the tiny mountain village of Telluride, Colorado triples in size. Swells of passionate film enthusiasts flood the town for four days of total cinematic immersion, embarking on a viewing odyssey, blissfully spending entire days in flickering dark rooms. With only an appreciation of celluloid to guide them, these devotees flock to the show, year after year. Why? Blind faith. They don’t reveal the program until everyone lands in town. Yet the Telluride family trusts that a unique experience will unfold.

The Telluride Film Festival is not just a picture show. It is Tributes to luminaries who’ve propelled the medium forward; it is candid discussions with a film’s creator or the historian who champions it; it is discovering that the person in line behind you made the film you just enjoyed; it is engaging in lively debate with every manner of film lover in the summer sun of a Colorado afternoon, always minutes away from a new exhibition. The Telluride Film Festival is on Oscar streak. Nine times in the last 11 years, Oscar winners for Best Picture Films have had their North American premiere in Telluride including Slumdog Millionaire (2008), The King’s Speech (2010), The Artist (2011),Argo (2012), 12 Years a Slave (2013), Birdman (2014), Spotlight (2015), Moonlight (2016), and Shape of Water (2017).

The Telluride Film Festival take great pains to remain not a competition, but a celebration of the best in film—past, present and future—from all around the world. This is one weekend immersed in an unabashed carnival of film: viewing, breathing, eating, and talking cinema. This is The SHOW.