Telluride: Where tiny is big

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Good film festivals are always going to feature movies so small and personal that they are unlikely to grab the attention of a prominent distributor. The makers of ‘Helen’ are proud of their film’s deliberate pacing and spare exposition, but know that the very elements that brought the British film to the attention of the Telluride Film Festival are also the same attributes that may scare off a buyer. ‘It’s a real risk,’ says Joe Lawlor, who co-directed the film with his wife, Christine Molloy. ‘It’s not going to work for half the people.’

In fact, it didn’t appear to work for everybody at the film’s first showing in Telluride, with one festival guest wondering out loud as she left the theater if the projectionist had shown ‘Helen’ at the wrong speed. But as the 2006 Sundance title ‘Old Joy’ proved, patient filmmaking still has its admirers; that virtually narrative-free movie about two friends on a hike may not have sold many tickets, but it did generate some strong reviews.

‘Helen,’ a story about an orphaned teen who is enlisted to appear in a police reenactment about another missing young girl, is populated almost entirely with non-professional actors. Anyone who shows up to be in their films, Lawlor and Molloy say, gets to act. ‘We’ve made a vow never to say no one to anyone,’ Lawlor says.

Working with a budget of less than $500,000 and only two weeks of shooting, the filmmakers say they were forced to use many long takes because multiple camera set-ups and edits are too expensive. ‘One of the challenges of a film like this is that it can be boring because we can’t afford cuts,’ Lawlor says.

But as several dozen enthusiastic Telluride fans who stuck around to discuss ‘Helen’ proved, one film’s obstacles may lead to its distinction; ‘Helen’ already has appeared at festivals in Sydney and Edinburgh. Maybe a small American distributor will decide that tiny isn’t necessarily a negative.

--John Horn