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'Steve Jobs' biopic to premiere at Telluride

Video screenshot: Trailer for Steve Jobs (2015 film)

Telluride's significance has risen as it has become one of three film festivals that are considered indicative of how the Academy Awards will play out early the following year; we take a look at some of the biggest names on its 2015 slate.

Running September 4-7, its placement on the annual festival calendar has Telluride, in the US state of Colorado, overlapping with the Venice Film Festival (September 2-12) and the Toronto International Film Festival (September 10-20).

Together, the trio are major destinations for world and North American premieres.

Michael Fassbender will be seen as Apple CEO Steve Jobs in the Danny Boyle biopic, which is based on Walter Isaacson's biography, co-starring Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels; Boyle himself will receive one of the festival's three Silver Medallion Awards in recognition of his career achievements to date.

"Suffragette," the story behind movement for equal voting rights in the UK is another world premiere, which has Carey Mulligan ("An Education"), Helena Bonham-Carter and Meryl Streep as its leading actresses.

"Carol," which has Rooney Mara as its lead in a romantic drama (and adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel "The Price of Salt"), was first shown at Cannes where Mara shared Best Actress with Emmanuelle Bercot.

She arrives at Telluride for the film's North American premiere knowing that she, too, will be given a Silver Medallion; the third recipient will be documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, who will show "Bitter Lake."

North American debuts for Whitey Bulger crime biopic "Black Mass" (Johnny Depp, Benedict Cumberbatch, Dakota Johnson), which arrives after premiering at Venice on September 4th, as well as church scandal investigation "Spotlight" (Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams) and Netflix' "Beasts of No Nation" (Idris Elba, dir. Cary Fukunaga), were confirmed after Toronto's schedule had revealed them as Canadian rather than continental premieres.

Other films on Telluride's 27-strong slate, as usual revealed only the day before the festival starts, include Charlie Kaufman's "Anomalisa" (another world premiere), Sidney Pollack's previously lost Aretha Franklin concert documentary "Amazing Grace," and Kent Jones's "Hitchcock/Truffaut," examining the legacy of the latter's guide to the former cinematic master.

A full line-up can be found at telluridefilmfestival.org.