The Holdovers Feels the Love at Its Telluride Film Festival Premiere

At Telluride Film Festival this past week, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers was met with enormous love and enjoyment. Paul Giamatti plays a cantankerous teacher at a prestigious Eastern prep school who must oversee the students with no place to go for the holidays; Da'Vine Joy Randolph plays the school’s cook whose son has recently died in Vietnam; and newcomer Dominic Sessa plays a student whose family has left him behind. The three form an unlikely trio whose time together changes their sense of the future.

Festival goers enjoyed seeing Payne and Giamatti reunited after their classic Sideways, but even more, people loved how moving the story is and how pitch-perfect the performances are.

The following reactions reflect how much Telluride audiences loved The Holdovers—in select theaters October 27, everywhere November 10.