Tom Hanks' Sully film to open Telluride festival

Hanks, left, dyed his hair blond in order to play Chesley 'Sully' Sullenberger

Clint Eastwood's new film about the US pilot who famously crash-landed a plane in New York's Hudson River is to open this year's Telluride Film Festival.

Sully, in which Tom Hanks plays Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, will premiere later on Friday at the Colorado event.

All 155 people on board the US Airways flight survived the emergency landing after the plane hit a flock of geese on 15 January 2009.

The Telluride Film Festival runs from 2 to 5 September.

According to Variety, Friday's Sully premiere marks Eastwood's first film at the festival since he showed White Hunter, Black Heart there in 1990.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone co-star in the musical La La Land

The event will also screen the musical La La Land and the sci-fi drama Arrival, following their premieres earlier this week at the Venice Film Festival.

Other titles in the line-up include Bleed for This, a biopic of boxer Vinny Pazienza starring Miles Teller, and Una, an adaptation of David Harrower's 2005 play Blackbird.

Casey Affleck, Amy Adams and Chilean film-maker Pablo Larrain will be presented with Telluride's Silver Medallion awards as part of this year's festivities.

Sully, which also stars Laura Linney and Aaron Eckhart, opens in the US on 9 September and in the UK and Ireland on 2 December.