Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips (Opening Night, NYFF51)

Manohla Dargis of The New York Times stole the words out of our mouth: “Ladies and gentlemen, clear your calendars and chug those double espressos: the 51st New York Film Festival is about to begin.”

The yearly cinematic marathon we call NYFF has finally arrived! We open tonight with the World Premiere of Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips. Starring Tom Hanks, this suspenser set at high seas throws audiences into the fraught hijacking of a commercial ship by Somali pirates. Dargis said, “Surprising and satisfyingly complex, it opens as a tale of men and work, then revs up into a camera-shuddering thriller, only to deepen. It’s a tough, political look at power and the wretched of the earth and is likely to send at least some first-night revelers running for the Alice Tully bar.”

All of tonight's screenings are currently standby only, but we're offering a Standby Special: any tickets that become available to the standby line at Alice Tully Hall will be just $25!

This is the first in a series of daily posts about NYFF that will give an overview of the many goings-on of each day of the festival. Going forward, these posts will go up the night before and will include information on Standby screenings as well as everyone's favorite topic: rush tickets! For daily info on rush ticket availability, you can also bookmark this page: filmlinc.com/rush

On FilmLinc Daily, we'll be doing regular roundups of press coverage of the festival and collections of photos from NYFF events. Posts from members of the NYFF Critics Academy will begin next week. Our NYFF Spotlight posts on festival films will continue throughout and we'll also be doing some special coverage of various festival events. Video of our press conferences and Q&As will go up on our YouTube channel and, if you don't already, you should follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get the full effect!

In case you missed it, we also just made two exciting announcements about our Grand Theft Auto V events in NYFF Convergence and the return of our free NYFF Live talks, featuring Isabelle Huppert, Steve McQueen, Louis Garrel, Bruce Dern, Claire Denis, and more!

It's a lot, we know, but we guarantee that the next 17 days will bring enough cinematic delights to make it all worth it!