Listen to the official unveiling of the 54th New York Film Festival Main Slate on this week’s edition of our podcast. Yesterday, festival director Kent Jones presented this year’s lineup of groundbreaking films, with festival veterans like Pedro AlmodĂłvar, Kelly Reichardt, and Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne returning, plus filmmakers like Kenneth Lonergan and Alison Maclean making their NYFF debuts. Click here for the complete list. 

Also on the podcast, David Lowery, whose Pete’s Dragon opens this week, talks about his work. Lowery has been an editor (Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color and Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine) and producer (Alex Ross Perry’s Listen Up Philip), and he made his feature debut as a writer-director in 2013 with Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. Pete’s Dragon brings the indie jack-of-all-trades to big-budget studio filmmaking. Early reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with Peter Debruge in Variety calling it, “One of the year’s most delightful moviegoing surprises.” In part two of the podcast, hear Lowery in 2013 talk about Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which stars Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara as lovers torn apart by crime. Pete’s Dragon opens this weekend. 

Listen to the episode below, or click here to listen and subscribe on iTunes.