The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced the full lineup of repertory, festival and new release programming for the fall and winter seasons, including the Next Generation Film Festival, a weekend-long series of new and classic works for burgeoning film lovers; tributes to prolific documentarian Wang Bing and 2018 Palme d’Or winner Hirokazu Kore-eda; a retrospective of German director Christian Petzold; and the largest New York City retrospective of Jacques Tourneur in decades. Our new releases include Gustav Möller’s tense thriller The Guilty (ND/NF 2018)  and four NYFF56 Main Slate selections: Paul Dano’s Wildlife, Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters, and Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War. More details and series dates are listed below.

FALL/WINTER 2018 REPERTORY

November 9–11

My First Film Fest
This November, we’re pleased to present the third edition of our weekend-long showcase of classic and new cinematic works that speak to the experiences and curiosity of young people. My First Film Fest is the Film Society’s home for the next generation of movie lovers, nurturing the sense of discovery, excitement, and education of the film festival experience while shining a light on the indelible significance of the moving image. This year’s slate includes premieres of outstanding recent offerings from around the world alongside repertory classics that exemplify turning points in film history. Featuring free educational screenings as well as in-cinema discussions and introductions, this is an opportunity for children, teenagers, and young adults alike to actively engage with our growing film culture.
Organized by Florence Almozini, Rufus de Rham, and Tyler Wilson

November 16–18

Wang Bing: The Weight of Experience
One of the great documentarians working today and an intrepid chronicler of the human tribulations underlying modern China’s social and economic transformation, Wang Bing makes films that are epic in duration yet precise in scope. Forging intimate bonds with his subjects, he captures the plights of individuals and communities in factory towns and rural villages, and demands that we behold the political complexity and moral weight of their struggles. On the occasion of the premiere of his latest, the eight-hour opus Dead Souls, we will also present a rare screening of his debut masterpiece, the three-part West of the Tracks (2002). Wang himself will join us to discuss these films and his singular art.
Organized by Dennis Lim

November 19–22

Six by Kore-eda
Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda ranks among the best-known and most acclaimed directors in world cinema today. Each of his films is marked by a subtle dramatic touch, a gentle yet assured feeling for the profundity and emotional charge of everyday life, and an enduring fascination with the role of the family in contemporary Japanese society. Kore-eda has varied his approach to exploring his signature themes, resulting in a consistently touching and truly humanist oeuvre. On the occasion of the theatrical release of his 2018 Palme d’Or–winning Shoplifters (NYFF56; opening November 23 from Magnolia Pictures), the Film Society will present a selection of our favorite films by the Japanese master.
Organized by Florence Almozini and Tyler Wilson

November 30–December 13

Christian Petzold: The State We Are In
Christian Petzold makes films quite unlike anyone else’s. They are singularly precise and efficient, and radically reimagine film noir, the thriller, melodrama, and even the espionage film. Replete with narrative mysteries; enigmatic protagonists immersed in even more enigmatic circumstances; an incomparable sense of atmosphere and style; and clever, surprising links between Germany’s turbulent past and its fragile present, Petzold’s work is at once intricately engaged with the real world and steeped in film history. A founding member of the loose movement known as the Berlin School, and a longtime collaborator of the late Harun Farocki, Petzold gained attention with acclaimed titles like Jerichow (2008), Barbara (2012), Phoenix (2014), and his latest masterwork, Transit (2018; NYFF56) but his entire career to date—including several inventive films made for television—affirms his status as one of contemporary cinema’s premier directors. This fall the Film Society is honored to host Petzold in person as we pay tribute to his artistry, and Petzold will also present a selection of movies that have influenced him.
Organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan

December 14–January 3

Jacques Tourneur, Fearmaker
The son of Maurice Tourneur, one of early French cinema’s preeminent directors, Jacques Tourneur ranks among the most fascinating yet most elusive filmmakers of his time. After working as an editor for his father and a director of shorts and B-features at MGM in his adoptive America, Tourneur eventually found a home in Hollywood with the success of his 1942 horror movie Cat People. He went on to make a series of striking low-budget pictures in the 1940s and ’50s: distinct, atmospheric works in a variety of genres (including the landmark 1947 noir Out of the Past), all notable for their wit, irony, and simultaneous precision and ambiguity. Tourneur mixed the uncanny with the psychological, located even the most outlandish premises within familiar spheres, and roguishly circumvented financial constraints through his singular artistry. This winter, the Film Society is pleased to present a wide-ranging retrospective of Tourneur’s body of work, the largest in New York City in decades.
Organized by Dennis Lim, Dan Sullivan, and Tyler Wilson in partnership with the Locarno Film Festival, where a Jacques Tourneur retrospective was presented in 2017, curated by Roberto Turigliatto and Rinaldo Censi, in collaboration with the Cinémathèque Française in Paris and the Cinémathèque Suisse in Lausanne.

Out of the Past

 

FALL/WINTER 2018 NEW RELEASES

October 19

The Guilty
Gustav Möller, Denmark, 2017, 85m
Danish with English subtitles
In this pulsating crime thriller set entirely inside a claustrophobic emergency call center, police officer Asger is assigned to dispatcher duty following a fatal incident. An initially slow evening takes a sharp turn when he receives a mysterious call for help, and Asger must spring into action, embarking on a hair-raising journey—on the phone—to bring the caller to safety. Debut feature filmmaker Gustav Möller keeps the tension and the viewer’s imagination alive in this chamber piece that won audience awards at the Rotterdam and Sundance film festivals. A Magnolia Pictures release.

Wildlife
Dir. Paul Dano, USA, 2018, 104m
In the impressive directorial debut from actor Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), a carefully wrought adaptation of Richard Ford’s 1990 novel, a family comes apart one loosely stitched seam at a time. We are in the lonely expanses of the American west in the mid-’60s. An affable man (Jake Gyllenhaal), down on his luck, runs off to fight the wildfires raging in the mountains. His wife (Carey Mulligan) strikes out blindly in search of security and finds herself running amok. It is left to their adolescent son Joe (Ed Oxenbould) to hold the center. Co-written by Zoe Kazan, Wildlife is made with a sensitivity and at a level of craft that are increasingly rare in movies. An IFC Films release.

October 26

Burning
Dir. Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, 2018, 148m
Expanded from Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning,” the sixth feature from Korean master Lee Chang-dong, known best in the U.S. for such searing, emotional dramas as Secret Sunshine and Poetry, begins by tracing a romantic triangle of sorts: Jongsu (Yoo Ah-in), an aspiring writer, becomes involved with a woman he knew from childhood, Haemi (Jun Jong-seo), who is about to embark on a trip to Africa. She returns some weeks later with a fellow Korean, the Gatsby-esque Ben (Steven Yeun), who has a mysterious source of income and a very unusual hobby. A tense, haunting multiple-character study, the film accumulates a series of unanswered questions and unspoken motivations to conjure a totalizing mood of uncertainty and quietly bends the contours of the thriller genre to brilliant effect. A Well Go USA release.

November 23

Shoplifters
Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda, Japan, 2018, 121m
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner is a heartrending glimpse into an often invisible segment of Japanese society: those struggling to stay afloat in the face of crushing poverty. On the the margins of Tokyo, a most unusual “family”—a collection of societal castoffs united by their shared outsiderhood and fierce loyalty to one another—survives by petty stealing and grifting. When they welcome into their fold a young girl who’s been abused by her parents, they risk exposing themselves to the authorities and upending their tenuous, below-the-radar existence. The director’s latest masterful, richly observed human drama makes the quietly radical case that it is love—not blood—that defines a family. A Magnolia Pictures release.

December 21

Cold War
Dir. Paweł Pawlikowski, Poland, 2018, 90m
Academy Award–winner Paweł Pawlikowski follows up his box-office sensation Ida with this bittersweet, exquisitely crafted tale of an impossible love. Set between the late 1940s and early 1960s, Cold War is, as the title implies, a Soviet-era drama, but it stringently and inventively avoids the clichés of many a classical-minded World War II art film, tracking the tempestuous love between pianist (Tomasz Kot) and singer (Joanna Kulig) as they navigate the realities of living in both Poland and Paris, in and outside of the Iron Curtain. Shot in crisp black-and-white and set to a bewitching jazzy score, Pawlikowski’s evocative film consummately depicts an uncompromising passion caught up in the gears of history. An Amazon Studios release.

New Releases are organized by Dennis Lim and Florence Almozini