Laurence Olivier’s Richard III

For 50 years the New York Film Festival has celebrated the history of cinema while showcasing contemporary filmmaking talent from around the world. Today’s additions to the 50th NYFF lineup sum up this balancing act perfectly, with more from our retrospective Masterworks section and the announcement of our annual HBO On Cinema and Directors Dialogue programs, which take audiences behind the lens with some of the most exciting filmmakers working today.

Since 2004, the New York Film Festival has teamed with HBO Films to broaden the conversation about cinema in our Directors Dialogues and, later, On Cinema presentations. The list of participating filmmakers reads like a who’s-who of modern filmmaking: Agnès Jaoui, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, Neil Jordan, Michael Winterbottom, Patrice Chéreau, Noah Baumbach, Steve Coogan, Guillermo del Toro, Wes Anderson, Todd Haynes, Sydney Lumet, Julian Schnabel, Darren Aronofsky, Arnaud Desplechin, Jia Zhang-ke, Wong Kar Wai, Olivier Assayas, David Fincher, Kelly Reichardt, Julie Taymor, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Alexander Payne, Julia Loktev, Abel Ferrara, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, and Wim Wenders.


Like Someone In Love director Abbas Kiarostami

NYFF’s landmark 50th edition is no exception.

This year’s On Cinema is something new: a conversation between acclaimed filmmakers, cinephiles, and mutual admirers Noah Baumbach and Brian De Palma, both of whom will also bring their latest films to the festival (Frances Ha and Passion, respectively). Abbas Kiarostami, whose Taste of Cherry (NYFF ’97) was the first Iranian film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, will discuss his career and his Main Slate feature Like Someone in Love in a Directors Dialogue.

We’re thrilled to announce that the filmmakers behind our Closing Night and Centerpiece films will also participate in Dialogues. Don’t miss this chance to hear from Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Flight) as well as one of the most decorated writer-producers in television history, David Chase (Not Fade Away).


Frank Oz' Little Shop of Horrors

Cinephiles will rejoice at the new additions to our Masterworks lineup. Frank Oz’s Little Shop of Horrors will screen in a Director’s Cut with its original ending, including 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage. Prolific Portuguese filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira’s epic The Satin Slipper, which played in NYFF ’85 in a drastically cut two-hour version, will be presented in its full, seven-hour glory.

Leading Hitchcock scholar William Rothman will present a screening of one of the Master of Suspense’s weirdest tales in “Re-Introducing Marnie.” And restorations abound, from the Oscar-nominated Satyricon by Federico Fellini—who, believe it or not, has never had a film shown in the New York Film Festival—to Michael Cimino’s unfairly-maligned Heaven’s Gate (another director’s cut), Peter Whitehead's rock doc The Rolling Stones – Charlie is My Darling – Ireland '65, Laurence Olivier’s Richard III and many more.


Cinéastes de notre temps co-creator André S. Labarthe

Finally, two new areas of our Masterworks section take the history lesson to France. The 50th NYFF will feature over 30 installments of television series Cinéastes de notre temps/Cinéma, de notre temps. Created by film critic and filmmaker André S. Labarthe and film theorist Janine Bazin in 1964, this program tapped working directors to create portraits of their peers, both historical and contemporary, providing unique insight into the life and work of filmmakers from around the world. Film Society Program Director & NYFF Selection Committee Head Richard Peña calls it “a kind of history of cinema, almost as seen by the New York Film Festival because so many of the directors in this series have been prominent in our own history.” Episodes on display include Jacques Rozier’s Jean Vigo</em> (1965); Jacques Rivette’s Jean Renoir, The Boss: The Rule and the Exception (1967); Claire Denis’ Jacques Rivette: The Night Watchman (1990); and Olivier Assayas’ HHH, A Portrait of Hou Hsiao-hsien (1996). For the full list of programs, see the press release

Men of Cinema: Pierre Rissient and the Cinéma Mac-Mahon celebrates the historic Paris movie house and its pioneering programmer Pierre Rissient.  Rissient’s rejection of the French New Wave filmmakers and his programming’s emphasis on American film noirs and genre fare throughout the 1950s made the Mac-Mahon, in the words of critics J. Hoberman and Jonathan Rosenbaum, “a temple which, unlike the Hollywood film cathedrals of the 1920s, would show movies for movies’ sake.” The classic films being screened are Max Ophüls’ Liebelei (1933), Raoul Walsh’s Objective, Burma! (1945) and Pursued (1947), Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool (1949), Jules Dassin’s Night and the City (1950), Joseph Losey’s The Prowler (1951), and Fritz Lang’s The Tiger of Eschnapur (1959).

General Public tickets for the 50th New York Film Festival go on sale September 9. There will be a pre-sale ticketing period for Film Society Patrons and Members prior to that date. Join Film Society by August 29 to take advantage of this priority period. For more info on attending the 50th NYFF, please visit the NYFF Tickets section of the website.