This week we’re excited to present a conversation with A Different Man director Aaron Schimberg and lead actor Sebastian Stan from Opening Night of this year’s New Directors/New Films.
New Directors/New Films runs through April 14 at Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art. Get tickets!
With the hotly anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed sophomore feature, 2018’s Chained for Life, New York-based director Aaron Schimberg boldly announces himself as one of the most fearless and socially incisive new voices in American independent cinema with the 2024 New Directors/New Films Opening Night selection, A Different Man. Sebastian Stan, winner of this year’s Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival, delivers an ingeniously embodied performance as Edward, an aspiring actor with severe facial disfigurement, to whom we’re introduced as he navigates a dreary daily existence marked by discouragement and resignation. When a winsome playwright moves in next door, and an experimental medical procedure becomes available to change his face, Edward’s outlook brightens, and he jumps at the chance for a new lease on life—until the arrival of Oswald, an outgoing and warmly charismatic stranger puts his newfound “normalcy” into perspective, and his artistic aspirations in jeopardy. Schimberg’s latest is a discomfiting tour de force, a social satire that wrangles thorny questions of identity and authenticity with unflinching honesty and slyly virtuosic storytelling flair. An A24 release.
This conversation was moderated by New Directors/New Films co-chair Dan Sullivan.
Listen/watch below:
