Shane Carruth's Upstream Color
The roster for the 42nd New Directors/New Films Festival (ND/NF) is taking shape! Film Society of Lincoln Center, in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art, announced on Wednesday the first seven selections for the annual festival, which is set for March 20 – March 31 at Lincoln Center and MoMA.
Leading the list is Upstream Color, the anticipated sophomore effort from Shane Carruth that will debut at Sundance on Monday before heading to the Berlinale next month.
“Even with the vast majority of films still to be selected,” said Film Society's Director of Year-Round Programming Robert Koehler, “these first selections for ND/NF set the tone for the introduction of a wide range of cinema and cinematic voices—both narrative and documentary—that has been the ambition of New Directors/New Films.”
Entering its 42nd year, ND/NF showcases new talent in cinema, usually in the form of first or second-time filmmakers. Last year's slate included recently Oscar-nominated films such as Beasts of the Southern Wild and How to Survive a Plague, along with critical darlings such as Joachim Trier's Oslo, August 31st and Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighboring Sounds.
For more information, please visit the New Directors/New Films website. Information about tickets, as well as the complete lineup, will be announced in the coming weeks.
Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell
Here's a bit more about the seven selected films films:
Nine years after his Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning film, Primer, Shane Carruth returns with Upstream Color, which stars Andrew Sensenig and Amy Seimetz. Shrouded in mystery with spellbinding trailers, Upstream Color is one of the most heavily anticipated films debuting at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Along with its stops in Park City and the Film Society, Carruth's latest film was recently added to the Panorama Section at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
What do families hold onto as truth? Director Sarah Polley (Take This Waltz) aims to answer this question in the very personal familial documentary Stories We Tell. Gathering photos, home movies and interviews, Polley looks at her own family to answer questions of memory and family secrets.
Rachid DjaĂŻdani’s Hold Back and MatĂas Piñeiro’s Viola tell two Shakespearean tales. The latter following the outline of Twelfth Night in present-day Buenos Aires, and the former a contemporary Romeo and Juliet set in Paris. Hold Back looks at race, religion, and Paris street life as it presents love and loss in a new way. Viola, on the other hand, waxes philosophically as it plays on artifice and reality in melodramatic and comedic ways.
Libbie Dina Cohn and JP Sniadecki’s People's Park
Libbie Dina Cohn and JP Sniadecki’s People’s Park documents an immersive visit to People’s Park in Chengdu, China, which captures people at play in what is an uneasy and intoxicating documentary.
Based on true events and shot on location in the Indian Ocean, Tobias Lindholm’s A Hijacking shows the danger of the ever-increasing disparity between impoverished nations and the “first world.” At times claustrophobic and always tense, Lindholm’s re-creation of a freight crew held hostage surprises at every turn.
Emil Hristow’s dark comedy The Color of the Chameleon, based on Vladislav Todorov’s 2010 novel, Zincograph, centers on a misfit youth (codename: Marzipan) recruited to infiltrate a book reading group. Things go awry for the secret police when Marzipan goes rogue and creates a fictitious branch of the Ministry of Information in an attempt to get to the “very nature of secret policing under communism.” Chameleon is Bulgaria’s first film to be part of ND/NF in 35 years!
ND/NF highlights emerging directors year-after-year and has introduced or cemented the status of many familiar and critically acclaimed directors including: Chantal Akerman, Pedro AlmodĂłvar, Darren Aronofsky, Ken Burns, Agnieszka Holland, Wong Kar Wai, Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, and Steven Spielberg, to name a few. Though it's two months away, in the meantime be sure to check out our newly revamped ND/NF website, newdirectors.org, and get ready for the festival of a lifetime!
