New Directors/New Films 2018
Celebrating its 47th edition in 2018, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Throughout its rich, nearly half-century history, New Directors has brought previously little-known talents like Pedro Almodóvar, Chantal Akerman, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Christopher Nolan, Laura Poitras, Spike Lee, and Kelly Reichardt to wider audiences. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating a group of filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema: daring artists whose work pushes the envelope and is never what you’d expect. Presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.
Celebrating its 47th edition in 2018, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Throughout its rich, nearly half-century history, New Directors has brought previously little-known talents like Pedro Almódovar, Chantal Akerman, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Christopher Nolan, Laura Poitras, Spike Lee, and Kelly Reichardt to wider audiences. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating a group of filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema: daring artists whose work pushes the envelope and is never what you’d expect.
Matangi/Maya/M.I.A.
Opening Night · New York Premiere · Stephen Loveridge and M.I.A. in person
Before rapper M.I.A. became a global sensation, she was an aspiring filmmaker, having made countless personal video diaries. These eventually find their way into this intimate portrait constructed by first-time documentarian Stephen Loveridge.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening
Introduction from RaMell Ross · Opening Night Reception
With the artistic support of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Glover, and Laura Poitras, RaMell Ross spent five years intimately observing a community of African Americans in the Deep South, out of which comes this visionary and political meditation on race in America.
3/4
New York Premiere
The gracefully shot, uncommonly tender 3/4 evokes the intimacies, joys, and tensions of a contemporary Bulgarian family facing an uncertain future; the father is an astrophysicist with his head in the clouds, his son a waywardly antic teenager, his daughter a gifted but anxious pianist.
Ava
New York Premiere · Q&As with Sadaf Foroughi
Adolescence creates intense pressure for any girl, but it’s particularly strong for 17-year-old Ava, buffeted by the harsh strictures of home and school in contemporary Tehran.
Azougue Nazaré
North American Premiere · Q&As with Tiago Melo
In Tiago Melo’s fabulous—and fabulist—Azougue Nazare, no measure of hellfire preaching can quell the boisterous and bawdy passions of Maracatu, an Afro-Brazilian burlesque carnival tradition with roots in slavery that takes place in the northwest state of Pernambuco.
Black Mother
New York Premiere · Q&As with Khalik Allah
The second feature by filmmaker and photographer Khalik Allah immerses us in Jamaica’s neighboring worlds of charismatic holy men and equally charismatic prostitutes, the sacred and the profane alike.
Closeness
New York Premiere
A young woman is trapped in a tight-knit Jewish community in the Kabardino-Balkar Republic that demands her total dedication but provides her with little protection from the perpetual violence encompassing all aspects of life.
Cocote
New York Premiere · Q&As with Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias
This stylistically audacious opus, about an evangelical gardener returning to his hometown for his father’s funeral rites, is at once a profound film about spirituality and a unique tale of revenge.
Djon África
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with João Miller Guerra and Filipa Reis
A Cape Verdean in Portugal, Miguel Moreira, also known as Djon África, travels back home to look for his birth father. This hopefully soul-searching journey quickly gets derailed as he comes across beautiful women, colorful parties, and the local liquor known as grogue.
Drift
Friends Theresa, a German, and Josefina, an Argentinian, spend a weekend together on the North Sea, taking long walks on the beach and stopping at snack stands. Eventually they separate and the film gives way to a transfixing and delicate meditation on the poetics of space.
An Elephant Sitting Still
The New York Times Critic's Pick
The late Hu Bo’s epic feature debut—a modern reworking of the tale of Jason and the Argonauts—is a masterpiece that will be remembered as a landmark in Chinese cinema.
Good Manners
New York Premiere · Q&As with Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas
Dutra and Rojas’s second collaboration follows the relationship between a pregnant socialite and her new housemaid before transforming into a werewolf movie unlike any other.
The Great Buddha +
New York Premiere · Q&As with Huang Hsin-yao
Huang Hsin-yao's fiction feature debut is a stylish, rip-roaring satire on class and corruption in contemporary Taiwanese society about two provincial friends who idle away their nights in the security booth of a Buddha statue factory.
The Guilty
Denmark's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar Entry · Critic's Pick at The New York Times
In this pulsating crime thriller from debut feature filmmaker Gustav Möller, set entirely inside a claustrophobic emergency call center, a police officer must bring a caller to safety.
Makala
New York Premiere · Q&As with Emmanuel Gras
The latest by acclaimed French documentarian Emmanuel Gras follows the monumental efforts of a young Congolese man who makes a living producing, transporting, and selling charcoal.
Milla
New York Premiere · Q&As with Valérie Massadian
Following up her acclaimed 2011 debut Nana, Valérie Massadian has made a moving, visually striking meditation on young motherhood and the vagaries of growing up.
Nervous Translation
North American Premiere
Informed by filmmaker Shireen Seno’s childhood in the Filipino diaspora and her dual training in film and architecture, this sophomore work is a stylized evocation of a child's fanciful interpretation of the world around her.
Notes on an Appearance
The Nothing Factory
New York Premiere · Q&As with Pedro Pinho
A rich and formally surprising film of ideas, beautifully shot on 16mm, and featuring one of recent cinema’s most memorable musical numbers, Portuguese director Pedro Pinho’s nearly three-hour epic concerns the occupation of an elevator plant by its workers.
Our House
North American Premiere · Q&As with Yui Kiyohara
This feature debut by one of Japanese cinema’s most exciting new voices is an evocative and surprising exploration of female friendship, parallel realities, and the mysteries of everyday life.
Scary Mother
New York Premiere · Q&As with Ana Urushadze and actress Nato Murvanidze
In Georgian filmmaker Ana Urushadze’s gripping and bleakly comical feature debut, a 50-year-old Tblisi mother abandons her family to pursue a feverishly obsessive and hermetic life of writing poetry.
Those Who Are Fine
New York Premiere · Q&As with Cyril Schäublin
This feature debut from Swiss Cyril Schäublin revels in dark comedy in a dystopic but formally playful study of an alienated society.
Until the Birds Return
New York Premiere · Q&As with Karim Moussaoui
In three tales, exciting newcomer Karim Moussaoui takes the pulse of modern-day Algiers, a country once riven by colonial occupation and sectarian warfare yet still abundant in beauty and promise.
A Violent Life
New York Premiere · Q&As with Thierry de Peretti
This sophomore feature by Corsican filmmaker Thierry de Peretti tensely unspools as a poignant regional portrait and coming-of-age tale dashed with crime, political radicalism, and youthful idealism.
Winter Brothers
New York Premiere · Q&A with Hlynur Pálmason on 3/31
This immersive sensory experience, set in a desolate Danish limestone community, is a portrait of a young man trapped in an unforgiving isolation.
Shorts Program 1
Q&As with Sebastián Pinzón Silva and Arash Nassiri (joined by Gabe Elder on 4/1)
From an atmospheric thriller set in Iran, uncanny and moving sketches of displaced people, to a musical documentary and an atypical dance film, these five bold shorts evoke the struggles and joys of communities from around the world.
Shorts Program 2
Q&As with Sam Kuhn & Carlos Conceição
The irreverent, melancholic, and transgressive impulses of youth collide in this program of four films, each set within its own impeccably crafted, hermetic world.Tickets are now on sale!
To purchase tickets to individual films, please click on the “Films” or “Schedule” tabs at the top of this page and then click on your desired films or showtimes.
Tickets are $12 for Members, Students & Seniors / $17 General Public. Opening Night and Closing Night tickets are $20 for Members, Students & Seniors / $25 General Public. Opening Night Party Pass also available: attend the Opening Night and Party for $50.
3+ Film Package – Minimum of 3 films required. Tickets just $10 Members, Students & Seniors / $13 General Public.
All Access Pass – See everything in the series for $1,000, including two tickets to every film, two tickets to Opening Night and Party, invite to Filmmaker Brunch, and invite to Industry Party.
Student Pass – See everything in the series for $50, excluding Opening and Closing Night films.
Note: Film Society member complimentary tickets can not be used for this series.
Not a member? Take advantage of discounted tickets, early access periods, complimentary offers year-round, and more by becoming one today! Join here.
MoviePass is accepted at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for regularly-priced films and series, and this year we are proud to accept for New Directors/New Films at both venues. Admission is not guaranteed. For app-related customer support, contact MoviePass.
New Directors/New Films 2022
Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art present the 51st edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), April 20–May 1. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2021
Celebrating its 50th edition in 2021, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2020
Celebrating its 49th edition in 2020, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2019
Celebrating its 48th edition in 2019, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2018
Celebrating its 47th edition in 2018, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2017
Celebrating its 46th edition in 2017, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2016
Celebrating its 45th edition in 2016, New Directors/New Films introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2015
Now in its 44th year, New Directors/New Films remains guided by the spirit of discovery. At a time of new digital frontiers of film production and distribution, this year’s lineup shows artistic innovation more than keeping pace with technological change. We hope you'll join us in celebrating a group of filmmakers who represent both the present and the future of cinema, the daring artists whose work pushes the envelope and is, fascinatingly, never what you'd expect. Read More
New Directors/New Films 2014
For 43 years New Directors/New Films has been an annual rite of early spring in New York City, bringing exciting discoveries from around the world to adventurous moviegoers. All aspects of cinema, from production to exhibition, have changed dramatically over the years, and even more rapidly of late. But the spirit of innovation and the element of surprise that have always defined this festival remain intact. Read More
