New Directors/New Films will return for its 51st edition from April 20 through May 1, 2022! Subscribe to the Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art newsletters for more updates soon.

The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center announce the 50th anniversary edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), April 28 – May 8 available via virtual cinema, with in-person screenings extending through May 14 at FLC. Throughout its rich, half-century history, the festival has celebrated filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema, and whose daring work pushes the envelope in unexpected ways. This year’s festival will introduce 27 features and 11 shorts to audiences nationwide in the MoMA and FLC virtual cinemas, and to New Yorkers at Film at Lincoln Center.

To celebrate this year’s 50-year milestone, MoMA and FLC will also present a free virtual retrospective looking back on the festival’s history. In 1972, FLC (formerly the Film Society of Lincoln Center) and MoMA’s Department of Film presented the inaugural New Directors/New Films festival: a modest but eclectic program of 11 films born from a simple desire to share the best new works by emerging international directors with New York moviegoers. Richard Roud, one of the festival’s founding programmers, reflected in the Village Voice then that the festival allows one to “sit down and find out just where, in fact, the New Cinema is going.” 

The last 50 years of ND/NF prove that there is not simply one way forward, as young directors continue to blaze into the vanguard of filmmaking. Directors early in their careers who were presented to New York audiences, some for the very first time, include Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Almódovar, Souleymane Cissé, Euzhan Palcy, Jia Zhangke, Spike Lee, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke, Wong Kar Wai, Agnieszka Holland, Lino Brocka, Guillermo del Toro, Luca Guadagnino, and over a thousand others. Now in a vastly different film landscape and accessible to viewers nationwide through streaming, the program has grown in size and stature while maintaining its commitment to experimentation and sharing the gift of discovery with audiences. Presented here is a small selection of favorites from the first 30 years of the festival, showcasing early works from filmmakers such as Lee Chang-dong, Chantal Akerman, Charles Burnett, and Christopher Nolan.