Shorts Program I
New Directors/New Films 2023
March 29 - April 9, 2023
Includes Aqueronte, 48 Hours, Center, Ring, Mall, Civic, and Human Nature.
Q&As with Manuel Muñoz Rivas, Mateo Vega, Dwayne LeBlanc, and Monica Lima
Aqueronte
Manuel Muñoz Rivas, 2023, Spain, 26m
Spanish with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Manuel Muñoz Rivas’s richly textured tone poem documents a long ferry passage across an unidentified river, overlaying with meditative precision the attendant sights and sounds: overheard fragments of murmured conversations accompany languorous views of fog-shrouded shores and disarmingly candid glimpses of men, women, and children in transit.
48 Hours
Azadeh Moussavi, 2022, Iran, 20m
Farsi with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Nader, a political prisoner, has been granted a 48-hour furlough after three years of incarceration. Upon returning home to spend two short days with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, the soft-spoken father struggles to find his paternal footing in this deeply felt and meticulously observed portrait of a family under duress.
Center, Ring, Mall
Mateo Vega, 2023, Netherlands/Peru, 17m
English, Dutch, and Spanish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Provocatively abstracted 16mm images and animated 3D renderings are interposed with incantatory, multilingual voiceover tracks in this vivid portrait of three infrastructural totems: an Amsterdam data center whose servers facilitate global communication networks; a peripheral ring road encircling the city; and a vacant shopping mall, a once-bustling emblem of unbridled consumerism gone to seed.
Civic
Dwayne LeBlanc, 2022, USA, 19m
New York Premiere
Shot almost entirely from an unobtrusive perch in the backseat of a car, Dwayne LeBlanc’s searching, deceptively restrained narrative debut follows Booker, a young man returning to South Central L.A. after a long absence, and reconnecting—or seeking a new beginning—with the loved ones he left behind.
Human Nature
Mónica Lima, 2023, Portugal/Germany, 25m
Portuguese with English subtitles
US Premiere
A man and woman, confined to the quiet idyll of their home and garden during a pandemic lockdown, wrestle with the complicated emotional aftermath of a failed pregnancy and their evolving dreams for an unknowable future in this bittersweet, sun-dappled slice-of-life vignette.
Read More
Kamal Aljafari on With Hasan in Gaza and ‘The Camera of the Dispossessed’
Our 63rd New York Film Festival Talks featured a special conversation with With Hasan in Gaza director Kamal Aljafari, moderated by Film Comment editor Devika Girish.
Lucrecia Martel on Our Land (Nuestra Tierra), the Filmmaker’s First Feature Documentary
On the latest episode of FLC Luminaries, our video series that spotlights talent at all levels of the filmmaking process who uplift the art and craft of cinema, Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) director Lucrecia Martel discusses her expansive and enlightening first feature documentary.
Carla Simón on Her Poignantly Autobiographical Romería
This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with Romería director Carla Simón, moderated by NYFF Main Slate selection committee member Florence Almozini.
