25 of the most exciting new feature films from around the world.
Opening Night Selection · World Premiere · Introduction by Richard Linklater, Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, J. Quinton Johnson, and Darryl Ponicsan on 9/28 at ATH
Three aging Vietnam-era Navy vets—soft-spoken Doc (Steve Carell), unhinged and unfiltered Sal (Bryan Cranston), and quietly measured Mueller (Laurence Fishburne)—reunite for the proper burial of Doc’s only child, who has been killed in the early days of the Iraq invasion. Richard Linklater’s lyrical road movie is as funny as it is heartbreaking.
Centerpiece Selection · Introduction by Todd Haynes
Todd Haynes’s all-ages enchantment, adapted from a young-adult novel by Hugo author Brian Selznick, follows the parallel, ultimately converging journeys of two children, one set in 1927 and the other 1977. This is an intelligent, deeply personal, and lovingly intricate tribute to the power of obsession.
Closing Night • World Premiere
In Coney Island in the 1950s, a carousel operator (James Belushi) and his beleaguered wife (Kate Winslet), who eke out a living on the boardwalk, are visited by his estranged daughter (Juno Temple)—a situation from which layer upon layer of all-too-human complications develop. Woody Allen has created a bracing and truly surprising movie experience.
Q&As with Luca Guadagnino, Armie Hammer, and Timothée Chalamet on 10/3 and 10/4 (with Michael Stuhlbarg)
Capturing with eloquence the confusion and longing of youth, Call Me by Your Name charts the slowly ripening romance between an American teen on the verge of discovering himself and the handsome older grad student his professor father has invited to their vacation home in Northern Italy.
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Alain Gomis on 10/4 and 10/5
In Senegalese director Alain Gomis’s new film, a singer in a makeshift bar in Kinshasa goes in search of money for her son’s medical care after he is injured in an accident. Félicité is tough, and tender, funny and terrifying, both responsive to the moment and fixed on its heroine’s spiritual progress.
Q&As with Sean Baker and cast on 10/1 and 10/3
A six-year-old girl and her two best friends run wild on the grounds of a week-by-week motel complex on the edge of Orlando’s Disney World in Sean Baker’s depiction of childhood on the margins, a film of fierce energy, tenderness, and great beauty.
Critic's Pick at The New York Times!
A filmmaker (Mathieu Amalric) in the throes of writing a spy thriller sees his life upended after the return of his wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard), a fragile, Hitchcockian femme fatale, who disappeared twenty years earlier. Ismael’s Ghosts is about the process of creating a work of art and all the madness that requires.
Q&As with Greta Gerwig on 10/8 and 10/9
Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut, a portrait of an artistically inclined teenage girl (Saoirse Ronan) trying to define herself in the shadow of her mother (Laurie Metcalf), is rich in invention and incident, and powered by Ronan, 23 years old and one of the finest actors in movies.
One of Cahiers du cinéma's top 10 films of 2017
In Philippe Garrel’s poetic exploration of relationships, desire, and fidelity, Jeanne (Esther Garrel), after a painful breakup, moves back in with her university professor father to discover that he is living with a student who is the same age as Jeanne.
North American Premiere · Q&A with Noah Baumbach on 10/1 (with cast) and on 10/2
Noah Baumbach revisits the family terrain of The Squid and the Whale in this intricately plotted story of three middle-aged siblings (Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Elizabeth Marvel) coping with their strong-willed father (Dustin Hoffman) and the flightiness of his wife (Emma Thompson).
North American Premiere · Q&As with Serge Bozon and Isabelle Huppert on 9/29 + 10/1
Isabelle Huppert hypnotizes us again in Serge Bozon’s eccentric twist on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in which a timid and rather peculiar physics professor is struck by lightning and wakes up a decidedly different person, the newly powerful Mrs. Hyde.
Q&A with Dee Rees, Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Jason Mitchell, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Rob Morgan on 10/12
Writer-director Dee Rees’s historical epic, based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, details the daily hardships and vicissitudes of farm life in Mississippi during the post–World War II era, focusing on two families, one white (the landlords) and one black (the sharecroppers), working the same miserable piece of farmland.
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Agnieszka Holland and Kasia Adamik on 9/30 and 10/1
A series of hunters die mysteriously in the wilderness on the Polish-Czech border, and part-time teacher and animal activist Janina wonders if the animals are taking revenge in this phantasmagorical murder mystery, which is also a tender love story and a resistance and rescue thriller.
Q&As with Joachim Trier, Eskil Vogt, and Eili Harboe on 10/6 and 10/7
In this fluid, sharply observant, and continually surprising film, an adolescent country girl (Eili Harboe), the daughter of a quietly domineering mother and father, begins to manifest a terrifying and uncontrollable power. Warning: This film contains flashing lights which may not be suitable for photosensitive epilepsy. Viewer discretion is advised.
Critic's Pick at The New York Times!
Valeska Grisebach uses the Western as a template for her supremely intelligent genre update about an all-male group of German workers who are building a water facility in remote rural Bulgaria, and the conflict that arises between the reserved newbie and the boorish team leader.
