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Talks

Free Talk: NYFF58 Kick-off

  • 60 minutes

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Get ready for the 58th edition of the New York Film Festival with a special preview led by NYFF's new programming team! NYFF58 Talks programmers Devika Girish and Maddie Whittle will chat with the rest of the team about curating the historic festival in an unprecedented year and the must-see films in this year's lineup.

Deep Focus

In-depth dialogues with festival filmmakers & their collaborators.

Free Talk: Smooth Talk with Laura Dern, Joyce Chopra, and Joyce Carol Oates

  • 60 minutes

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To celebrate the premiere of the new restoration of Smooth Talk (1985) in NYFF58’s Revivals section, tune in for a live conversation with the three powerhouse women behind the film: director Joyce Chopra; actress Laura Dern; and author Joyce Carol Oates, whose short story provided the inspiration for the film. Moderated by TCM host Alicia Malone.

Free Talk: Tsai Ming-liang 

  • 60 minutes

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An unparalleled portraitist of loneliness and longing, Tsai Ming-liang returns to NYFF with Days: his first feature since 2013’s Stray Dogs, and undoubtedly one of his best, sparest, and most intimate films. We are delighted to welcome the legendary Taiwanese director for an extended conversation about this latest entry in his masterful, decades-spanning oeuvre.

Free Talk: Marie-Claude Treilhou with Serge Bozon

  • 60 minutes
Marking the NYFF58 Revivals premiere of Simone Barbes or Virtue’s new restoration, we’re honored to host Treilhou in a talk with Serge Bozon about the making and the enduring legacy of the vital and vivid film.

Free Talk: The Making of Small Axe

  • 60 minutes
With his Small Axe anthology, Steve McQueen has made the films of the moment. The director and his collaborators will dig into the making of this sprawling project—which McQueen has dedicated to George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement—and illuminate the artistic and political ambitions that have shaped it.

Free Talk: Gianfranco Rosi

  • 60 minutes
The veteran documentary filmmaker, last seen at NYFF with 2016’s Fire at Sea, joins us to discuss his extraordinary body of immersive, empathetic, and urgent nonfiction. 

Crosscuts

Conversations between filmmakers across festival sections, genres, and styles.

Free Talk: Sam Pollard & John Gianvito 

  • 60 minutes

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We’re excited to bring the veteran directors of MLK/FBI and Her Socialist Smile together to discuss their formal, aesthetic, and discursive approaches to filmmaking, and the challenge of crafting art that resonates in the present moment while frankly reckoning with the untidy contours of the past.  

Free Talk: Garrett Bradley & Ephraim Asili

  • 60 minutes

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Don’t miss this conversation between the directors of Time and The Inheritance, two of the most formally inventive and politically astute films in the NYFF58 program. Moderated by writer and researcher Yasmina Price.

Free Talk: Matías Piñeiro & Nicolás Pereda

  • 60 minutes

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In Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella (Main Slate) and Nicolás Pereda’s Fauna (Currents), one never knows where performance ends and life begins. In what is sure to be a conversation full of creative insight, the two filmmakers will chat about their shared affinities and inimitable idiosyncrasies.

Free Talk: Valeria Sarmiento/Galut Alarcón & Filip Jan Rymsza/Bob Murawski

  • 60 minutes

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The filmmakers behind the posthumously completed works of Raúl Ruiz (The Tango of the Widower and Its Distorting Mirror) and Orson Welles (Hopper/Welles) will chat about the unique artistic and logistical process of fashioning a film out of the fragments left behind by an iconic auteur. 

Free Talk: Christian Petzold & Heinz Emigholz

  • 60 minutes
Two major auteurs of German cinema—and brilliant portraitists of modernity—bring sublime and surprising new works to this year’s NYFF. Catch the two filmmakers in an unmissable exchange about their common concerns, formal divergences, and cinematic philosophies. 

Roundtables

Panels and discussions that connect the festival to the themes of the moment.

Free Talk: New York Stories

  • 60 minutes
Join us for what is sure to be a lively, expansive roundtable with the directors featured in NYFF58’s New York Stories short film program, part of this year’s Currents section. These nine NYC-based filmmakers will discuss their working methods, influences, and creative networks, and the ways in which their filmmaking practices reflect and refract this most cinematic of cities.

Free Talk: Outside the Canon

  • 60 minutes

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As discussions about reforming and expanding the cinematic canon rage on, some argue that it’s time to do away with it entirely—to imagine new and equitable structures, instead of trying to fix the old flawed ones. This roundtable discussion turns the spotlight on individuals and initiatives that bypass gatekeeping institutions, choosing instead to build alternative, collective, and grassroots methods of film distribution and exhibition.

Free Talk: The Revolution Will Be Filmed

  • 60 minutes
To expand on the timely questions raised by NYFF58 selections The Monopoly of Violence, Mangrove, and Red, White and Blue, we’re bringing together a group of film artists, writers, and scholars for a conversation about the cinematic representation of police brutality and revolutionary protest.

Free Talk: Rethinking World Cinema

  • 60 minutes
This year’s NYFF features trailblazing filmmakers from around the globe who are not only reinventing world cinema, but challenging the very assumptions of that label. A selection of these directors will join us for a discussion about breaking boundaries and inventing new international canons.

Free Talk: The Artist, the Athlete, and the Revolutionary

  • 60 minutes
Two Revivals selections featuring James Baldwin and Muhammad Ali pose the questions: Can artists and athletes act as political—perhaps even revolutionary—agents of change? And what are the double binds faced by Black artists and athletes in the public eye? Join us for a timely roundtable discussion featuring critics and scholars.

Free Talk: Festival Report

  • 60 minutes
For the festival’s final week, a group of critics will gather together for a spirited discussion with Devika Girish, Assistant Editor of Film Comment and Film at Lincoln Center, about the movies they’ve seen in the NYFF58 lineup and their tales from the trenches of the pandemic-era festival.