32 of the most exciting new feature films from around the world.
Opening Night · North American Premiere · On Sept. 30, Q&A with Noah Baumbach & cast at 6pm screening; intros at 6:15pm (WRT), 9:30pm (ATH), and 9:45pm (WRT) screenings
In one of the year’s most gratifyingly ambitious American films, Noah Baumbach adapts Don DeLillo’s epochal postmodern 1985 novel, long perceived as unfilmable, into a richly layered, entirely unexpected work of contemporary satire.
Closing Night Selection · U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Elegance Bratton, cast members Jeremy Pope, Gabrielle Union & Raúl Castillo, and producers Effie Brown & Chester Algernal Gordon
Filmmaker and photographer Elegance Bratton makes his ambitious narrative debut with The Inspection, a knockout drama based on his own experiences as a gay man in Marine Corps basic training following a decade of living on the streets.
NYFF 60th Anniversary Celebration · Q&As with James Gray and Jeremy Strong on Oct. 12 (joined by Anne Hathaway, Banks Repeta, and Jaylin Webb) and Oct. 13; Intro from James Gray on Oct. 14
The most personal film yet from James Gray (The Immigrant, The Lost City of Z) is also one of his greatest, an exquisitely detailed coming-of-age drama that follows Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a sixth grader who dreams of becoming an artist. Also starring Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway, and Jaylin Webb.
Spain's Oscar Entry
Winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, Carla Simón’s follow-up to her acclaimed childhood drama Summer 1993 is a ruminative, lived-in portrait of a rural family in present-day Catalonia whose way of life is rapidly changing.
Q&As with Shaunak Sen on Oct. 11 & 12
In this hypnotic, poignant, and beautifully crafted documentary, New Delhi-based filmmaker Shaunak Sen immerses himself with two brothers who for years have been taking it upon themselves to save the black kite, their city’s endangered birds of prey, which the general population largely sees as nuisances despite their essential role in the city’s ecosystem.
Austria's Oscar Entry
In a perceptive, nuanced performance, Vicky Krieps (Phantom Thread) quietly dominates the screen as Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who begins to see her life of royal privilege as a prison as she reaches her fortieth birthday. Marie Kreutzer boldly imagines her cloistered world with both realism and fanciful imagination.
North American Premiere · Q&As with Frederick Wiseman on Oct. 1 & 2
Legendary American documentarian Frederick Wiseman has made a film based on the diaries of Sophia Tolstoy, structured as a series of monologues delivered with magnificent poise and gathering intensity by star and co-writer Nathalie Boutefeu—a captivating one-woman portrait of a remarkably contemporary rendering of a marriage.
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor on Oct. 2 & 3
In their thrilling new work of nonfiction exploration, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Leviathan) burrow deeper than ever, using microscopic cameras and specially designed recording devices to survey the wondrous landscape of the human body.
South Korea's Oscar Entry
A Busan detective is increasingly obsessed with a murder suspect in a puzzling new case: a middle-aged businessman has mysteriously fallen to his death and his wife might be to blame. Park Chan-wook won the Cannes Best Director award for this twisting Hitchcockian detective thriller, one of his most enveloping and accomplished films.
Q&As with Margaret Brown on Oct. 1 & 2
A southern U.S. town’s submerged history symbolizes an entire nation’s forgotten atrocities in this poignant and cathartic documentary from nonfiction film veteran Margaret Brown, which reckons with the legacy of the Clotilda, a slave ship that brought more than one hundred people to Alabama from Africa in 1860, decades after the practice was made illegal.
Closes Thursday!
In this eerie, texturally rich experience from Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin, an isolated middle-aged woman spends her days in enigmatic environmental study on an uninhabited, windswept, rocky island off the coast of Cornwall in southwest England, yet she’s also increasingly haunted by her own nightmarish visitations.
U.S. Premiere · Intros by Mina Kavani on Oct. 9, 13 & 14
Jafar Panahi’s risk-taking output has never slowed down even amidst his internationally condemned treatment by the Iranian government. In No Bears, another virtuosic sleight of hand, the director appears as himself, relocated to a rural border town to remotely oversee the making of a new film in Turkey, the story of which comes to sharply parallel disturbing events that begin to occur around him.
U.S. Premiere · Q&As with Cristian Mungiu on Oct. 9 & 10
Cristian Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days), who dramatizes the tensions of a modern Romania still beholden to dangerous traditions, returns with a gripping, mosaic-like portrait of a rural Transylvanian town riven by ethnic conflicts, economic resentment, and personal turmoil.
U.S. Premiere · Q&A with Davy Chou and Park Ji-Min on Oct. 13
A young French woman finds herself spontaneously tracking down the South Korean birth parents she has never met while on vacation in Seoul. From this seemingly simple premise, Cambodian-French filmmaker Davy Chou spins an unpredictable, careering narrative that takes place over the course of nearly ten years.
France's Oscar Entry
Successful journalist and author Rama (Kayije Kagame) attends the trial of a young Senegalese woman (Guslagie Malanda), who has allegedly murdered her own baby daughter. Rama’s plan to write about Laurence in a book inspired by the Medea myth increasingly unravels as she becomes overwhelmed by the case in Alice Diop’s arresting yet highly sensitive, superbly acted fiction feature debut.
North American Premiere · Q&As with Kelly Reichardt and Hong Chau on Oct. 5 & 6
Continuing one of the richest collaborations in modern American cinema, director Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women) reunites with star Michelle Williams for this marvelously particularized portrait of a sculptor’s daily work and frustrations in an artist’s enclave in Portland.
Q&A with Todd Field, Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, and Hildur Guonadóttir on Oct. 3 · Intro by Todd Field, Cate Blanchett, and Nina Hoss on Oct. 4
The charisma and emotional precision of Cate Blanchett are put to astounding use in this deft showcase for the actor’s musical artistry, a stinging portrait of a world-famous orchestra conductor’s gradual unraveling that is the first film in sixteen years from director Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children).
Q&As with Ruben Östlund, Dolly de Leon, and Zlatko Burić on Oct. 1 & 2
Ruben Östlund’s wildly ambitious Palme d’Or–winning Buñuelian satire follows two hot young models (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) who rub elbows with the super-rich on a luxury cruise gone haywire.
Closes Thursday!
Anarchist and socialist philosopher Pyotr Kropotkin experiences a quiet revolution in Cyril Schäublin’s complexly woven timepiece set in the hushed environs of the Swiss watchmaking town of Saint-Imier in the 1870s.
Closes Thursday!
Successful middle-aged filmmaker Byungsoo (Kwon Haehyo) drops by to visit an old friend, Mrs. Kim (Lee Hyeyoung), the owner of a charming apartment building, only to find his life taking a series of unexpected turns. Hong Sangsoo uses a delicately radical structure in his latest exploration of the complexities of relationships, growing older, and artistic pursuit.
