Free Talk: Alice Diop & Frederick Wiseman

French filmmaker Alice Diop has said that it was the work of Frederick Wiseman that inspired her to become a documentarian. It is fitting, then, that this year’s NYFF Main Slate features new films by Wiseman and Diop that speak to each other in extraordinary ways—including in their deviation from documentary into the more delicate terrain between fiction and nonfiction. Both A Couple (Wiseman) and Saint Omer (Diop) take true stories of extraordinary and fraught women as their bases, probing the formal possibilities and limits of cinema in revealing the inner lives of real people. Join the two directors for a conversation about the turn to narrative cinema, the cultural and generational distinctions of filmmaking in France and the United States, their respective approaches to cinema as a mode of systemic critique, and more. Moderated by Dessane Lopez Cassell (editor-in-chief, SEEN journal).

Alice Diop’s Saint Omer and Frederick Wiseman’s A Couple are Main Slate selections of this year’s New York Film Festival.  

NYFF Talks are presented by:

Free tickets for NYFF60 Talks will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis beginning one hour prior to each event at the corresponding box office. Tickets are limited to one per person, subject to availability. For those unable to attend, video from these events will be available online on Film at Lincoln Center’s YouTube channel at a later date.