Film at Lincoln Center has announced its full lineup of festival, repertory, and new release programming for the 2022 spring season.

Highlights include a two-part retrospective of the works of Hong Sangsoo, with the prolific filmmaker in person at FLC, and the release of his most recent offering, NYFF59 selection In Front of Your Face; additional NYFF59 selections The Girl and the Spider, The Tale of King Crab, Petite Maman, and The Tsugua Diaries; Los conductos, director Camilo Restrepo’s winner of the Best First Feature prize at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and a New Directors/New Films 2020 selection; two entries by David Lynch: a new 4K restoration of Lost Highway and a special screening of Inland Empire, from a new digital restoration and featuring an in-person talk with Melissa Anderson, author of a recently published monograph on Lynch’s enigmatic 10th feature; new digital restorations as part of a vast retrospective for acclaimed humanist director Mike Leigh; a celebration of horror icon Dario Argento, featuring quintessential works of giallo, the pulpy Italian subgenre he helped formalize, many of which will be presented in brand-new 4K restorations; and five greatly anticipated annual festivals: FLC’s nonfiction showcase Art of the Real, the New York African Film Festival, New Directors/New Films, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, and the Human Rights Watch Film Festival

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Film descriptions and additional details are listed below and on filmlinc.org. New releases and revival runs are organized by Florence Almozini, Dennis Lim, and Tyler Wilson.

FILMS & SERIES DESCRIPTIONS
All films screen at the Walter Reade Theater (165 W. 65th St.) or Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
(144 W. 65th St.).

March 31-April 7
Art of the Real
Celebrating its ninth year, the Art of the Real festival presents the most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction, hybrid, and unclassifiable filmmaking. This edition promises a vibrant slate of brilliant new works by internationally acclaimed artists and filmmakers, along with impressive, award-winning debuts from around the world. The 2022 roster will feature, alongside a host of premieres, a retrospective of the French filmmaker Alice Diop, whose latest film, Nous (We), was part of the 2021 New Directors/New Films lineup.

Organized by Dennis Lim and Rachael Rakes, with program advisor Almudena Escobar López.

Opens April 8
The Girl and the Spider
Ramon and Silvan Zürcher, 2021, Switzerland, 98m
German with English subtitles
Everything is in its right place, yet nothing is ever what or where it seems in this alternately droll and melancholy new film from the Zürcher brothers, whose The Strange Little Cat was one of the most striking and original debut features of recent years. Their latest charts a few days in the lives of two young people on the verge of change: Lisa (Liliane Amuat), who is in the process of moving into a new apartment, and her current roommate, Mara (Henriette Confurius), who’s staying behind. Though its setup is simple, the film—and the ambiguous relationship between the women—is anything but. The architectural precision of the filmmaking belies the inchoate longings and desires that appear to course through Lisa and Mara, as well as the various characters who come in and out of their homes. The Girl and the Spider is a minor-key symphony of inscrutable glances and irresolvable tensions. An NYFF59 selection. A Cinema Guild release.

April 8-17 and May 4-10
The Hong Sangsoo Multiverse: A Retrospective of Double Features
Few if any contemporary directors have amassed as vast and prolific a body of work as Hong Sangsoo. Working at an unparalleled clip of productivity, the South Korean auteur has helmed 25 of his 27 features this century, each a valuable addition to an oeuvre that returns time and again to the same themes, preoccupations, and strategies, but always with some fresh angle, some radically new way of telling a familiar story. Hong’s films seize the material of everyday life—regret, infidelity, professional frustrations, the casual cruelty and brutish folly of men and women alike (but especially men)—in the service of exploring psychology and metaphysics in elegant, subtly profound ways. In a structural gesture befitting Hong, our two-part survey consists entirely of double features, with each film paired differently each time it screens. This career-spanning retrospective, timed to the May 6 release of In Front of Your Face (NYFF59), will also feature in-person appearances by Hong. 

Organized by Dennis Lim and Dan Sullivan. Presented in partnership with the Korea Society.

Opens April 15 – Exclusive
The Tale of King Crab
Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, 2021, Italy/Argentina/France, 106m
Italian and Spanish with English subtitles
This rich, engrossing fiction feature debut from documentary filmmakers Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis takes storytelling itself as its subject. Based on a legendary figure about whom the filmmakers first heard while making their previous collaboration, 2015’s Il solengo, this rousing, bifurcated tale follows the improbable adventures of Luciano (a bewitching Gabriele Silli), a village outcast in late-19th-century rural Italy. In the film’s first half, set in the countryside near Rome, his life is undone by alcohol, forbidden love, and an escalating quarrel with a local aristocrat; in the second, Luciano is in the distant Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego, hunting for a mythic treasure with the help of a compass-like crab. Rigo de Righi and Zoppis have created a highly unconventional narrative of redemption, alternating images of grandeur and folkloric idiosyncrasy. An NYFF59 selection. An Oscilloscope Laboratories release.

April 20-May 1New Directors/New Films
Celebrating its 51st edition in 2022, the New Directors/New Films festival introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging filmmakers from around the world. Throughout its rich, half-century-plus history, New Directors has brought previously little-known talents like Spike Lee, Chantal Akerman, Bi Gan, Gabriel Mascaro, RaMell Ross, Theo Anthony, Jessica Beshir, and Kelly Reichardt to the attention of wider audiences. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating a group of filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema: daring artists whose work pushes the envelope and is never what you’d expect.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art.

Opens April 22
Petite Maman
Céline Sciamma, 2021, France, 72m
French with English subtitles
Following such singular inquiries into gender as Tomboy, Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (NYFF57), Céline Sciamma proves again that she’s among the most accomplished and unpredictable of all contemporary French filmmakers, with the gentle yet richly emotional time-bender Petite Maman. Following the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother’s childhood home to begin the difficult process of sorting and removing its cherished objects. While exploring the nearby woods, Nelly encounters a neighbor her own age, with whom she finds she has a remarkable amount in common. Sciamma’s scrupulously constructed jewel uses the most delicate of touches to palpate profound ideas about grief, memory, and the past. An NYFF59 selection. A NEON release.

Opens April 29 – Exclusive
Los conductos
Camilo Restrepo, 2020, France/Colombia/Brazil, 70m
Spanish with English subtitles
A former criminal and cult member living under cloak of night in the crevices and corners of the Colombian city of Medellín makes his way back into civilization, yet is gripped by a shadowy past, in this fragmented first feature from Camilo Restrepo. After his memorable shorts Cilaos and La bouche, the director proves his mastery at economical yet expansive storytelling here, taking a complex narrative about the possibility of regeneration within a society all too willing to discard its outcasts and boiling it down to a series of precise shots, sounds, and gestures of offhanded beauty. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival. A New Directors/New Films 2020 selection. A Grasshopper Film release.

Opens May 6
In Front of Your Face
Hong Sangsoo, 2021, South Korea, 85m
Korean with English subtitles
After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress (Lee Hye-young) has returned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one day in Seoul, via various encounters—including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives in her converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like to make a comeback—we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the big secret that’s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of the spiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sangsoo in a particularly contemplative mood; it’s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace and a sick joke. An NYFF59 selection. A Cinema Guild release.

May 11
Melissa Anderson and Inland Empire
On the occasion of the release of her monograph Inland Empire (published by Fireflies Press), critic/editor Melissa Anderson joins us for a special screening of Lynch’s enigmatic and singularly immersive 10th feature (from a new digital restoration, courtesy of Janus Films), to be followed by a book signing.

May 12-17
New York African Film Festival
The 29th New York African Film Festival is presented under the banner Visions of Freedom: tuning into diverse and interconnected notions of freedom pertinent to Africa, the diaspora, and the world at large. This year’s festival presents programs that recall activisms past and usher in new anthems of the future to embrace a united front for liberation and expression.

Co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and African Film Festival, Inc. Organized by Mahen Bonetti, Francoise Bouffault, Dara Ojugbele, and Farima Kone Kito, African Film Festival, Inc.

May 20-26
Human Rights Watch Film Festival
Human Rights Watch is one of the world’s leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, and its annual film festival is a vital forum for movies that tackle important global issues. Showcasing an international selection of acclaimed works that bring human rights struggles to life through storytelling, the festival presents challenging, provocative art that calls for justice and social change.

Selections in recent years have included some of the most urgent documentary and fiction films of our time (including Welcome to Chechnya, One Child Nation, City of Ghosts, and On Her Shoulders), and this year again features essential and entertaining films destined to spark debate.

This year, the festival invites you to celebrate the power we all possess to make a difference in the world, as we meet courageous individuals on both sides of the lens.

Discover more information at ff.hrw.org.

Organized by Human Rights Watch.

Opens May 27
The Tsugua Diaries
Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes, 2021, Portugal, 102m
Portuguese and Romanian with English subtitles
The rigorous process of moviemaking meets the torpor of pandemic life in this beguiling new film co-directed by Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes (Arabian Nights, NYFF53). A daily journal that unfolds in revelatory reverse order, this playful rug-puller begins by surveying the mundane routines of three housemates (Carloto Cotta, Crista Alfaiate, and João Nunes Monteiro) living in rural peace during the COVID lockdown: impromptu dance parties, cleaning, building a backyard butterfly house. Soon, we discover that there’s more going on beyond the limits of the camera frame. Cockeyed, funny, and slyly meta-cinematic, The Tsugua Diaries, lovingly shot on 16mm, demonstrates the possibility of artistic creation out of sheer will. An NYFF59 selection. A KimStim release.

May 27-June 8
Mike Leigh
For over half a century now, Mike Leigh has directed films suffused with emotion and the realities of working-class struggle. From his debut feature, Bleak Moments (1971); to his ’70s television work for the BBC; to the breakout mid-career successes of Life Is Sweet (1990), Naked (1993), and Secrets and Lies (1996); through the historical films that have marked his output more recently, like Mr. Turner (2014) and Peterloo (2018), a Mike Leigh film always has an unmistakable energy and feeling for the triumphs and tragedies of everyday life. Leigh is one of world cinema’s most ardent, relentless humanists, and one of the great directors of actors: his oeuvre abounds with spellbinding, bracingly multilayered portrayals from some of the UK’s finest screen performers of the past 50 years, in no small part due to Leigh’s signature methods of improvisation. Join Film at Lincoln Center as we look back and celebrate Leigh’s singular career with the largest retrospective of his work that New York has seen in three decades, featuring new digital restorations.

Organized by Dan Sullivan and Madeline Whittle. Co-presented with Janus Films.

June 9-15
Open Roads: New Italian Cinema
Open Roads: New Italian Cinema is the only screening series to offer North American audiences a diverse and extensive lineup of contemporary Italian films. This year’s edition again strikes a balance between emerging talents and esteemed veterans; commercial and independent fare; outrageous comedies, gripping dramas, and captivating documentaries.

Co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and Cinecittà. Organized by Dan Sullivan, Film at Lincoln Center; and by Carla Cattani, Griselda Guerrasio, and Monique Catalino, Cinecittà.

June 17-29
Dario Argento
Ever since his heart-stopping directorial debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Dario Argento has been redrawing the boundaries of cinematic horror with flamboyant violence, feverish plotting, and deliriously stylized compositions. Perhaps most closely associated with giallo, the pulpy Italian subgenre he helped formalize and would later take to unprecedented heights with his international breakthrough, Deep Red (1975), Argento embraces a gamut of fantastical influences—from sublime Gothic art and penny dreadfuls to Murnau, Hitchcock, and Disney—with his distinctively baroque style of disorienting cinematography, stained-glass colorwork, and elaborate musical scores (often composed by his own rotating house group, Goblin). Film at Lincoln Center is pleased to present a retrospective of Argento’s singular and influential feature films, many of them premiering in brand-new 4K restorations.

Organized by Madeline Whittle and Tyler Wilson of Film at Lincoln Center, and by Camilla Cormanni, Paola Ruggiero, and Marco Cicala of Cinecittà. Co-produced by Cinecittà, Rome.

Opens June 24
Lost Highway
David Lynch, 1997, USA/France, 134m
Most of Lynch’s later films straddle (at least) two realities, and their most ominous moments arise from a dawning awareness that one world is about to yield to another. In Lost Highway, returning to Film at Lincoln Center in a new 4K restoration, we are introduced to brooding jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) while he lives in a simmering state of jealousy with his listless and possibly unfaithful wife Renee (Patricia Arquette). About one hour in, a rupture fundamentally alters the narrative logic of the film and the world itself becomes a nightmare embodiment of a consciousness out of control. Lost Highway marked a return from the wilderness for Lynch, and the arrival of his more radical expressionism—alternating omnipresent darkness with overexposed whiteouts, dead air with the belligerent soundtrack assault of industrial metal bands, and the tactile sensation that everything is really happening with the infinite delusions of schizophrenic thought. A Janus Films release.