Ari Aster on Midsommar, Cathartic Endings, the Directors Cut, and His Favorite Films Film at Lincoln Center 2019-07-12 | Ari Aster joined us last summer for a talk at Film at Lincoln Center to discuss his previous feature, the unforgettable Hereditary, and we were delighted to welcome him back for another Film Comment chat on Tuesday, July 10. In front of a packed house, Aster sat down with author and Film Comment mainstay Michael Koresky for a discussion about his Swedish countryside-set horror film Midsommar, working with star Florence Pugh, and favorite movies such as 45 Years. Also, listen up for a few details on the forthcoming director’s cut of Midsommar, and don’t forget to read about Aster’s inspirations for the film in the July-August issue of Film Comment: filmcomment.com/issue/july-august-2019Film at Lincoln Center is dedicated to supporting the art and elevating the craft of cinema and enriching film culture.Film at Lincoln Center fulfills its mission through the programming of festivals, series, retrospectives, and new releases; the publication of Film Comment; the presentation of podcasts, talks, and special events; the creation and implementation of Artist Initiatives; and our Film in Education curriculum and screenings. Since its founding in 1969, this nonprofit organization has brought the celebration of American and international film to the world-renowned arts complex Lincoln Center, making the discussion and appreciation of cinema accessible to a broad audience, and ensuring that it remains an essential art form for years to come.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow: http://twitter.com/filmlinc
Mati Diop on Dahomey | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-18 | Director Mati Diop discusses Dahomey, a Main Slate selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Selection Committee member Justin Chang. Dahomey opens at Film at Lincoln Center on October 25. Get tickets: filmlinc.org/nyff2024/films/dahomeyThe African kingdom of Dahomey, which ruled over its region at the west of the continent until the turn of the 20th century, saw hundreds of its splendid royal artifacts plundered by French colonial troops in its waning days. Now, as 26 of these treasures are set to return to their homeland—now within the Republic of Benin—filmmaker Mati Diop documents their voyage back. As with her layered, supernaturally tinged Atlantics (NYFF57), Diop takes a singular approach to contemporary questions around belonging in our postcolonial world, transforming this rich subject matter into a multifaceted examination of ownership and exhibition, and employing multiple points of view, including—most strikingly—those of the artifacts themselves as they sail in darkness over the ocean to their rightful home. Alternating images of nocturnal melancholy and debates among students at Benin’s University of Abomey-Calavi about what should be done with the objects, Dahomey brilliantly negotiates a lost past and an unsure present. Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival. A MUBI release.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Anora | Clip | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-17 | An NYFF62 Main Slate selection, Sean Baker's Anora is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets: filmlinc.org/films/anoraThis year’s rambunctious Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival is a pure shot of frenetic pleasure, a New York odyssey that is the most immersive and accomplished comic adventure yet from American original Sean Baker (The Florida Project, NYFF55; Red Rocket, NYFF59). In a thrilling, star-making performance, Mikey Madison plays Ani, a tough-as-nails exotic dancer from Brighton Beach suddenly thrust into the lap of luxury when she’s whisked away on a whirlwind romance with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), an obscenely wealthy young customer at her strip club. However, Ivan turns out to be the spoiled scion of Russian oligarchs, and Ani’s wild ride is anything but your average rags-to-riches story. Baker always takes a good-natured, sociological approach to his subject matter and milieu, and here he has created an authentic 21st-century screwball comedy that tackles sex, love, class, and money with matter-of-fact directness. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection. A NEON releaseMore info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Marta Mateus on Fire of Wind | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-17 | Director Marta Mateus joined NYFF Selection committee member Tyler Wilson to discuss Fire of Wind at its North American Premiere as a Currents election at the 62nd New York Film Festival.In the feature debut of Portuguese filmmaker Marta Mateus, a peasant community of vineyard workers at harvest time become characters in a timeless myth. Hiding high in the branches of oak trees from a dangerous runaway bull, they escape into dreams and memories, their experience evoking personal and political pasts as day descends into night. Set in the Alentejo region in southern Portugal, where Mateus grew up, Fire of Wind is both earthy and deeply symbolic in its imagery, its characters coming to embody the historical memory of the landscape, still haunted by Salazar’s mid-20th-century dictatorship.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Wang Bing on Youth (Homecoming) | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-17 | Wang Bing discusses his NYFF62 Main Slate selection Youth (Homecoming) with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.Wang Bing concludes his monumental Youth trilogy in expansive fashion, giving ever wider scope to the lives of migrant workers in Zhili’s textile factories, which the filmmaker recorded over the course of five years. Centered around New Year’s break, when the workers are planning to visit their families in remote hometowns to celebrate the festivities, Homecoming functions as a sweeping portrait of contemporary rural China, incorporating images of tightly packed trains and buses climbing treacherous mountainside roads, and joyous interludes, including wedding celebrations for workers Shi Wei and Fang Lingping, into its scenes of factory life. Wang’s cyclical account of young people caught in constant survival mode comes to a poignant close here, giving definitive shape and meaning to his enormous act of observation. An Icarus Films release.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
The Making of exergue – on documenta 14 | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-17 | This panel brings together director Dimitris Athiridis, Adam Szymczyk, documenta 14 artist Naeem Mohaiemen, and curator and writer Serubiri Moses in a conversation exploring the making of exergue and D14; how its portrayal unwittingly signaled major political, financial, and cultural policy shifts in Europe; and the ethical and material complexities involved in conceiving any major international art showcase today.Reflecting the ambitions of its subject, Dimitris Athiridis’s exergue – on documenta 14 plays out over 14 hours to trace the making and near-breaking of the historic German quadrennial’s 14th edition, through the innumerable barriers and controversies faced by Artistic Director Adam Szymczyk and his curatorial team. As a gesture toward de-centering Europe’s art world from the North, Szymczyk proposed the exhibition take place both in its original home of Kassel, Germany and in Athens, Greece—all during Europe’s mid-2010s financial crises. Athiridis observes the team and contributing artists as they face off against politicians, bureaucrats, handlers, critics, and other adversaries in their efforts to make progress with the project. Moderated by curator and NYFF Currents Programmer Rachael Rakes.NYFF Talks are presented by HBO. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Marva Nabili on The Sealed Soil | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-17 | Director Marva Nabili joins NYFF selection committee member Dan Sullivan to discuss her 1977 film The Sealed Soil, an NYFF62 Revivals selection.The earliest surviving Iranian film directed by a woman, Marva Nabili’s astonishing debut is a deftly observant work that conjures the plight of the female subject in a time of political subjugation. The film follows Roo-Bekheir, a woman living in a poor village in southwest Iran who must prepare to move in order to accommodate a state-ordered construction project. We watch as she goes about her everyday routine, a life structured as much by repetitiveness as by social repression. Evoking Akerman and Bresson through its uncompromising rigor, yet marked by its own brand of low-key sensuality, The Sealed Soil is shot through with criticality and an attentiveness to the inner world of a woman rebelling, in her way, against stifling patriarchy. An Arbelos Films and Venera Films release. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Ben Russell and Guillaume Cailleau on DIRECT ACTION | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-17 | Directors Guillaume Cailleau and Ben Russell discuss DIRECT ACTION, an NYFF62 Currents selection, with NYFF Currents programmer Aily Nash.This detailed portrait of the intricate processes of a French political eco-activist group, a collaboration between American experimental filmmaker Ben Russell and French artist Guillaume Cailleau, is a work of striking, meaningful duration, philosophically immersing viewers in the world of its committed subjects by focusing on the physical. Set in the Notre-Dame-des-Landes commune in western France, where the collective plans and carries out its mission—termed ZAD (Zone to Defend)—to disrupt and discourage corporations and state entities from building on and destroying land, DIRECT ACTION follows the minutiae and daily efforts leading to the protest of a reservoir development. Winner of the Best Film award in the Berlinale’s Encounters section, Cailleau and Russell’s film shows the stakes, pitfalls, and reverberations of taking a militant stance against the injustices of our times. All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Julia Loktev & Roberto Minervini on Depicting War and Immigrant Perspectives | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-16 | NYFF62 Main Slate selections The Damned, by Roberto Minervini—a naturalistic period drama set on a remote western frontier during the American Civil War—and My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, by Julia Loktev—a sweeping, urgent vérité documentary that follows an ensemble of dissident journalists in Russia in the months leading up to the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—represent major new entries in their respective directors’ impressively rigorous bodies of work. Each film forges a vivid and extraordinarily detailed portrait of the ways in which geopolitical forces shape human relationships, vocations, and attitudes on an intimate scale. We were pleased to host Minervini and Loktev for a conversation about crafting cinematic depictions of war, whether imminent or long-past; the experience of moving between narrative and documentary modes of storytelling; and their perspectives as immigrant filmmakers working in (and outside of) the United States. Moderated by Madeline Whittle.Talks are presented by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Robinson Devor, Sean Kirby, Jason Reid, and Bob Fink on Suburban Fury | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-16 | At the world premiere of their NYFF62 Main Slate selection, director Robinson Devor, cinematographer Sean Kirby, producer Jason Reid, and co-writer Bob Fink joined FLC programmer Dan Sullivan to talk about the 10-plus-year process of creating their latest film.On September 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore took a revolver out of her purse and fired two shots at President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square. This failed political assassination was destined to become a strange historical footnote, yet Moore is revealed as an extraordinary subject in this expansive, fascinating new documentary by the protean Robinson Devor (The Woman Chaser, NYFF37). Having served more than 30 years of a life prison sentence, Moore tells her own story, from FBI informant to would-be assassin, all of which Devor dramatizes against the backdrop of the era’s prevalent political unrest and militancy, of Attica, the Black Panthers, the U.S.-backed Chilean coup, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. A pugnacious and unapologetic interview subject, Moore holds the center of a fleet and compelling nonfiction drama with the feel of a 1970s thriller.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are presented by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, Zita Hanrot, and Josué Gutierrez on The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-16 | Director Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich and cast members Zita Hanrot and Josué Gutierrez discuss The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, an NYFF62 Currents selection, with Currents selection committee member Rachel Rakes.“We are making a film about an artist who didn’t want to be remembered,” says Zita Hanrot, the actress playing an actress grappling with the legacy of the real-life figure she’s supposed to be playing: the Martinique writer Suzanne Césaire. Overshadowed by her husband, the poet and politician Aimé Césaire, Suzanne was a feminist activist as well as a member of the Négritude movement in Paris in the 1930s. For her bold project of reclamation, filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich has taken a metacinematic and mesmerizing approach, using voice-over and direct address to evoke her writing, as well as meditative, immersive 16mm images of forests in Martinique to burrow to the complex truths about a woman, artist, and mother forgotten to history. Uniting Hunt-Ehrlich’s elegant narrative and visual strands is the presence of Hanrot, herself a new mother going through her own reckoning.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by Mubi.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Trương Minh Quý on Việt and Nam | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-16 | Director Trương Minh Quý discusses Việt and Nam, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, with NYFF selection committee member Justin Chang.Two young men emerge from the stygian darkness of a cave. They are in the bowels of the earth working as coal miners, but Việt and Nam are also lovers, enjoying moments of physical embrace kept secret from the rest of the world, before one of them embarks on a dangerous emigration to another country. From this personal drama, captured with sensual detail and mesmeric eroticism, Vietnamese filmmaker Trương Minh Quý digs even deeper to excavate the memories and legacies of a nation. Set at the turn of the 21st century, Trương’s film resounds with echoes of the country’s war decades earlier, as Nam’s mother takes them on a pilgrimage to try and discover where his father was killed as a soldier. Shot in a hypnotic style on 16mm film—and banned in its home country—Việt and Nam is a remarkable work of quiet expressivity about two men with unsettled pasts and indeterminate futures. A Strand Releasing release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky on bluish | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky discuss bluish, an NYFF62 Currents selection, with NYFF programmer Rachael Rakes.A film of deep tranquility permeated by roiling sensations of desire and uncertainty, the latest reverie from Austrian directors Lilith Kraxner and Milena Czernovsky (Beatrix, Art of the Real 2022) transmits the tense unfolding of young adulthood by following two women as they move through their day, a physical part of their urban environment yet set apart in emotional isolation. The two students seem different on the surface: the introverted Errol gazes at the world in meditative solitude, while Sasha, a Russian émigré, seems keen on meeting people and networking within her artistic circles. Yet through Kraxner and Czernovsky’s marvelously oblique approach to character and storytelling, they both come to represent the beautiful fragility of human connection. Winner of the International Grand Prix at this year’s FIDMarseille International Film Festival.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Nicolás Pereda on Lázaro at Night | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Nicolás Pereda discusses Lázaro at Night, an NYFF62 Currents selection, with NYFF programmer Tyler Wilson.Nicolás Pereda, whose films elegantly balance wry, naturalistic interpersonal comedy and surreal transcendence, returns with a marvelous inquiry into art-making, storytelling, and the fragile bonds of friendship that takes his blend of the theatrical and the mundane to a new level. The film centers on a trio of friends, connected by a writing workshop they attended years earlier. Today, as they navigate romance and infidelity, their bond is further complicated by the fact that they are all auditioning to be in the same low-budget movie. Connected by a complex sound design that occasionally collapses time and space, scenes of absurd mundanity give way to the fantasy of fiction, its triangle of poets, artists, and actors motivated equally by wishful dreaming and comic, everyday neuroses.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Walter Salles, Fernanda Torres, and Marcelo Rubens Paiva on Im Still Here | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Walter Salles, Fernanda Torres, and Marcelo Rubens Paiva discuss their NYFF62 Main Slate selection I'm Still Here with NYFF programmer Madeline Whittle.One afternoon in 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil’s newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens’s wife, Eunice (a shattering Fernanda Torres), whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. A devastating true story, I’m Still Here is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice. Featuring a deeply affecting appearance from Fernanda Montenegro, Oscar nominee for Salles’s Central Station. A Sony Pictures Classics release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
David Cronenberg on The Shrouds | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Director David Cronenberg discusses The Shrouds, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, with NYFF selection committee member Florence Almozini.In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife’s sister (also Kruger)—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy. Written following the death of the director’s wife, the new film from David Cronenberg is both a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, set in an ominous world of self-driving cars, data theft, and A.I. personal assistants. Offering Cronenberg’s customary balance of malevolence and wit, The Shrouds is a sly and thought-provoking consideration of the corporeal and the digital, the mortal and the infinite. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Matías Piñeiro and Melanie Schapiro on You Burn Me | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Matías Piñeiro and Melanie Schapiro discuss You Burn Me, an NYFF62 Currents selection, with NYFF programer Aily Nash.In his consistently generative films, Argentinian filmmaker Matías Piñeiro (The Princess of France, NYFF52; Isabella, NYFF58) finds compelling cinematic ways to express the eternal hold that classical texts have on the modern world. In his inventive You Burn Me, the tragic romantic relationship between ancient Greek poet Sappho and the siren goddess Britomartis, as described in “Sea Foam,” a chapter in Italian novelist Cesare Pavese’s 1947 book Dialogues with Leucò, becomes the starting point for an elegantly constructed exercise of research, performance, and interpretation by a group of contemporary women. Given to repetition and abstraction, Piñeiro’s film brings desire and myth to vivid life, reflecting the fragmented nature of what remains of Sappho’s poetry. A Cinema Guild release.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Petra Costa on Apocalypse in the Tropics | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Petra Costa discusses Apocalypse in the Tropics, an NYFF62 Spotlight selection, with NYFF selection committee member Rachel Rosen.In the follow-up to her Oscar-nominated documentary The Edge of Democracy, which examined Brazil’s increasingly polarized politics, Petra Costa dramatizes the chilling rise of the far right in her country. Apocalypse in the Tropics focuses on how the evangelical movement paved the way for the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and continues to pose the threat of a national theocracy. Gaining remarkable access to major figures on both sides of the extreme political divide, including fire-and-brimstone televangelist Silas Malafaia, who was Bolsonaro’s right-hand man, and Bolsonaro’s liberal predecessor and successor President Lulu da Silva, Costa provides a gripping and urgent précis on the recent tumultuous events that have put Brazil in the international spotlight while painting an unsettling portrait of democracy’s fragility.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Heinz Emigholz, Julian Antoniano, and Claudio Sijuelo on The Suit | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Director Heinz Emigholz and producers Julian Antoniano, and Claudio Sijuelo discuss The Suit, a NYFF62 Currents selection, with NYFF programmer Tyler Wilson.That loquacious cynic known only as “Old White Male,” played by John Erdman in Heinz Emigholz’s 2020 film The Lobby (NYFF58), returns in this delirious, sci-fi-comic follow-up in which our fearless, joyless monologist covers an even wider spectrum of human absurdity as he wrestles with the biggest question mark of all: The Future. Smarting from his last experience making a movie with “that nobody of a director,” which he’s told was “rejected by a once-famous film festival” for its alleged misanthropy, Erdman is this time joined by a caustic, endlessly philosophizing German filmmaker (Susanne Bredehöft) and a robot version of himself from the past (visualized as his own disembodied, portable miniature head). Shot in Berlin, Malta, and Mexico City, but set mostly in his bunker-like home, The Suit gives Erdman ample room to expound upon cinema, the corporeal vs. the digital, the apocalypse, architecture, health and nutrition, and what it means to see and be seen in a world that’s increasingly turning inward. Texts include everything from Walter Benjamin to Nelly Furtado, and nothing is sacred.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Mike Leigh, Marianne Jean-Baptiste & Tuwaine Barrett on Hard Truths | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-15 | Director Mike Leigh returned to the New York Film Festival in its 62nd edition to discuss Hard Truths, his 10th Main Slate selection, joined by stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Tuwaine Barrett. Moderated by NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Colllins.Hard Truths opens at Film at Lincoln Center on December 6 for an exclusive one-week run; returning to FLC on January 10. Sign up for the FLC newsletter to be the first to know when tickets are on sale: filmlinc.org/email-listsMike Leigh returns to a contemporary milieu for the first time since Another Year for this raw, uncompromising domestic drama that continues the great British filmmaker’s inquiries into the possibility for happiness and the limits of human connection. In a gutsy, excoriating performance, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Oscar nominee for Leigh’s Secrets & Lies) absorbs herself completely into the role of Pansy, a middle-aged, working-class woman whose emotional and physical health problems have metastasized into a profound and relentless anger that’s become toxic for everyone around her, including her husband, grown son, doctors, and even strangers on the street. Raging against every aspect of her domestic life and fearful of the world beyond, Pansy only finds potential solace in the unwavering love of her sister, Chantelle (a magnificent, gracious Michele Austin). Bringing his customary, thrilling eye for the details of human behavior and the complexities of social interaction, Leigh has created in close collaboration with his extraordinary cast a rigorous and unflinching look at a life in freefall. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection. A Bleecker Street release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Naomi Watts, Sigrid Nunez, Scott McGehee, and David Siegel on The Friend | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-14 | Naomi Watts, author Sigrid Nunez, and co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel join NYFF62 Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss The Friend, a Spotlight selection at the 62nd New York Film Festival.Novelist and creative writing teacher Iris (Naomi Watts) finds her comfortable, solitary New York life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor (Bill Murray) commits suicide and bequeaths his beloved Great Dane to her. The regal yet intractable beast, named Apollo, immediately creates problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones, his looming presence constantly reminding her of her friend’s choice to take his own life. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding to the animal, she begins to come to terms with her past, her lost friend, and her own creative inner life. Featuring a warm, emotionally present central performance from Watts, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s (The Deep End) deeply fulfilling adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s beloved, slyly shape-shifting National Book Award winner is a rare kind of contemporary American film—humane, philosophical, curious, yet never diagnostic about loss, grief, and anger.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Robinson Devor, Jason Reid, Bob Fink, and Charles Mudede on Suburban Fury | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-14 | At the world premiere of their NYFF62 Main Slate selection, director Robinson Devor, producer Jason Reid, and co-writers Bob Fink and Charles Mudede joined NYFF programmer Florence Almozini to talk about the 10-plus-year process of creating their latest film.On September 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore took a revolver out of her purse and fired two shots at President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square. This failed political assassination was destined to become a strange historical footnote, yet Moore is revealed as an extraordinary subject in this expansive, fascinating new documentary by the protean Robinson Devor (The Woman Chaser, NYFF37). Having served more than 30 years of a life prison sentence, Moore tells her own story, from FBI informant to would-be assassin, all of which Devor dramatizes against the backdrop of the era’s prevalent political unrest and militancy, of Attica, the Black Panthers, the U.S.-backed Chilean coup, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. A pugnacious and unapologetic interview subject, Moore holds the center of a fleet and compelling nonfiction drama with the feel of a 1970s thriller.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are presented by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Steve McQueen on Blitz | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-12 | Director Steve McQueen discusses Blitz, the Closing Night selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Blitz opens at Film at Lincoln Center on November 1. Get tickets: filmlinc.org/films/blitzAn authentic and astonishing recreation of London during its blitzkrieg, Blitz pushes the artistry of Steve McQueen to ever more impressive levels. Working on a vast scale, McQueen sets things at human eye level, telling his original tale from the parallel perspectives of working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her 9-year-old son, George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), as they become separated within the labyrinth of a city under siege. Alternately overwhelming and tender, McQueen’s dazzling film offers a multicultural portrait of 1940s London too infrequently seen on screens. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Steve McQueen Introduces Blitz | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-12 | Director Steve McQueen introduces Blitz, the Closing Night selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Blitz opens at Film at Lincoln Center on November 1. Get tickets: filmlinc.org/films/blitzBlitz, an authentic and astonishing recreation of London during its blitzkrieg by the Germans during World War II, pushes the artistry of Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) to ever more impressive levels. Working on a vast scale, McQueen sets things at human eye level, telling his original tale from the parallel perspectives of working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her 9-year-old son, George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), as they become separated within the labyrinth of a city under siege. Alternately overwhelming and tender, McQueen’s dazzling film offers a multicultural portrait of 1940s London too infrequently seen on screens. While Ronan and Heffernan emotionally match one another beat for beat, the supporting cast, including Kathy Burke, Benjamin Clémentine, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, Hayley Squires, and Paul Weller, is uniformly superb, fleshing out a film that feels positively Dickensian in its scope and storytelling. NYFF62 Closing Night selection. An Apple Original Films release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
R.J. Cutler and David Furnish Introduce Elton John: Never Too Late | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Co-directors R.J. Cutler and David Furnish introduce Elton John: Never Too Late, an NYFF62 Spotlight selection, at the U.S. premiere.Co-directed by R.J. Cutler (Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry, Belushi, The September Issue) and David Furnish, this rousing, intensely personal documentary finds a legendary musician in a richly reflective mood during his final concert tour, the multiyear, globe-spanning Farewell Yellow Brick Road. Filled with revealing interviews and rare archival material, Elton John: Never Too Late offers keen insight into a life and career marked by soaring highs and crushing lows, and contemplates a legacy defined equally by advocacy and artistry. A Disney+ release. Featuring a special appearance by Elton John and directors R.J. Cutler and David Furnish.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias on Pepe | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Director Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias discusses Pepe, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, with NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Collins.In 1993, after the death of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the wild array of exotic pets he kept in his menagerie were shipped off to zoos and other preserves. His hippopotamuses, however, escaped, fending for themselves, reproducing, and becoming the target of government sterilizers and poachers. Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Cocote, New Directors/New Films 2018) takes a fascinating, highly unorthodox approach to this strange but true tale, which is told from the perspective of a sentient hippo, Pepe, at the moment of its death. We hear the animal’s thoughts as they’re spoken aloud by a raspy narrator, as the film skips across time and continents, from Pepe’s home country of Namibia to the Rio Magdalena in Colombia, where Pepe has escaped; shuffles modes of storytelling; and alternates between nonfiction and fantasy. In its sympathetic inquiry and aesthetic muscularity, Pepe poses provocative questions about the ever-shifting ecological stakes of life on earth and the nature of being. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Miguel Gomes on Grand Tour | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Miguel Gomes discusses Grand Tour, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.In this fanciful and high-spirited cinematic expedition, the uncommonly ambitious Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (Tabu, NYFF50; Arabian Nights, NYFF53) takes a journey across East Asia, skipping through time and countries with delirious abandon to tell the tale of an unsettled couple from colonial England and the world as it both expands and closes in around them. It’s 1918, and Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) has escaped the clutches of beckoning marriage, leaving his bemused fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), in indefatigable pursuit. Edward gives chase from Mandalay to Bangkok to Shanghai and beyond, while Gomes responds with a splendid and enthralling series of scenes that use a magic form of cinema to situate us in these places both then and now, keeping us at a knowingly exotic traveler’s distance while also immersing us in rhythm, texture, and emotional reality. Whether black-and-white or color, zigzagging or meditative in tone, scripted or captured as documentary, Grand Tour is splendid, moving, and human-scaled. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. A MUBI release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Andrei Ujică & Collaborators on Capturing Beatlemania in TWST / Things We Said Today | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Director Andrei Ujică and collaborators Tommy McCabe, Therese Azzara, Shea Grant, Sarah McCluskey discuss their NYFF62 Spotlight selection TWST / Things We Said Today with NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Collins.It’s August 1965, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo have descended upon New York for a sold-out concert at Queens’ massive Shea Stadium. Throngs of young superfans stricken with Beatlemania tear through the streets of Manhattan for a glimpse of the Liverpudlians from their hotel room window. But this tells only one part of the story of that hot summer weekend in the metropolis. More than a decade in the making, Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică’s first feature since the monumental The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (NYFF48) finds the found-footage maestro fabricating a fresh kind of city symphony. This variegated rendering of New York and its people, from Harlem to Jones Beach, from the mundane to the magical, is made up entirely of archival material, from news station broadcasts to personal 8mm film diaries. Ujică’s fanciful documentary is also a work of imagination, using superimposed animated drawings (by French artist Yann Kebbi) and descriptive voice-over (from personal writings by Geoffrey O’Brien and Judith Kristen, and Ujică’s own poetry) to memorialize this vanished moment in history with poignant, distinctive flair.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Zeinabu irene Davis, Michelle A. Banks, John Earl Jelks & Marc Arthur Chéry on Compensation | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Director Zeinabu irene Davis, writer Marc Arthur Chéry , and cast members Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks discuss Compensation, an NYFF62 Revivals selection, with Racquel Gates.Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poem of the same title, Zeinabu irene Davis’s debut feature is an exploration of language, migration, illness, love, and ritual that likewise illuminates unique Black histories, cultures, and artistry. Starring Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks, the film follows two couples in different time periods between the early and late 20th century who must contend with their emotions, tensions between Deaf and hearing experiences, and the toll of structural racism on Black lives during major medical epidemics. Shot in luminous black-and-white and incorporating a rich trove of historical photos, an original ragtime score, and title cards, Compensation evokes both a sense of tragedy and a hopefulness for life that remains persistent in the hearts of Black Americans today. A Janus Films release.Guided and approved by director Zeinabu irene Davis, this 4K digital restoration was undertaken by the The Criterion Collection, The UCLA Film and Television Archive, and Wimmin With a Mission Productions in conjunction with The Sundance Institute from a scan of the 16mm original camera negative. The 5.1 surround soundtrack was mastered from DAT tapes by the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Newly created open captions have been implemented, designed by Alison O’Daniel in collaboration with the Compensation Caption Creative Team.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Payal Kapadia and Thomas Hakim on All We Imagine As Light | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Director Payal Kapadia and producer Thomas Hakim discuss All We Imagine As Light, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, with NYFF Artist Director Dennis Lim.All We Imagine as Light opens at Film at Lincoln Center on November 15 with Payal Kapadia in person for a sneak preview on November 14! Get tickets: filmlinc.org/films/all-we-imagine-as-lightThe light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated with a vivid, humane richness by Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut. Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital—head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha)—and a newly retired coworker Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on prosaic moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is pursued by a courtly doctor; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment. Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside resort with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actors with an unforced expressivity and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. An NYFF62 Main Slate Selection. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Julia Loktev and Journalists on My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Director Julia Loktev and film subjects Anna Nemzer, Ksenia Mironova, Olga Churakova, and ElenaKostyuchenko discuss My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, a Main Slate selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.American filmmaker Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, NYFF49), born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist for TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev ends up immersing herself with a group of young women fighting to ensure the vocalization of dissent and outspoken criticism of the country—even as they are branded by the government as “foreign agents,” their careers and lives increasingly at risk as the country creeps toward war. Structured in five chapters, Loktev’s film, the climactic days of which were filmed in Moscow during the first week of the invasion, when most independent journalists fled the country, is an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety, as well as a vital depiction of the eternal hope that so many in Russia hold for living in a democratic state. Screening in two parts: Chapters 1–3 (198m), Chapters 4–5 (124m).All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Roberto Minervini & Team on The Damned | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Director Roberto Minervini, producers Paolo Benzi and Denise Ping Lee, and cast members Paolo Benzi, Tim Carlson, Jeremiah Knupp, René W Solomon, Noah Carlson, and Judah Carlson discuss their NYFF62 Main Slate selection The Damned with NYFF62 advisor Leo Goldsmith. A regiment of battle-fatigued Union soldiers makes its way west, forging ahead to survey the forbidding landscape of the Northwest frontier, in this transporting, existential Civil War drama from Italian-born director Roberto Minervini. The maker of What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? (NYFF56) and Stop the Pounding Heart (New Directors/New Films 2014), gripping, idiosyncratic portraits of struggle on the margins of American life, Minervini applies his accomplished minimalist naturalism to the period war film, forgoing genre markers for an absorbing plunge into undying questions of morality and American identity. Punctuated by images of jarring violence and eerie beauty, and effectively cast with a troupe of compelling non-professional performers with weather-beaten faces, The Damned engages in the emotional and moral quandaries of fighting a homeland war whose purpose grows hazier as it trudges on. Winner of the Best Director Award in the 2024 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section. A Grasshopper Film release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Wang Bing on Youth (Hard Times) | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Wang Bing discusses his NYFF62 Main Slate selection Youth (Hard Times) with NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Collins.Continuing the observational nonfiction saga that began with Youth (Spring) (NYFF61), Wang Bing returns to the Chinese district of Zhili, where more than 300,000 migrant workers from rural provinces are employed in clothing workshops. In this enveloping second part of the Youth trilogy, shot between 2015 and 2019, Wang deepens his vérité portrait of a generation struggling to survive on meager wages amidst a nation’s economic expansion, emphasizing the distrustful, increasingly combative relationship between workers and management. Wang’s epic yet compressed documentary is a singular rendering of young people who have become so focused on “making a living” that they have no time for joy or rest. Says one of the film’s many subjects: “You have no rights, so what’s the use of having money?” Despite these grim realities, Wang’s film provides hope in its depiction of workers who may find their collective voice. The final part of the trilogy, Youth (Homecoming), also screens in this year’s NYFF. An Icarus Films release.All NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Walter Salles, Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, and Marcelo Rubens Paiva on Im Still Here | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-11 | Walter Salles, Fernanda Torres, Selton Mello, and Marcelo Rubens Paiva discuss their NYFF62 Main Slate selection I'm Still Here with NYFF selection committee member Florence Almozini.One afternoon in 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil’s newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens’s wife, Eunice (a shattering Fernanda Torres), whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. A devastating true story, I’m Still Here is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice. Featuring a deeply affecting appearance from Fernanda Montenegro, Oscar nominee for Salles’s Central Station. A Sony Pictures Classics release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Stanley Nelson & More on San Juan Hill: Manhattans Lost Neighborhood | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Director Stanley Nelson, producer Rita Coburn, former San Juan Hill resident Deborah Gray White, and historian Virginia Sánchez Korrol discuss San Juan Hill: Manhattan's Lost Neighborhood, which world premiered as an 62nd New York Film Festival Special Event. The discussion was moderated by Film at Lincoln Center President Lesli Klainberg.In the first half of the 20th century, the area now called Lincoln Square was known by another name: San Juan Hill. Musical phenomena like bebop and the Charleston were created there; its clubs and theaters nurtured creative geniuses like James P. Johnson, Josephine Baker, and Thelonious Monk; and artist spaces like the Lincoln Square Arcade counted luminaries like Eugene O’Neill, George Bellows, and Robert Henri among their inhabitants. Home to a largely working-class community, San Juan Hill was redlined in the 1930s and targeted by “urban renewal” in the 1940s and 1950s, when thousands of residents were displaced to make way for Amsterdam Houses, Lincoln Center, Fordham University, and other modern developments. Through never-before-accessed records and archives, historical footage, expert commentary, and interviews with residents, San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood traces the neighborhood’s rise and fall and explores the vibrant people, arts, and culture whose enduring legacy still resonates today.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Mike Leigh, Marianne Jean-Baptiste & Tuwaine Barrett on Hard Truths | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Director Mike Leigh returned to the New York Film Festival in its 62nd edition to discuss Hard Truths, his 10th Main Slate selection, joined by stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Tuwaine Barrett. Moderated by NYFF selection committee member Dennis Lim.Hard Truths opens at Film at Lincoln Center on December 6 for an exclusive one-week run; returning to FLC on January 10. Sign up for the FLC newsletter to be the first to know when tickets are on sale: filmlinc.org/email-listsMike Leigh returns to a contemporary milieu for the first time since Another Year for this raw, uncompromising domestic drama that continues the great British filmmaker’s inquiries into the possibility for happiness and the limits of human connection. In a gutsy, excoriating performance, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Oscar nominee for Leigh’s Secrets & Lies) absorbs herself completely into the role of Pansy, a middle-aged, working-class woman whose emotional and physical health problems have metastasized into a profound and relentless anger that’s become toxic for everyone around her, including her husband, grown son, doctors, and even strangers on the street. Raging against every aspect of her domestic life and fearful of the world beyond, Pansy only finds potential solace in the unwavering love of her sister, Chantelle (a magnificent, gracious Michele Austin). Bringing his customary, thrilling eye for the details of human behavior and the complexities of social interaction, Leigh has created in close collaboration with his extraordinary cast a rigorous and unflinching look at a life in freefall. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection. A Bleecker Street release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Carson Lund and Keith William Richards on Eephus | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Drector Carson Lund and actor Keith William Richards joined NYFF selection committee member Justin Chang to discuss Eephus, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, which opens March 7, 2025 at Film at Lincoln Center.For his gracefully accomplished debut feature, Carson Lund has fashioned perhaps the most elegiac baseball movie yet, a poignant celebration of a recent American past that already feels as though it has slipped away. Against an autumnal Massachusetts backdrop, sometime in the 1990s, the film lovingly nestles in with a pair of amateur recreation league teams as they play one last game at their beloved Soldiers Field before it’s torn down and paved over for the construction of a middle school. An afternoon of brilliant blue sky quietly fades into October twilight as the players battle and bond, trade barbs and memories, stretching their game out to extra innings, in no hurry to leave this hallowed space. Lund’s tranquil souvenir of a film captures the singular beauty of the sport itself. Recalling the work of Robert Altman and Richard Linklater, but with a touch of Tsai Ming-liang, Eephus (its title referring to a curveball so slow it confuses the batter) is a film about the passage of time—both the hours of the day and one era fading into another. A Music Box Films release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Naomi Watts, Carla Gugino, Sigrid Nunez & More on The Friend | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, author Sigrid Nunez, and cast members Naomi Watts, Sarah Pidgeon, Carla Gugino, Noma Dumezweni, Constance Wu, Owen Teague, and Bing join NYFF62 programmer Florence Almozini to discuss The Friend, a Spotlight selection at the 62nd New York Film Festival.Novelist and creative writing teacher Iris (Naomi Watts) finds her comfortable, solitary New York life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor (Bill Murray) commits suicide and bequeaths his beloved Great Dane to her. The regal yet intractable beast, named Apollo, immediately creates problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones, his looming presence constantly reminding her of her friend’s choice to take his own life. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding to the animal, she begins to come to terms with her past, her lost friend, and her own creative inner life. Featuring a warm, emotionally present central performance from Watts, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s (The Deep End) deeply fulfilling adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s beloved, slyly shape-shifting National Book Award winner is a rare kind of contemporary American film—humane, philosophical, curious, yet never diagnostic about loss, grief, and anger.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Pia Marais and Jeremy Xido on Transamazonia | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Director Pia Marais and actor Jeremy Xido discuss their NYFF62 Main Slate selection Transamazonia with NYFF selection committee member Florence Almozini.In the eerie quiet of the vast, verdant Amazon jungle, a young girl stirs to life. Rescued by a member of the local Indigenous tribe, the child, Rebecca, is the only survivor of a plane crash. Years pass, and Rebecca (Helena Zengel) has become something of a local celebrity after her father (Jeremy Xido), an American missionary, has cast the teenager as a faith healer capable of miracles. Just as Rebecca is beginning to have a will of her own, doubting her father and the role in which she’s been cast, another crisis emerges when illegal loggers encroach on the land, threatening the livelihoods of the local tribe, and forcing emotional, familial, and racial reckonings. South Africa–born director Pia Marais has fashioned a mesmerizing, entrancingly photographed moral tale with no easy answers that is also a singular coming-of-age fable.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
62nd New York Film Festival Week Two Recap! Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | The second week of NYFF62 was full of highlights, from the U.S. premieres of our Centerpiece selection The Room Next Door and our Spotlight Gala Queer to an appearance by the band Pavement, a four-legged co-star of Naomi Watts, a giant-sized Jesse Eisenberg, legends of the screen (Isabelle Huppert) and behind the camera (David Cronenberg), and much more.Thank you to the amazing audiences and filmmakers from around the world who have joined us so far! Take a look back at the fest so far, catch up on recorded Q&As, and join us for more NYFF62 through October 14: filmlinc.org/nyff2024More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Dea Kulumbegashvili on April | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Dea Kulumbegashvili discusses her NYFF62 Main Slate selection April with NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Collins. Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili follows her striking debut feature Beginning (NYFF58), which told the story of a wife and mother persecuted for her religious beliefs in a provincial village, with this tenebrous, provocative drama about the precarious social position of a woman living in an isolated community. When a newborn baby dies after an otherwise routine delivery, obstetrician Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) falls under suspicion for negligence, her standing in the small town further jeopardized by people’s knowledge that she also provides illegal abortion services to local women. Shot by Arseni Khachaturan (Bones and All), balancing long-take realism and nightmarish expressionism, April is a complex and disquieting depiction of a caregiver in crisis, rich with haunting, metaphorical imagery that feels emanated from its maker’s subconscious. A Metrograph Pictures release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré on 7 Walks with Mark Brown | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Pierre Creton and Vincent Barré discuss their NYFF62 Currents selection 7 Walks with Mark Brown. Moderated by NYFF programmer Rachael Rakes and interpretetion by Nicholas Elliott.Filmmaker and farmer Pierre Creton returns to the Normandy landscape so lushly portrayed in last year’s A Prince (NYFF61). Now, in this singularly tranquil documentary, co-directed with filmmaker-sculptor Vincent Barré, he offers an experience pleasing in its magnificent simplicity. Accompanied by a small filming crew, Creton and Barré follow paleobotanist Mark Brown across seven locations in the Pays des Caux region as he seeks out native plants from which an ancient garden could be created and explains, with the loving tenderness of a true expert, the etymology, beauty, and scientific properties of the region’s flora. Structured in two halves, 7 Walks with Mark Brown first documents the making of these expeditions and then presents the result, a cinematic work of taxonomy and poetry, of nature and camaraderie.NYFF62 feature documentaries are sponsored by HBO.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Luca Guadagnino and Daniel Craig Introduce Queer | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Director Luca Guadagnino, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, costume designer Jonathan Anderson, and cast members Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey introduce Queer, the Spotlight Gala of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Learn more: filmlinc.org/nyff2024/films/queerWritten in the early 1950s yet not published until 1985, William S. Burroughs’s Queer has come to be considered a canonical work in the career of the Beat Generation author and a cornerstone of transgressive gay literature. In his wildly ambitious adaptation, Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, NYFF55) expertly evokes the book’s post–World War II time period and cinematically translates Burroughs’s iconoclasm with panache. In a transformative role, Daniel Craig immerses himself into Burroughs’s alter ego William Lee, a habitual heroin user luxuriating in freedom and desiccation among a disconnected group of gay American expatriates in Mexico City in the late 1940s. When enigmatic, preppy ex-military kid Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) catches Lee’s eye, he swoons into a headlong love affair, commencing an odyssey that will take them all the way to the Ecuadorian jungle in pursuit of the ultimate high. Buoyed by go-for-broke performances from Craig and Starkey, and rollicking, unexpected supporting turns from Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman, Queer is a dazzling showcase for many in Guadagnino’s stable of collaborators, including Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, and music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s a film that finds Guadagnino in his most formidable, gutsiest mode yet, a universal love story featuring expressionistic flights of fancy, gratifying moments of psychedelic surrealism, and surprising tenderness. An A24 release.Queer opens in theaters on November 27, courtesy of A24.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Jem Cohen on Little, Big, and Far | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Jem Cohen discusses his NYFF62 Currents Centerpiece selection Little, Big, and Far, which world premiered at the festival, with NYFF programmer Rachael Rakes.Jem Cohen brings the same meditative elegance and intellectual curiosity he did to Museum Hours (2012) with his stargazing new feature, again using the cinematic form to patiently interrogate ways of seeing and being. The principal subject of Cohen’s film is an Austrian astronomer named Karl who has been re-evaluating his work and life after turning 70, and who travels to a mountaintop on a Greek island in search of the darkest sky against which to view the cosmos. Yet the real matter of the singular Little, Big, and Far—whose title refers to the three concepts Karl and his physicist wife believe are at the core of their work—is as vast as the universe itself, a reckoning with scientific truth at a moment of humanity’s existential crisis. A Grasshopper Film release.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Neo Sora and Yeo Siew Hua on Happyend and Stranger Eyes | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | At the 62nd New York Film Festival, Japanese-American director Neo Sora and Singaporean director came together to discuss their careers, their inspirations, and the new directions of Asian cinema today.Newcomers to the NYFF Main Slate—Neo Sora (HAPPYEND) and Yeo Siew Hua (STRANGER EYES)—represent an emerging generation of auteurs from Asia. Their films wrestle with the political histories and futures of the continent—including entrenched legacies of imperialism and fast-encroaching realities of authoritarianism and surveillance—to craft radical new cinematic vocabularies, while also drawing upon the work of the masters who’ve come before them. Moderated by Kevin Lozano, Associate Literary Editor at The Nation.NYFF62 Talks are presented by HBO.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey & More on A Real Pain | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Jesse Eisenberg, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Grey, and producer Ali Herting discuss A Real Pain, a Spotlight selection at the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF selection committee member Florence Almozini. Learn more: filmlinc.org/nyff2024/films/a-real-painBorn weeks apart, cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) were as close as brothers growing up, yet have drifted apart due to the responsibilities and disappointments of adult life. After the death of their beloved grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, David accompanies Benji on a trip to Poland, as a pilgrimage to both her hometown and to sites haunted by the genocide of World War II. Initially following a tour group (featuring elegantly scripted characters played with effortless nuance by such actors as Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, and Will Sharpe), the tightly wound David and the manic-neurotic Benji confront their own raw resentments and personal demons, which are further laid bare by the backdrop of an insuperable history. Anchored by spirited performances by its dynamic stars, writer-director Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a work of compassion and maturity that alternates nimbly between anxious comedy and meditative drama. A Searchlight Pictures release.A Real Pain opens in theaters on November 1, courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Alex Ross Perry and Andrei Ujică on Pavement and The Beatles | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Pavements director Alex Ross Perry and TWST / Things We Said Today director Andrei Ujică engage in a wide-ranging conversation about musical fandoms across generations, cultural memory and mythmaking, and how experiments with documentary cinema can produce new ways of understanding archival materials and affective histories. The conversation was moderated by writer and editor Vikram Murthi.The familiar forms and conventions of the music documentary are breezily dispensed with in two singular, bracingly inventive selections from this year’s Spotlight section of the 62nd New York Film Festival. Pavements, Alex Ross Perry’s shape-shifting account of 1990s indie rock fixture Pavement, takes a cheeky and formally audacious approach to narrating their artistic legacy and pop-cultural footprint, while TWST / Things We Said Today is an obliquely melancholic and surprisingly tender inquiry into the icons and textures of 1960s Beatlemania from veteran nonfiction auteur Andrei Ujică. More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Susan Chardy on On Becoming a Guinea Fowl | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Lead actress Susan Chardy discusses On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, a Main Slate selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with Film Comment editor Devika Girish. Learn more: filmlinc.org/nyff2024/films/on-becoming-a-guinea-fowlA middle-aged man’s sudden death brings about a reckoning with the past for an extended Zambian family in Rungano Nyoni’s scalding drama. Balancing domestic realism and expressionistic absurdity with precision and constant surprise, Nyoni, in the follow-up to her feature debut, I Am Not a Witch, commandingly delineates the contours of a community caught between tradition and modernity. Nyoni’s film centers on Shula (a furious and touching Susan Chardy), whose stoical response to finding her uncle’s body on the street in the middle of the night hints at the many emotional fissures that will lead to the exposure of difficult truths long repressed. The film’s compositional rigor, inventive sound design, and unexpected narrative turns and digressions confirm Nyoni as a distinctive new voice in international cinema. Winner of the Best Director prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. An A24 release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Film Comment Live: Collective Protagonists w. Union and Northern Lights Filmmakers | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-10 | Two films in this year’s New York Film Festival lineup grapple beautifully with the challenge of narrating stories of collective movements without giving in to the allure of the heroic individual protagonist: John Hanson and Rob Nilsson’s Revivals selection Northern Lights (1978) and Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s documentary Union (2024). The directorial pairs joined Film Comment Editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a live panel discussion on their stylistically different but thematically connected works. In a thought-provoking conversation, they examined the practical, formal, and political considerations of making films about people power.Subscribe to The Film Comment Letter: filmcomment.com/newsletter-sign-upSubscribe to The Film Comment Podcast: filmcomment.com/blog/category/podcastMore info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Philippe Lesage and Noah Parker on Who by Fire | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-09 | Writer-director Philippe Lesage and actor Noah Parker discuss Who by Fire, an NYFF62 Main Slate selection, with NYFF selection committee member Florence Almozini.A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage (Genesis, New Directors/New Films 2019). Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) and his longtime friend and former collaborator Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), the vacation gradually becomes something far more complex and less stable, especially with the combustible admixture of Albert’s teen son’s best friend, Jeff (Noah Parker), and Albert’s self-asserting daughter Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré). Long-simmering middle-aged resentments surface, set against the anxieties of the young, all captured sensitively by Lesage, who in recent years has proven unparalleled in evoking the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes. Featuring thrillingly choreographed dinner sequences of mounting tension, Who by Fire confirms Lesage as a major contemporary filmmaker, with its assured tonal negotiation of the naturalistic and the oneiric, the joyous (especially an epic dance interlude to The B-52s) and the ominous. A KimStim release.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
Matthew Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati & More on Universal Language | NYFF62 Film at Lincoln Center 2024-10-09 | Director Matthew Rankin, actors Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, and producer Sylvain Corbeil discuss Universal Language, an NYFF62 Currents selection, with NYFF programmer Tyler Wilson.With deadpan, absurdist charm, Manitoban filmmaker Matthew Rankin triangulates a group of interconnected storylines set in a wintry, bleakly beautiful Winnipeg. Two kids discover a bank note frozen in a block of ice, which they hope to retrieve to buy their classmates a new pair of glasses. A tour guide brings befuddled visitors on a walking tour of the city’s modest environs. A melancholy man (Rankin, in an autobiographical role) returns home from Montreal to reunite with his family after many years. Imagining a city in which Farsi is the predominant language, Rankin’s visually and narratively inventive film was inspired by Iranian films of the 1970s, frequently humanistic children’s fables, in this case transferred to a world of beige, concrete brutalist buildings and increasingly surreal, Tati-esque humor. Winner of the Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. An Oscilloscope release.NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by MUBI.More info: http://filmlinc.orgSubscribe: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_center?add_user=filmlincdotcomLike on Facebook: http://facebook.com/filmlincFollow on X: http://twitter.com/filmlincFollow on Instagram: http://instagram.com/filmlinc
