Authors — Nelson Kim
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Five Favorites from the 2025 New Directors/New Films Festival
The 54th edition of New Directors/New Films, co-sponsored by the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, runs from April 2 to April 13. This year’s program includes 24 features and 9 shorts. As always, the slate is admirably international in scope, spotlighting work from 22 different countries, with many films making their U.S. premieres after screening at festivals such as Berlin, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Rotterdam, and Venice. Although I’ve attended ND/NF for more than two decades, and reported on it for this website and others for almost half that time, I still get excited when the slate […]
by Nelson Kim on Apr 2, 2025 -
Six Recommendations from the 2024 New Directors/New Films Festival
The 53rd annual edition of New Directors/New Films kicks off tonight and continues through April 14. Jointly presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, New Directors showcases work from emerging filmmakers, largely culled from festivals such as Berlin, Cannes, Karlovy Vary, Locarno, Rotterdam and Sundance. The “New Directors” part of the name shouldn’t be taken too literally — in past years, selections were limited to first and second features, but that seems to no longer be the case: one director spotlighted below, Stephan Komanderev, is in his late 50s, with six features under his belt. […]
by Nelson Kim on Apr 3, 2024 -
“Limit Yourself to Three Setups Per Scene”: Linh Tran on Slamdance Award-Winner Waiting for the Light to Change
Vietnamese American filmmaker Linh Tran’s debut feature Waiting for the Light to Change tells the story of five friends in their twenties who head to a beach house for a weeklong winter getaway. At the center of the group are Amy (Jin Park) and Kim (Joyce Ha), whose once-close friendship seems to be running out of fuel—especially now that Kim is dating Amy’s longtime secret crush, Jay (Sam Straley). As past regrets and resentments come to the surface, Amy and Kim wrestle with painful questions about whether their old selves fit into the new lives they’re trying to create for […]
by Nelson Kim on Oct 19, 2023 -
Five Highlights from the 2023 New Directors/New Films Festival
New Directors/New Films, the annual showcase of work by emerging directors co-presented by the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, began this week in New York City and runs through April 9. The 2023 slate features 27 features and 11 shorts, most of them culled from top-tier festivals such as Berlin, Cannes, Locarno, and Rotterdam. As always, ND/NF’s offerings are global in scope, with over 30 countries represented, and the programmers remain admirably committed to arthouse aesthetics: conventional genre films and commercially minded crowd-pleasers are thin on the ground here. This is a festival for audiences willing […]
by Nelson Kim on Mar 30, 2023 -
“I Want to Make Big, Unforgettable, Life-Changing Works”: Martine Syms on Her New Directors/New Films Closing-Night Film, The African Desperate
The 2022 edition of New Directors/New Films — the annual showcase of emerging filmmakers co-presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art — concludes this weekend with three screenings of its closing-night film, Martine Syms’ The African Desperate. Syms is an art-world luminary whose work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim, LACMA, MoMA, and the Tate, among others, and her extraordinarily varied and prolific output includes video art, installations, essays and manifestos, and a publishing press. Much of her oeuvre reflects a deep engagement with the moving image, from her […]
by Nelson Kim on Apr 29, 2022 -
“Someone Needs to Shed Light On This Issue”: Justin Chon on His Adoptee Deportation Melodrama, Blue Bayou
Justin Chon first came to the world’s attention playing Eric Yorkie, a supporting character in the Twilight movies. The global success of that young-vampires-in-love franchise helped Chon land lead roles in films such as 21 & Over, Revenge of the Green Dragons, and Seoul Searching, but all the while, the freshly minted movie star was honing his craft as a writer and director. First came 2015’s little-seen Man Up (“That was my film school”), then the breakthrough of Gook, which won the NEXT Audience Award at Sundance in 2017. A bracing look at the 1992 Rodney King riots from a […]
by Nelson Kim on Sep 16, 2021 -
Six Favorites from the Just Concluded 2021 New Directors/New Films Festival
After moving its 2020 edition to December and shifting to online-only viewing, New Directors/New Films returned to its usual springtime slot for its 50th iteration in 2021, combining virtual screenings with in-person ones at the Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center. The fest celebrated its golden anniversary with a streamable selection of films that played at ND/NF in years past — early work by luminaries such as Chantal Akerman, Charles Burnett, Lee Chang-dong, Christopher Nolan, and Humberto Solás. However, this well-deserved victory lap was just a sidebar to the main program: 27 new feature films, along with […]
by Nelson Kim on May 14, 2021 -
The World at Home: New Directors/New Films 2020
COVID-19 brought two major changes to New Directors/New Films, the annual showcase of emerging filmmakers jointly presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. First, the festival was pushed from its usual March/April perch to December. Second, of course, it moved entirely online. In ordinary years, ND/NF takes place at the two poshest moviegoing venues in New York City, but in 2020, like almost every other communal-cultural event that makes city life worthwhile, it was reduced to a scattering of solitary viewers squinting at their home screens. Happily, the programming was up to its usual high […]
by Nelson Kim on Dec 29, 2020 -
“It Feels like this Case was a Warning Sign for the Future”: Ursula Liang on Her DOC NYC Feature, Down a Dark Stairwell
On November 20, 2014, 28-year-old Akai Gurley was killed by an NYPD officer’s bullet in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project. Another unarmed Black man dead at the hands of the police; another surge of street protests and demands for justice. But this one was different: the officer, Peter Liang, was Chinese American. Liang claimed the shooting was entirely accidental. When he was indicted, many wondered if he was being scapegoated for the shortcomings of a justice system that had only recently failed to bring charges against the white policemen who killed Michael Brown and Eric Garner. After Liang […]
by Nelson Kim on Nov 11, 2020 -
Upstream Color — A Hammer To Nail Review (and Interview)
(Upstream Color premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in January. It opens theatrically in New York on Friday, April 5, and will roll out to other cities in April and May before becoming available on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD on May 7. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) Here’s the plot of Shane Carruth’s new film Upstream Color, for all the good it will do you: A young woman named Kris (Amy Seimetz) is kidnapped by a man named in the credits only as the Thief (Thiago Martins). The Thief has been conducting secret experiments in mind […]
by Nelson Kim on Apr 4, 2013
