NYFF
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21 Films to See at the 2024 New York Film Festival
With this year’s New York Film Festival underway, Filmmaker is recommending 18 films to watch over the course of the festival, which runs this year from September 27 through October 14. This year, our staff has covered several festivals— including TIFF, Venice, and Cannes,—whose premieres will be screening at NYFF during these upcoming weeks, some of which have previously been featured on our site. Below, we have compiled a list of the must-see films playing at the New York Film Festival, along with links and excerpts from director interviews and festival dispatches as well as, for three titles we have […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 27, 2024 -
18 Films to Watch in 17 Days at NYFF 2023
With the opening night of the 61st New York Film Festival upon us, Filmmaker would like to recommend 18 titles to catch during the 17-day engagement, which runs from September 29 through October 15. Over the course of our previous festival coverage from this year—including Sundance, Cannes, Venice and TIFF—many of these films have been featured on our site in critical dispatches and reviews. Below, we share links and edited excerpts from these director interviews and festival dispatches. Anatomy of a Fall Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner is more straightforward and more detour-prone than its courtroom drama premise—even if a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Sep 28, 2023 -
14 Films (and Other Recommendations) at the 60th New York Film Festival
With the opening night of the 60th New York Film Festival upon us, Filmmaker would like to recommend 14 titles to catch during the 17-day engagement, which runs from September 30 through October 16 in-person at Film at Lincoln Center. Over the course of our previous festival coverage from this year—including Sundance, Cannes, Venice and TIFF—many of these films have been featured on our site in critical dispatches and reviews. Below, we share links and excerpts from these director interviews and festival dispatches, highlighting Jerzy Skolimowski’s Eo, Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica, Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up […]
by Scott Macaulay on Sep 30, 2022 -
NYFF 2022: White Noise
Can product placement ever transcend advertising? Pepsi’s vintage logo—a comically over-present staple of ’80s and ’90s commercial Hollywood filmmaking—is continuously conspicuous in Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s White Noise. As a period marker, this makes sense: the novel was published in 1985 and the film’s production design places it in the early ’80s. Thematically, it’s obviously relevant: DeLillo’s first-person narrator, J.A.K. Gladney (Adam Driver), regularly has his thoughts interrupted by lines that simply list corporate names or interpolate overheard advertising chatter. DeLillo originally thought of naming the book Panasonic, writing to his editor that “The word ‘panasonic,’ split into its component […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 30, 2022 -
Film at Lincoln Center Announces 2022 NYFF Main Slate
Film at Lincoln Center has announced the main slate for the 2022 New York Film Festival, featuring anticipated films from celebrated auteurs and promising newcomers alike. Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel White Noise will open the 60th edition of the festival, while Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed serves as the Centerpiece selection and The Inspection, the narrative debut from director Elegance Bratton, closes it out. Directors also featured in the program include James Gray, Claire Denis, Frederick Wiseman, Park Chan-wook, Paul Schrader, Kelly Reichardt, Ruben Östlund and Todd Field. Filmmakers Mia Hansen-Løve, Joanna Hogg and […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Aug 9, 2022 -
NYFF 2021 Critic’s Notebook: Benedetta, Il buco
Given what it took to arrive back at this point, anyone who introduced the first press and industry screening of this year’s New York Film Festival would have gotten a nice round of applause—I too am excited to be back at the Walter Reade Theater, my favorite NYC auditorium on a sheer projection quality/screen size/audio fidelity basis. But all politics is local, and NYFF’s significance relative to the larger festival landscape shouldn’t obscure the specific context of this year’s edition. With its union chapter recognized, Film at Lincoln Center’s staff are now attempting to negotiate and ratify a contract. The […]
by Vadim Rizov on Sep 24, 2021 -
NYFF 2019: Bacurau, Varda by Agnès and The Irishman
A number of cinematic styles, narrative modes, and political agendas collide in Bacurau, one of two South American films on NYFF’s Main Slate this year. Urgent, yet vague enough to feel timeless, the film depicts a form of unhinged white supremacy in the outback of northern Brazil. We’re told up top, quite ominously, that Bacurau takes place “a few years from now,” as if to suggest that the wholly irrational racism herein is just around the corner. An angry movie, at once frightening and funny, it’s bound to rattle viewers aesthetically, politically, or both. Bacurau, a fictional town, is already […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Oct 9, 2019 -
“We Didn’t Try to Colonize the Boy in Making the Film”: The Dardenne Brothers on Young Ahmed
For 20 years running, the films of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have confronted a single fundamental facet of modern life: class. From their breakout La Promesse (1996) to The Unknown Girl (2016), the messy tangle of money, employment, and morality has defined their work. The brothers take a hard turn, in subject if not style, with Young Ahmed. The film debuted at Cannes, like their previous seven features, where it won the Best Director prize earlier this year. Despite that honor–which they won over Almodóvar, Tarantino, and Malick among other heavyweights–the film has earned the harshest reviews of the Dardennes’ career. […]
by Soheil Rezayazdi on Oct 4, 2019 -
NYFF 2019: Oh Mercy!, Synonyms
Arnaud Desplechin’s returned to his hometown onscreen many times: “I still have to go back in my tracks, as a malediction—not as a dream, but as a curse,” he’s said of Roubaix, where My Sex Life and My Golden Years‘ protagonist stand-in Paul Dédalus hails from and where A Christmas Tale unfolds. Desplechin’s also shot digitally before, but this is the first time he’s ever aggressively leaned into it: like Tale, Oh Mercy! also starts during the holiday season, but—opening strings of Christmas lights over city streets aside—the dominant colors aren’t red and green but the familiar digital color-correction staples of orange and blue. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 3, 2019 -
NYFF 2019: Vitalina Varela, Fire Will Come
Vitalina Varela is a luxuriantly claustrophobic staging of a story Pedro Costa’s title subject, playing herself, first orally recounted in 2014’s Horse Money. The world Costa constructs around her is, initially, an endless night—daylight is, at best, the barest suggestive sliver peeking in from outside. As the narrative unfolds, more sunlight penetrates interiors, but a full radiant glare seems, at best, a hypothetical perk for people with more money, and in the very final-stretch shots in exterior day, colors have been graded down enough where the effect isn’t overwhelming but mutedly in keeping. There isn’t a pixel Costa hasn’t accounted for in his […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 1, 2019
