At 62-years-old there are a lot of familiar aspects to the prestigious New York Film Festival (NYFF), like heavily auteur driven entries and gleaning the best from the Cannes and Venice Film Festivals, yet ensuring all their selections will be U.S. premieres. As to the changes, NYFF has clearly been influenced by changing social tides it’s not surprising there are some welcome new elements such as a bit more women filmmakers and directors of color represented in the lineup, and going paperless on the press/film notes. NYFF has always had a relatively modest size amount of films in their repertoire in comparison to the likes of other festivals like Cannes, Mill Valley and Toronto. The boutique nature of the festival confirms their commitment to being carefully curated, aka, the cream of the film crop. Most of the films here will go onto art houses and Oscar contention.
The festival is divided into five categories:
Main Slate, which includes the opening, center piece and closing films is considered the core of the program. “It is a selection of the most exceptional new films from around the world.” (Films at Lincoln Center/FLC)
Spotlight “expands the vision of the Main Slate, showcasing a selection of the season’s most anticipated and significant films.” (FLC)
Currents “complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices.” (FLC)
Revivals “showcases important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners.” (FLC)
Talks, which are free to the public, “features in-depth conversations with filmmakers, critics, curators, and more” (FLC)
While the festival’s official opening is at the end of September, the press screenings have already been underway. As such, below are a few previewed thus far.
“All We Imagine As Light” – This is a richly observed inter-generational story of female empowerment in modern day Mumbai; an impressive debut by Payal Kapadia, who won this year’s Grand Prize at the Cannes festival. Focusing on Prabha, the head nurse at a local hospital and her relationship with her younger roommate, Anu, a student nurse, and her older friend, Parvaty, who also works at the hospital. The three women are at various states of their careers and personal relationships. Prabha seems to have been abandoned by her husband through an arranged marriage, while Parvaty is dealing with the aftermath of her husbands death, and Anu is pursuing a forbidden romance with a young man despite her parents’ attempts to marry her off. Seek this film out when it comes to an art house in your neighborhood.
Director: Payal Kapadia
Writer: Payal Kapadia
Stars: Kani Kusruti, Diva Prabha, Chhaya Kadam
Language: Hindi
Production Companies: Petit Chaos, Luxe Box
Running Time: 1 hour 58 minutes
“Anora”- Riding the wave of being the Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, this film by Sean Baker has a lot of buzz around it and rightfully so. It is undeniably fun, funny and a creative raucous modern romp in the tradition of an Ernst Lubitsch comedy from the 1940s and Night Shift from 1982.The movie follows a young exotic dancer, Anora (Mikey Madison), who works at a club in Brighton Beach. Because of her Russian background, she is one night paired up with a young Russian customer, Ivan, who as it turns out is the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. Being on his own in the States, the reckless, spoiled youth ends up becoming enamored with Anora, buying her time and affection. Claiming to be in love with her one night while partying in Las Vegas, Ivan proposes, and the two get married in a quickie wedding. When they return to New York and the family’s personal manager and body guards learn of the marriage, chaos ensues and the fun begins over a 24-hour period.
This is already a festival audience favorite that will probably be readily available soon in theaters or on a streaming platform.
Director: Sean Baker
Writer: Sean Baker
Stars: Mikey Madison, Paul Weissman
Language: English
Production Companies: Neon, Cre Film
Release Date: Oct. 17
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 2 hours 19 minutes
“The Brutalist”- Coming in at 3.5 hours, with a built in 15 minute intermission, this movie is a long cinematic commitment, but a masterful achievement by director Brady Corbet, and oh so worth it. At the center of the story is Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian Jewish World War II survivor and talented architect who has made his way to America in 1947 After initially staying with and working for his cousin, the owner of a modest furniture store outside Philadelphia.Toth eventually ends up on his own, taking on manual labor odd jobs.
Through a series of events, he gets connected with Harrison Lee Van Buren, a wealthy industry tycoon played by Guy Pearce. Van Buren recognizes Toth’s unique talent in design and gives him a monumental project to work on while awaiting the arrival of Toth’s wife from Europe. What starts off as a friendship and opportunity of a lifetime, turns into volatile relationship leading to the rise and fall of Toth professionally and personally.
Director: Brady Corbet
Writers: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold
Stars: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce
Languages: English, Hungarian, Italian, Hebrew, Yiddish
Production Companies: A24, Brookstreet Pictures, Universal Pictures
Release Date: January 24, 2025
Running Time: 3 hours 35 minutes (with a 15 minute intermission)
“Nickel Boys” – It’s not hard to understand why this was selected for the most prestigious slot of the festival’s Opening Film. It is equal parts a magnificent work of art, a fantastic adaptation for the prize winning 2019 novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead, and creatively and beautifully shot.
It is more common for readers to be skeptical of an adaptation of a beloved book, but with “Nickel Boys” director RaMell Ross has managed to not only maintain the strong messaging of the source material based on true and horrifically racist events from a boys reform school in Florida, but in some ways enhance it. This through unique visual techniques including shooting it entirely through the point of view of the two leads played by Ethan Herisse as Elwood, and Brandon Wilson as Turner. The two form a close bond that serves to sustain their hope during their time at the Nickel Academy.
Director: RaMell Ross
Writers: RaMell Ross, Joslyn Barnes, Colson Whitehead
Stars: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor
Language: English
Release Date: Nov. 8, 2024
Production Companies: Orion Pictures, Plan B Entertainment
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours 20 minutes
“No Other Land” – This is a verity-style documentary by Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian journalist Basel Ada who collaborated on this project from 2019 through October 2023. The two filmmakers provide a harrowing account of the systematic destruction experienced by Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank, at the hands of the Israeli military. The two, who also take up activism, commit to filming and protesting, along with other village residents, the demolitions of homes and schools and the resulting displacement of their inhabitants, which were carried out to make way for Israeli military training ground.
“No Other Land” might prove challenging to watch, but its messaging and timeliness make it worth whatever heartache to endure or political assumption to overcome in experiencing this documentary. Hopefully that will prove true too for a perspective distributor because as of the time of this review, the documentary had no distributor. Interested viewers may need to make an effort to seek out this important film through independent art house theaters.
Directors: Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal
Writers: Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal
Language: Arabic
Release Date: TBD
Production Companies: Yabayay Media, Antipode Films (no distributor yet)
“Youth (Hard Times)” – Unlike the aforementioned “No Other Land,” this verite style documentary that is part of a series, is not worth navigating. While it is undeniable that the subject matter of sweatshops in China, their conditions, and complicit parties are undeniably significant, the film’s execution of conveying this is sorely lacking and depressing. That, along with the nearly 4 hour running time commitment makes it more of an endurance test than a worthwhile film experience. Although documentary filmmaker Wang Bing is a bit of a festival darling, in this, his lack of substantive information is glaring. It would be preferable that “Youth (Hard Times)” either be a narrative film, with a story line and character development, or be a traditional formatted documentary, with engaging interviews and information.
Director: Wang Bing
Writer: Wang Bing
Language: Chinese
Production Companies: Chinese Shadows, Glays Glover
Release Date: September 28, 2024
Running Time: 3 hours 47 minutes
