The Close-up

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a conversation from the 60th New York Film Festival, moderated by Film Comment Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish. This talk brought together the directors behind two stunning works of autofiction in the NYFF60 lineup. One Fine Morning by leading French filmmaker (and NYFF staple) Mia Hansen-Løve and Aftersun, the debut feature by Charlotte Wells, both center on father-daughter relationships drawn from the directors’ own lives, exploring tenderness and trauma, love and loss with formal ingenuity and emotional force. Both films also feature powerhouse performances—Paul Mescal in Aftersun and Léa Seydoux in One Fine Morning—that challenge and reinvigorate routine cinematic portrayals of femininity, masculinity, and intimacy.  Hansen-Løve and Wells partook in an extended conversation about the process of making art out of one’s life, giving filmic shape to the workings of memory and time, reimagining the contours of “women’s cinema,” and more. NYFF T

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we're revisiting a special conversation from the 60th New York Film Festival with director Park Chan-wook and actor Park Hae-il on the season's biggest hit, Decision to Leave. Moderated by NYFF Executive Director Eugene Hernandez. Busan detective Hae-joon (Park Hae-il) finds that he’s increasingly obsessed with a puzzling new case: a middle-aged businessman has mysteriously fallen to his death during a rock climbing expedition. Upon discovering photos of his abused wife, a Chinese national named Seo-rae (Tang Wei), Hae-joon begins to suspect it wasn’t an accident, all the while becoming emotionally and erotically drawn to her. From this Hitchcockian situation, director Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) weaves a swelling, expanding, ever more complex tale about a possible black widow and the investigator who just might be fashioning his own web. One of Park’s most enveloping and accomplished thrillers, which earned him the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes Film F

Director Elegance Bratton and cast members Jeremy Pope, Gabrielle Union, and Raúl Castillo, and producers Effie Brown and Chester Algernal Gordon present and discuss The Inspection, the Closing Night selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Executive Director Eugene Hernandez. Known for his affecting and dynamic documentary Pier Kids, about homeless queer and transgender youth in New York, and the Viceland series My House, on underground competitive ballroom dancing, filmmaker and photographer Elegance Bratton has made his ambitious narrative debut with The Inspection, a knockout drama based on his own experiences as a gay man in Marine Corps basic training following a decade of living on the streets. In a breathtaking first cinematic starring role, Tony– and Emmy–nominated actor Jeremy Pope is run through an emotional and physical gauntlet as a young man dealing with the intimidation of a sadistic sergeant (Bokeem Woodbine), his desire for a sympathetic superior (Raúl Castillo), and his complicated feel

Director Maria Schrader, screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz, cast members Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, and Ashley Judd, and New York Times journalists Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey discuss She Said, a Spotlight selection and World Premiere at NYFF60, with NYFF Executive Director Eugene Hernandez. In 2017, New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey broke a story that would change the world. Uncovering decades of sexual harassment and assault in Hollywood, Kantor and Twohey boldly took on an establishment that had too long been allowed to systematically protect abusers. This thrilling new drama based on Kantor and Twohey’s best-selling book about their hard-fought investigation is directed by Maria Schrader (director of I’m Your Man and the acclaimed TV series Unorthodox) from a screenplay by Rebecca Lenkiewicz (Ida). She Said stars Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan in wonderful performances as the two intensely committed reporters whose efforts would ultimately help ignite the #MeToo movement. Schrader’s film

We welcomed director James Gray and cast members Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, and Jaylin Webb to present and discuss Armageddon Time, the 60th Anniversary Celebration and Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. The most personal film yet from James Gray (The Immigrant, The Lost City of Z) is also one of his greatest, an exquisitely detailed and deeply emotional etching of a time and place: Queens, 1980. Set against the backdrop of a country on the cusp of ominous sociopolitical change, Armageddon Time follows Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a sixth grader who dreams of becoming an artist. At the same time that Paul builds a friendship with classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), who’s mercilessly targeted by their racist teacher, he finds himself increasingly at odds with his parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway), for whom financial success and assimilation are key to the family’s Jewish-American identity. Paul feels on firmest ground with his kind grandfat

We welcomed director Chris Smith and producers Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Kevin Ford to present and discuss "Sr.", a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. Rarely do films about artists allow the kind of poignant intimacy seen in this tender yet fittingly irreverent portrait of the life and career of Robert Downey Sr., the fearless, visionary American director who set the standard for counterculture comedy in the sixties and seventies. An inspired collaboration between celebrated documentarian Chris Smith (American Movie); the subject’s son, Robert Downey Jr.; and the man himself, who’s occasionally shown working on his own version of the movie we’re watching, “Sr.” functions both as an elegy for the rule-flouting underground icon, who passed away at age 85 in July 2021, and as a testament to his tireless creative spirit. Capturing its subjects’ refreshing candor about aging, past struggles with addiction, and the ups and downs of working in Hollywood,

We welcomed director Sarah Polley, cast members Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, & Liv McNeil, and producer Dede Gardner to present and discuss Women Talking, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Executive Director, Eugene Hernandez. Sarah Polley brings ferocious honesty and restrained urgency to her screen adaptation of Miriam Toews’s acclaimed novel about of a group of women from a remote religious community dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault perpetrated by the colony’s men. A film of ideas brought to life by Polley’s imaginative direction and a superb, fine-tuned ensemble cast—including Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw, and Judith Ivey—Women Talking is a deep and searching exploration of self-determination, group responsibility, faith and forgiveness, philosophically engaging and emotionally rich in equal measure. A United Artists release.

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF60 edition, director Elvis Mitchell and executive producer Steven Soderbergh discuss Is That Black Enough For You?!?, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Executive Director Eugene Hernandez. American film critic Elvis Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic documentary creates a definitive narrative of the Black revolution in 1970s cinema, from genre films to social realism, from the making of new superstars to the craft of rising auteurs. With Is That Black Enough for You?!? (the title referencing a recurring line from Ossie Davis’s 1970 benchmark Cotton Comes to Harlem), Mitchell takes a personal and panoramic approach, expressing his own experiences as a viewer while detailing the cinematic and political histories that led to this extraordinary flowering of a newly ascendant Black heroism. The Learning Tree, Watermelon Man, Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Cool Breeze, Sounder, Super Fly, Coffy, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Claudine, Uptown Saturday Ni

We welcomed director Charlotte Wells and actress Frankie Corio to NYFF60 to present and discuss Aftersun, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. In one of the most assured and spellbinding feature debuts in years, Scottish director Charlotte Wells has fashioned a textured memory piece inspired by her relationship with her dad, taking place over the course of a brooding weekend at a coastal resort in Turkey. The charismatic Paul Mescal and naturalistic newcomer Francesca Corio fully inhabit Calum and Sophie, a divorced father and his daughter often mistaken for brother and sister, who share a close and loving bond that creates an entire world unto itself. Wells employs an unusual and gorgeous aesthetic that brings us into the interior space of this parent and child, even as she judiciously withholds details, an approach that finally grants the film a singular emotional wallop. Aftersun reimagines the coming-of-age narrative as a poignant, ultimately un

We welcomed director Luca Guadagnino and actors Taylor Russell and Chloë Sevigny to NYFF60 to present and discuss Bones and All, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, moderated by NYFF Executive Director, Eugene Hernandez. In a startling, star-making performance, Taylor Russell plays Maren, a teenager who has just moved to a small town in Virginia with her father (André Holland). However, it’s only a matter of time before the frightening secret Maren harbors is revealed and she must hit the road again—on her own. Soon, she meets another young drifter, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who understands her more than anyone she’s ever met, and the two set out on a cross-country journey, satiating their dangerous desires and reckoning with their tragic pasts. Adapting a novel by Camille DeAngelis, director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) has crafted a work of both tender fragility and feral intensity, setting corporeal horror and runaway romance against a vividly textured Americana, and featuring fully in

Laura Poitras, artist Nan Goldin, P.A.I.N. activists Harry Cullen & Megan Kapler, and lawyer Mike Quinn discuss their NYFF60 Centerpiece selection All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim, at the press conference. In her essential, urgent, and arrestingly structured new documentary from Participant, Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) weaves two narratives: the fabled life and career of era-defining artist Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty Goldin personally took on in her fight to hold accountable those responsible for the deadly opioid epidemic. Following her own personal struggle with opioid addiction, Goldin, who rose from the New York “No Wave” underground to become one of the great photographers of the late 20th century, put herself at the forefront of the battle against the Sacklers, both as an activist at art institutions around the world that had accepted millions from the family and as an ad

This week we welcomed director Kelly Reichardt and actress Hong Chau to NYFF60 to present and discuss Showing Up, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. Continuing one of the richest collaborations in modern American cinema, director Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women) reunites with star Michelle Williams for this marvelously particularized portrait of a sculptor’s daily work and frustrations in an artists’ enclave in Portland. Lizzy (Williams) struggles to put the finishing touches on her latest pieces for a gallery show, all the while juggling admin work at the local art school; dealing with the neglect of her well-meaning landlord (a funny and nuanced Hong Chau), who also happens to be a rising-star conceptual artist; and tending to the emotional well being of her increasingly fragmented family. Christopher Blauvelt’s patient camerawork, Reichardt’s precise cutting, and Williams’s physically transformative performance coalesce to create something remar

This week we welcomed writer/director Todd Field, cast members Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, and Sophie Kauer, and composer Hildur Guonadóttir to the press conference for TÁR, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. The charisma and emotional precision of Cate Blanchett are put to astounding use in this deft showcase for the actor’s musical artistry, a stinging portrait of a world-famous orchestra conductor’s gradual unraveling that is the first film in sixteen years from director Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children). A Focus Features release. Tickets to the 60th New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis at filmlinc.org/tix

Last weekend we welcomed writer/director Frederick Wiseman and actress and co-writer Nathalie Boutefeu to NYFF60 to present and discuss A Couple, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival.  Countess Sophia Behrs married Leo Tolstoy when she was 18 and he was 34. They were husband and wife for 48 years, had 13 children, and she outlived him by nine years. Yet their relationship, among the most discussed and written about in literary history, was anything but harmonious, as Sophia, an artist in her own right—a photographer, memoirist, and editor—was constantly forced to negotiate her happiness with her husband’s infidelities. Inspired by Sophia’s story, legendary American documentarian Frederick Wiseman has made a film based on Sophia’s diaries and letters from Leo to Sophia, structured as a series of monologues delivered with magnificent poise and gathering intensity by star and co-writer Nathalie Boutefeu, pillowed by graceful images of natural beauty from the film’s bucolic French setting. Wiseman’s ca

This weekend we welcomed writer/director Paul Schrader and cast members Joel Edgerton and Sigourney Weaver to NYFF60 to present and discuss Master Gardener, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival.  Narvel Roth (Joel Edgerton) takes great care and pride in his work as the longtime head horticulturist at Gracewood Gardens, the historic estate of the demanding, imperious Norma Haverhill (Sigourney Weaver). An enclosed, scrupulously run world of its own, Gracewood has been in the Haverhill family for generations, and Norma trusts no one other than Narvel to continue its traditions. However, a threat of change is harkened by the arrival of Norma’s troubled grand-niece, Maya (Quintessa Swindell), whose presence sets off a chain reaction of events that catalyze Narvel into coming to terms with his own shocking past. Following First Reformed and The Card Counter, Paul Schrader continues his dramatic renaissance with an equally effective, startling tale about dormant violence and the possibility of regenerati

This weekend we welcomed writer/director Ruben Östlund and cast members Dolly de Leon and Zlatko Burić to NYFF60 to present and discuss Triangle of Sadness, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival.  Cinematic mischief maker Östlund liberally applies his customary playfulness to the wide canvas of his wildly ambitious, frequently hilarious latest film, which won the Swedish director his second Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Kicking off as a satirical romance, following the bickering, money-soured relationship between two hot young models (Harris Dickinson and Charlbi Dean), the three-part film escalates into increasing absurdity after they are invited on a luxury cruise, where they rub elbows with the super-rich, as well as a disheveled and disillusioned, Marx-spouting sea captain (Woody Harrelson). To tell more would ruin the Buñuelian twists of this poison-dipped farce on class and economic disparity, which doesn’t skewer contemporary culture so much as dunk it in raw sewage. Listen

The 60th edition of the New York Film Festival, currently in progress through October 16th, recently hosted the World Premiere of Chinonye Chukwu’s powerful new drama, Till, in the festival’s Spotlight section. Till tells the story of Mamie Till-Mobley, the Chicago woman whose son, Emmett Till, was lynched while visiting cousins in Mississippi and whose body became an indelible image of the horrors of American racism. Employing a direct, unflinching, yet sensitive gaze, Chukwu has created the definitive drama of this woman’s grief and resilience, and in an astonishing performance, Danielle Deadwyler captures both a mother’s indescribable heartbreak and her inspiring ascension to the role of civil rights activist. Till is a momentous reminder of an ever-present tragedy, featuring painstaking production design, subtly expressive camera framing and composition, and a note-perfect supporting cast, including Sean Patrick Thomas, Jalyn Hall, Tosin Cole, John Douglas Thompson, Frankie Faison, and Whoopi Goldberg.

The 60th edition of the New York Film Festival officially kicked off on September 30, 2022 with our Opening Night selection: the North American premiere of Noah Baumbach's White Noise, presented by Campari. At the film's press conference, we welcomed Noah Baumbach and select cast members Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, May Nivola, and Sam Nivola, composer Danny Elfman, and songwriter James Murphy in conversation with NYFF's Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. Their wide-ranging discussion covers adapting the "unfilmable" Don DeLillo novel, the story's frightening similarities to our current pandemic, working with a very large cast, and shooting in Anamorphic widescreen. White Noise opens in theaters on November 25th and will premiere on Netflix December 30th. To learn more and get tickets for this year's NYFF, taking place through October 16 throughout NYC, visit filmlinc.org/tix.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we're excited to welcome NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim and FLC Senior Director of Programming Florence Almozini for a programmers preview of the 60th New York Film Festival, through October 16th. Moderated by FLC Assistant Director of Marketing Jordan Raup. The three talked about the standouts and hidden gems of the festival across all five sections—Main Slate, Currents, Revivals, Spotlight, and Talks—along with the general ethos of the curation behind this year's historic edition. Don't miss NYFF60 and attend screenings in all five NYC boroughs! Get up to date information on available tickets at filmlinc.org/tix.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special archival Q&A from the 39th New Directors/New Films in 2010 on I Am Love, with director Luca Guadagnino. Luca Guadagnino returns to Film at Lincoln Center for this year’s 60th New York Film Festival with the Spotlight selection, Bones and All, a work of both tender fragility and feral intensity, setting corporeal horror and runaway romance against a vividly textured Americana, featuring Taylor Russell and Timothée Chalamet as lovers with insatiable, dangerous desires. Tickets to NYFF60, which takes place Sept. 30 - October 16, are now on sale! Don’t miss screenings of Bones and All on October 6th (followed by a Q&A with Guadagnino), 8th, 11th, and 16th. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff.