The Close-up

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A with Louverture Films co-producers Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, moderated by FLC’s Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Following a screening of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, the opening night film of our week-long Danny Glover and Louverture Films series, the co-producers discussed the history of the production company, collaborating with directors, and how the landscape of international cinema has changed over the years. Danny Glover and Louverture Films features 14 films from around the world and celebrates the work of the actor, activist, and groundbreaking production company. Now playing through December 7. For tickets, showtimes, and the full lineup, go to filmlinc.org/glover.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk from the 59th New York Film Festival with Drive My Car director, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, moderated by filmmaker Matías Piñeiro. Making his return to NYFF with not one but two Main Slate selections, Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi affirms his stature as a true rising star of world cinema, and one of the foremost chroniclers of the ebbs and flows of human relationships. With Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy—a pair of vividly realized and ceaselessly surprising emotional epics—Hamaguchi demonstrates his singular talent for tracing the intricate workings of the heart amid the perennial paradoxes of modern life. Inspired by a Haruki Murakami short story, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi spins an engrossing, expansive epic about love and betrayal, grief and acceptance, charting the unexpected, complex relationships that a theater actor-director forges with a trio of people out of professional, physical, or psychological necessity. Drive

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a remote live Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn director Radu Jude, moderated by NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn opens Friday, November 19. Get tickets: https://www.filmlinc.org/banging The targets are wide, the satire is broad, and every hit lands and stings in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s angry, gleefully graceless Golden Bear winner from this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Evoking the unsanitized provocations of the great Dušan Makavejev in his prime, Jude crafts an invigorating, infuriating film in three movements that grows in both power and absurdity, centering around the trials of a teacher (Katia Pascariu) at a prestigious Bucharest school whose life and job are upended when her husband accidentally uploads their private sex tape to the internet for all to see. Jude has no compunction about shocking and skewering in his quest to toy with contemporary soc

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? director Alexandre Koberidze, moderated by NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Among contemporary cinema’s most exciting and distinctive new voices, Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze has created an intimate city symphony like no other with his latest film. Beginning as an off-kilter romance in which footballer Giorgi and pharmacist Lisa are brought together on the streets of Kutaisi by chance, only to have their dreams complicated when they become victims of an age-old curse, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? continues to radically and pleasurably shape-shift. Ultimately it becomes a lovely portrait of an entire urban landscape and the preoccupations—and World Cup obsessions—of the people who live there. Koberidze has made an idiosyncratic epic out of passing glances that feels as free and fulsome as a fairy tale. What Do We See When We Look

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the director of two NYFF59 selections, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car. Hamaguchi sat down with Film Comment's Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish following the premiere of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. In this altogether delightful triptych of stories, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi again proves he’s one of contemporary cinema’s most agile dramatists of modern love and obsession. Whether charting the surprise revelation of a blossoming love triangle, a young couple’s revenge plot against an older teacher gone awry, or a case of mistaken romantic identity, Hamaguchi details the sudden reversals, power shifts, and role-playing that define relationships new and old. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is both ironic and tender, a lively and intricately woven work of imagination that questions whether fate or our own vanities decide our destinies. Hamaguchi’s second 2021 re

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special  Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with filmmaker Joanna Hogg and NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Grieving and depleted from the tragic end of a relationship with a boyfriend who had suffered from drug addiction, young Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) summons the emotional and creative fortitude to forge ahead as a film student in 1980s London. Continuing the remarkable autobiographical saga she had begun in 2019’s The Souvenir, British director Joanna Hogg (a filmmaker of unceasing visual ingenuity and sociological specificity) fashions a gently meta-cinematic mirror image of part one, cutting to the quick in one surprising, enthralling idea after another. A film about finding one’s artistic inspiration and individuality that avoids every possible cliché, The Souvenir Part II is a bold conclusion to this story of unsentimental education, told with the filmmaker’s inimitable oblique poignancy, and featuring a mesmerizing su

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk from the 59th New York Film Festival between filmmakers Mia Hansen-Løve & Joachim Trier. With their respective NYFF59 Main Slate selections Bergman Island and The Worst Person in the World, Mia Hansen-Løve and Joachim Trier achieve new creative heights in their parallel trajectories as the preeminent European filmmakers of their generation. Both artists have spent the last 15 years interrogating, with great compassion, the moral and emotional crosscurrents that undergird human behavior, and their latest films refine these inquiries with an invigorating reflexive frankness. The two writer-directors came together for a conversation about their influences and inspirations; their distinctively personal and philosophical approaches to cinematic storytelling; and the endlessly generative themes of romantic ambivalence and evolving self-knowledge that animate their new films. Bergman Island is now playing in our theaters, for showti

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On the final episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Denis Villeneuve and composer Hans Zimmer to discuss Dune, a selection in the Spotlight section of this year’s festival. A mythic and emotionally charged hero’s journey, Dune tells the story of Paul Atreides, a brilliant and gifted young man born into a great destiny beyond his understanding, who must travel to the most dangerous planet in the universe to ensure the future of his family and his people. As malevolent forces explode into conflict over the planet’s exclusive supply of the most precious resource in existence—a commodity capable of unlocking humanity’s greatest potential—only those who can conquer their fear will survive. Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Zendaya, Chang Chen, Charlotte Rampling, Jason Momoa, and Javier Bardem lead the all-star ensemble in v

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Céline Sciamma to discuss Petite Maman, a selection in the Main Slate section of this year’s festival. Following such singular inquiries into gender as Tomboy, Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma proves again that she’s among the most accomplished and unpredictable of all contemporary French filmmakers with the gentle yet richly emotional time-bender Petite Maman. Following the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother’s childhood home to begin the difficult process of sorting and removing its cherished objects. While exploring the nearby woods, Nelly encounters a neighbor her own age, with whom she finds she has a remarkable amount in common. Sciamma’s scrupulously constructed jewel uses the most delicate of touches to palpate profound ideas about grief, memory, and the past. Learn

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Pedro Almodóvar and cast members Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit to discuss Parallel Mothers, the Closing Night selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. In this muted contemporary melodrama, two women, a generation apart, find themselves inextricably linked by their brief time together in a maternity ward. The circumstances that brought them to the Madrid hospital are quite different—one accidental, the other traumatic—and a secret, hiding the truth of the bond that connects these two, is a powerful story that tackles a deep trauma in Spanish history. Penélope Cruz’s Janis is a uniquely complex, flawed, but ultimately alluring lead character, who finds herself in a morally and emotionally treacherous situation. She’s viewed in contrast with Ana, radiantly portrayed by newcomer Milena Smit, a discovery who brings a palpable innocence, pain, and longing to this interwoven portrait of women and motherhood.

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim sits down with director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and actress Tilda Swinton to discuss Memoria, a selection in the Main Slate section of this year’s festival.  Collective and personal ghosts hover over every frame of Memoria, somehow the grandest yet most becalmed of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s works. Inspired by the Thai director’s own memories and those of people he encountered while traveling across Colombia, the film follows Jessica (a wholly immersed Tilda Swinton), an expat botanist visiting her hospitalized sister in Bogotá; while there, she becomes ever more disturbed by an abyssal sound that haunts her sleepless nights and bleary-eyed days, compelling her to seek help in identifying its origins. Thus begins a personal journey that’s also historical excavation, in a film of profound serenity that, like Jessica’s sound, lodges itself in the viewer’s brain as it traverses city and country, climaxing in an extraordi

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Mike Mills and actors Joaquin Phoenix and Molly Webster to discuss C’mon C’mon, a selection in the Spotlight section of this year’s festival.  After gracing audiences with Beginners and 20th Century Women (NYFF54), writer-director Mike Mills returns with another warm, insightful, and gratifyingly askew portrait of American family life. A soulful Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny, a kindhearted radio journalist deep into a project in which he interviews children across the U.S. about our world’s uncertain future. His sister, Viv (a marvelously intuitive Gaby Hoffmann), asks him to watch her 9-year-old son, Jesse (Woody Norman, in one of the most affecting breakout child performances in years), while she tends to the child’s father, who’s suffering from mental health issues. After agreeing, Johnny finds himself connecting with his nephew in ways he hadn’t expected, ultimately taking Jesse with him on a journey fr

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim chats with filmmaker Gaspar Noé about his new film Vortex, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival.  Finding new depths of tenderness without forgoing the uncompromising fatalism that defines his work, Noé’s latest film guides us through a handful of dark days in the lives of an elderly couple in Paris: a retired psychiatrist (Françoise Lebrun) and a writer (Dario Argento) working on a book about the intersection of cinema and dreams. Explore what's playing at NYFF59 and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff.

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez speaks with director Rebecca Hall and cast members Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, and André Holland about Passing, a Main Slate selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. A cornerstone work of Harlem Renaissance literature, Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing is adapted to the screen with exquisite craft and skill by writer-director Rebecca Hall, who envelops the viewer in a bygone period that remains tragically present. The film’s extraordinary anchors are Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, meticulous as middle-class Irene and Clare, reacquainted childhood friends whose lives have taken divergent paths. Clare has decided to “pass” as white to maintain her social standing, even hiding her identity from her racist white husband, John (Alexander Skarsgård); Irene, on the other hand, is married to a prominent Black doctor, Brian (André Holland), who is initially horrified at Clare’s choices. As the film progresses, and resentments and lat

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez has a conversation with the team behind The French Dispatch: director Wes Anderson, producer Jeremy Dawson, and cast members Adrien Brody, Bill Murray, Steve Park, and Jason Schwartzman Zooming in from Spain, and cast members Anjelica Fellini, Lois Smith, Bob Balaban, Léa Seydoux, and Jeffrey Wright joining in person from New York. The French Dispatch is a selection in the Spotlight section of this year’s festival. Wes Anderson’s unmistakable cinematic style proves delightfully suited to periodical format in this missive from the eponymous expatriate journal. Brought to press by a corps of idiosyncratic correspondents, the issue includes reports on a criminal artist and his prison guard muse, student revolutionaries, and a memorable dinner with a police commissioner and his personal chef. As brimming with finely tuned texture as a juicy issue of a certain New York–based magazine to w

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez speaks with director Todd Haynes about The Velvet Underground, a Main Slate selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. The Velvet Underground opens in our theaters on Wednesday, October 13th. Tickets are now on sale. Given the ingeniously imagined musical worlds of Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, it should come as no surprise that Todd Haynes’s documentary about the seminal band The Velvet Underground mirrors its members’ experimentation and formal innovation. Combining contemporary interviews and archival documentation with newscasts, advertisements, and a trove of avant-garde film from the era, Haynes constructs a vibrant cinematic collage that is as much about New York of the ’60s and ’70s as it is about the rise and fall of the group that has been called as influential as the Beatles. Filmed with the cooperation of surviving band members, this multifaceted portrait folds in an array of participants in the creative scen

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim speaks with director Jane Campion, cast members Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and cinematographer Ari Wegner about The Power of the Dog, the Main Slate Centerpiece selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. With The Power of the Dog, her first film in nearly twelve years, Jane Campion reaffirms her status as one of the world’s greatest—and most gratifyingly eccentric—filmmakers. A mesmerizing, psychologically rich variation on the American western, it tells the story a melancholy young widow (played by Kirsten Dunst) who marries a rancher in 1920s Montana, where she and her young son are tormented by her new husband’s sullen and bullying brother (played by Benedict Cumberbatch). To learn more and get tickets for this year's NYFF, taking place through October 10 indoors and outdoors throughout NYC, visit filmlinc.org/nyff

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by The Lost Daughter writer & director Maggie Gyllenhaal and cast members Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Ed Harris, Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Dagmara Dominczyk to discuss their Spotlight selection of this year’s festival. The NYFF59 screenings of The Lost Daughter are presented by Citi. Based on the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante, Gyllenhaal's screen adaptation stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a divorced professor on a solitary summer vacation who becomes intrigued and then oddly involved in the lives of another family she meets there. Our wide-ranging discussion covers everything from hometown filmmaker Gyllenhaal's initial fascination with Ferrante's four Neapolitan Novels to how she eventually assembled her incredible cast. Also discussed are Johnson's breaking down the unique motivations of her character, Nina, as the story progresses, and how Mescal prepared for his role, his very first i

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez is joined by director Julia Ducournau and lead actors Vincent Lindon and Agathe Rousselle to discuss Titane, a Main Slate selection at NYFF59. Titane plays at the 59th New York Film Festival Wednesday, September 29 at 3:45pm. Standby only tickets may be available. The winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or, Titane is a thrillingly confident vision from Julia Ducournau that deposits the viewer directly into its director’s headspace. Moving with the logic of a dream—and often the force of a nightmare—the film begins as a kind of horror movie, with a series of shocking events perpetrated by Alexia (Agathe Rouselle, in a dynamic and daring breakthrough), a dancer with a titanium plate in her skull following a childhood car accident. However, once Alexia goes into hiding from the police, and is taken in by a grief-stricken firefighter (Vincent Lindon), Ducournau reveals her deployment of genre tropes to be a

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, we’re joined by the creative team behind Mississippi Masala, a Revivals selection in this year’s New York Film Festival. In this talk sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, writer Jhumpa Lahiri speaks with director Mira Nair, lead actress Sarita Choudhury, and Director of Photography Ed Lachman about this seminal screen romance of the 1990s. In Mississippi Masala, Sarita Choudhury plays Mina, a Ugandan Indian from Kampala whose family leaves Uganda after the implementation of Idi Amin’s policy of forcefully expelling all Asians from the country. They wind up in Greenwood, Mississippi, living with relatives and trying to reconcile the trauma of their involuntary exile with assimilating to American culture. Some 17 years pass before Mina falls for a self-employed carpet cleaner, Demetrius (played by Denzel Washington), and their romance puts them in conflict with the local Black and Indian-American communities—not to mention Mina’s family. At once a powerful parab