The Close-up

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with The Life Ahead director Edoardo Ponti who recently joined us for the retrospective Sophia Loren: La Signora di Napoli. Sophia Loren delivers a towering performance in her son Edoardo Ponti’s 2020 adaptation of the novel Madame Rosa, which embodies the range, intelligence, and innate charisma of the legendary actress. Previously adapted in 1977 by Moshé Mizrahi, with Simone Signoret in the lead role, Ponti moves Romain Gary’s novel to Bari, Italy, where a Holocaust survivor turned children’s caretaker (Loren) forms an unlikely friendship with a bitter street kid (a spectacular Ibrahim Gueye) after he robs her. By turns tender and haunted, the storied role of Rosa is imbued here with the unmistakable wisdom of a seasoned performer, who subtly nods to her own illustrious on-screen persona with subtlety and grace. This conversation was moderated by FLC Programmer Tyler Wilson.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation between My Dinner with André lead actor Wallace Shawn and Janet Planet filmmaker Annie Baker. When Dan Talbot, the pioneering distributor and exhibitor of international art films, read playwrights Wallace Shawn and André Gregory’s script for My Dinner with André, he was so excited about the project that he helped director Louis Malle procure production funding from Gaumont. The concept was to depict an encounter between the two writers, playing fictionalized versions of themselves, as they discuss mortality, money, despair, and love over a meal at an Upper West Side restaurant—according to Gregory, Malle’s one direction was to “talk faster.” By turns entertaining, confessional, funny, and moving, suffused with melancholy and joy alike, the film became a sensation at the art house upon its release, playing to packed theaters for a solid year, and went on to endure as a perennial favorite on the home video circuit. Now please enjoy the conversation between Ann

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Last Summer director Catherine Breillat and lead actress Léa Drucker from the 61st New York Film Festival. An NYFF61 Main Slate selection, Last Summer opens Friday at FLC, featuring Q&As with Breillat on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/summer One of the world’s most consistently provocative filmmakers for nearly 50 years, Catherine Breillat proves with her incendiary, compelling new drama that she is not through toying with viewers’ comfort levels. In Last Summer, Léa Drucker stars as Anne, a lawyer who specializes in cases of sexual consent and parental custody. Seemingly happily married to kind-hearted businessman Pierre (Olivier Rabourdin) with adopted twin daughters, Anne inexplicably finds herself drawn to Pierre’s estranged 17-year-old son Théo (Samuel Kircher) after the boy returns home to live with them. Embarking on a passionate affair with the teenager, Anne all too willingly thrusts herself into a maelstrom of attract

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Music director Angela Schanelec following her film’s U.S. premiere in the Main Slate at the 61st New York Film Festival. Music opens at Film at Lincoln Center next Friday, June 28 with introductions by Doug Tielli, the singer-songwriter featured in the film, at the 6:15pm screenings on June 28 and 29. Get tickets to Music! Leading contemporary German filmmaker Angela Schanelec is singularly adept at creating dramas of unexpected catharsis via the most oblique narrative strategies. Her latest film, Music, pushes this approach to new levels of emotionality. Using abstract gestures and broad narrative ellipses, yet still managing to plumb the depths of its characters’ complicated traumas, Music tells the story of a young man and woman unknowingly united by the same violent death. Brought together by fate and horrible irony, Ion (Aliocha Schneider) and Iro (Agathe Bonitzer) first meet in prison, where he’s an inmate and she’s a guard; they kindle a romance

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Film at Lincoln Center Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle, as she discusses the films featured in FLC’s new series Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Baker. A series of 17 films handpicked by acclaimed playwright Annie Baker that engage with theater as a cinematic theme, Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Bakera runs from June 14-20 in anticipation of the release of Baker’s directorial debut, Janet Planet, on June 21. Get tickets to Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Baker! Get tickets to Janet Planet! Many films in the series will be shown on 35mm and Baker will join us in-person for select introductions and Q&As, including a sneak preview of Janet Planet on June 20. Opening Night of the series will feature Louis Malle’s iconic collaboration with André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, My Dinner with André (1981) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), both presented on 35mm. Baker will also engage in a discussion

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Another End director Piero Messina from Opening Night of this year’s edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema. A melancholic, philosophical take on science fiction, Piero Messina’s ensemble drama contemplates a futuristic twist on the afterlife and its implications for those whom the deceased have left behind. Gael García Bernal stars as Sal, who has recently lost his partner Zoe in a car accident. When Sal’s sister Ebe (Bérénice Bejo) suggests he use a new technology to transplant Zoe’s memories into the mind and body of a stranger (Renate Reinsve), he finds himself confronted with a new opportunity to say goodbye to his love—but at what price? A rare blend of high-concept and deep feeling, Another End is a moving work on human connection in an increasingly virtual world. This conversation was moderated by FLC programmer Tyler Wilson.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 61st New York Film Festival with Green Border director Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk, and cast members Behi Djanati Atai & Joely Mbundu. This conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle. Green Border was a Main Slate selection of NYFF61 and will open in select theaters on June 19th. A Syrian family leaves the violence of their country behind, hoping to cross from Belarus into Poland and then onto the safe haven of Sweden. But, like so many lost souls, they end up caught in a political maelstrom, demonized by the Polish government and press and used as pawns in an inhumane, deadly border game. This harrowing, urgent drama from the veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland constructs an intricate account of the contemporary global humanitarian crisis, expanding out to encompass the interconnected lives of security patrol officers, activist lawyers, and civilians who put themselves on the line for strange

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Over the Bridge director Tolu Ajayi from a recent Q&A at the Opening Night of the 2024 edition of the New York African Film Festival. Since its inception in 1993, the festival has been at the forefront of showcasing African and diaspora filmmakers’ unique storytelling through the moving image. In Over the Bridge, a man named Folarin is an accomplished investment banker with a beautiful wife and a life most people can only dream of. When a high-profile government project his company was hired to manage goes awry, he starts to question everything he’s ever known to be true. After going missing, he discovers himself in a remote fishing village and starts to put together the missing pieces—but will he ever find his way back home?

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, lead actor Hitoshi Omika, and composer Eiko Ishibashi from a recent Q&A for Evil Does Not Exist, an NYFF61 Main Slate selection currently playing in our theaters. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/evil Deep in the forest of the small rural village Harasawa, single parent Takumi lives with his young daughter, Hana, and takes care of odd jobs for locals, chopping wood and hauling pristine well water. The overpowering serenity of this untouched land of mountains and lakes, where deer peacefully roam free, is about to be disrupted by the imminent arrival of the Tokyo company Playmode, which is ready to start construction on a glamping site for city tourists—a plan, which Takumi and his neighbors discover, that will have dire consequences for the ecological health and cleanliness of their community. The potent and foreboding new film from Oscar-winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, both NYFF59

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes from a recent advance screening of the highly anticipated new film Challengers. From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach and a force of nature who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court. Married to a champion on a losing streak (Mike Faist, West Side Story), Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick (Josh O’Connor, The Crown)–his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. As their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself, what will it cost to win? The conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle.

This week we’re excited to present a special podcast episode featuring the star-studded speeches from our recent Chaplin Award Gala. FLC was pleased to honor Jeff Bridges as the recipient of the 49th Chaplin Award, presented at a gala evening on April 29. The full house at Alice Tully Hall was treated to a joyful celebration of the actor’s incredible body of work with hilarious and heartfelt tributes by Bridges’s costars, culminating in Chris Pine presenting the Chaplin Award to the Dude himself. The evening’s guest speakers included, in order of appearance, FLC President Lesli Klainberg; Sharon Stone, who starred in two 1999 films with Bridges: Matthew Warchus’s Simpatico and Albert Brooks’s The Muse; Rosie Perez, who appeared with Bridges in Peter Weir’s Fearless, for which Perez received a 1993 Academy Award nomination; Blythe Danner, who starred alongside Bridges in the 1975 film Hearts of the West; and Chris Pine, who co-starred with Bridges in the Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water in 2016.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 2024 edition of New Directors/New Films with Exhibiting Forgiveness director Titus Kaphar and lead actor André Holland. One of the contemporary art world’s most important painters, Titus Kaphar creates powerful work that is multidisciplinary in nature and profound in historical meaning, often incorporating multiple layers and sculptural dimensions to his canvases. Kaphar brings the same sense of profoundly felt dynamism to his startlingly accomplished cinematic debut, Exhibiting Forgiveness, a wrenching work of emotional depth and visual flair starring the magnificent André Holland in one of the actor’s greatest screen roles so far. Painter Tarrell Rodin (Holland) is a loving and grounded husband to singer Aisha (Andra Day) and father to young Jermaine (Daniel Berrier), but he’s violently haunted by nightmares of his childhood. While preparing for a new gallery show, Tarrell finds his life upended by the sudden return of his father, La’Ron (John Earl

This week we’re excited to present two conversations: the first with Stress Positions director Theda Hammel, co-writer Faheem Ali, & lead actor John Early from Closing Night of the 2024 edition of New Director/New Films, and the second with The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed director Joanna Arnow & her cast from the 61st New York Film Festival. The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed will open at Film at Lincoln Center on Friday, April 26 with Q&As at select screenings opening weekend. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/feeling Our Stress Positions conversation was moderated by ND/NF selection committee member Madeline Whittle. Our The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed conversation was moderated by NYFF61 Currents programmer Tyler Wilson.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Omen director Baloji from the 2024 edition of New Directors/New Films. The sense of dread that often accompanies being around blood relatives with whom you share no real connection is brought into vivid focus in songwriter and rapper Baloji’s debut feature, Omen. Having been banished to Europe as a baby after a birthmark convinced his mother that he must be a sorcerer, Koffi (Marc Zinga) and his white Belgian fiancée Alice (Lucie Debay) embark on a family reconciliation trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo. The kinetic chaos of the return—missed airport transfers and traffic, bloody noses, family gatherings and judgments––sets the stage for a visceral reimmersion tale. Winner of the New Voice Prize at Cannes and selected as Belgium’s entry for the 96th Academy Awards, Omen melds the modern and the mystical in mesmerizing fashion. A Utopia release. This conversation was moderated by New Directors/New Films committee member Tyler Wilson.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with A Different Man director Aaron Schimberg and lead actor Sebastian Stan from this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films. Learn more: newdirectors.org With the hotly anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed sophomore feature, 2018’s Chained for Life, New York-based director Aaron Schimberg boldly announces himself as one of the most fearless and socially incisive new voices in American independent cinema wth the 2024 New Directors New Films Opening Night selection A Different Man. Sebastian Stan, winner of this year’s Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the Berlin Film Festival, delivers an ingeniously embodied performance as Edward, an aspiring actor with severe facial disfigurement, to whom we’re introduced as he navigates a dreary daily existence marked by discouragement and resignation. When a winsome playwright moves in next door, and an experimental medical procedure becomes available to change his face, Edward’s outlook brighten

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Léa Seydoux, lead actress of the 61t New York Film Festival Main Slate selection The Beast, which will open in our theaters on April 5. The Beast opens at FLC next Friday, April 5 View showtimes and get tickets at filmlinc.org/beast A filmmaker consistently unafraid to wade through the weird miasma of contemporary life, Bertrand Bonello (Nocturama; Coma, NYFF60) works from the outside in, dramatizing the psychological toll of the political and cultural world around us. Here he has created a dynamic and disturbing parable that jumps between three different time periods (1910, 2014, and 2044) to diagnose our acute—and perhaps eternal—feelings of estrangement and alienation. Using Henry James’s haunting 1903 short story “The Beast in the Jungle” as his film’s provocative inspiration, Bonello tells the story of a young woman (Léa Seydoux) who undergoes a surgical process to have her DNA—and therefore memories of all her past lives—removed. In so doing, she

This week we’re excited to present two conversations. First up, with our retrospective celebrating the films of the late Polish director Wojciech Jerzy Has currently running through March 31, listen to Digital Marketing Manager Erik Luers discuss the career of the filmmaker with Annette Insdorf, a celebrated scholar and author of the book Intimations: The Films of Wojech Has. Get tickets to The Long Strange Trips of Wojciech Jerzy Has retrospective at filmlinc.org/has Following that conversation, we’re happy to share a Q&A from the 61st New York Film Festival with La Chimera director Alice Rohrwacher and actors Josh O’Connor & Isabella Rossellini, moderated by NYFF Advisor Michelle Carey. With her customarily bewitching mixture of earthiness and magical realism, Alice Rohrwacher conjures a marvelous entertainment set in a rural Italy eternally caught between the ancient and the modern. La Chimera opens at FLC next Friday, March 29. View showtimes and get tickets now at filmlinc.org/chimera

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with The Animal Kingdom director Thomas Cailley and The Pod Generation director Sophie Barthes as they discuss their playful, up-to-the-minute experiments with genre and the use of speculative fiction to examine political realities and probe timeless emotional truths. This conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle with interpretation by Nicholas Elliott. Thomas Cailley, whose 2014 breakout feature Love at First Fight charmed audiences with its invigorating fusion of the rom-com and coming-of-age genres, returned to Rendez-Vous with French Cinema with this year’s Opening Night selection, The Animal Kingdom, in which a darkly imaginative sci-fi premise gives way to a thoughtful study of fatherhood. When mankind is plagued with a mysterious infection that selectively mutates the bodies of ordinary people into animal hybrids, a widower and his teenage son must fight to survive in Cailley’s darkly imaginative exploration of a human ec

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Little Girl Blue director Mona Achache, producer Laetitia Gonzalez, and lead actress Marion Cotillard as they discuss the 2024 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema selection with FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle. The lives and legacies of three generations of extraordinary women artists are unpacked in Mona Achache’s César-nominated hybrid documentary. Achache, herself an accomplished writer and filmmaker, turns her gaze on her mother, Carole—a writer, photographer, and actress, and the daughter of novelist and screenwriter Monique Lange (goddaughter of William Faulkner). Carole’s myriad professional achievements notwithstanding, her private life was indelibly marked by predatory behavior she experienced at the hands of those close to her, including family friend Jean Genet. Marion Cotillard brilliantly embodies Carole across a series of hauntingly resonant reconstructions that, alongside a generous archive of video, photography, and personal writing,

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Denis Villeneuve, the subject of a recent retrospective presented by FLC and who’s new highly anticipated sci fi-epic, Dune: Part Two, is now in theaters worldwide courtesy of Warner Bros Pictures. The saga continues as award-winning filmmaker Denis Villeneuve embarks on Dune: Part Two, the next chapter of Frank Herbert’s celebrated novel Dune, with an expanded all-star international ensemble cast. The big-screen epic continues the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s acclaimed bestseller Dune with returning and new stars, including Oscar nominee Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Josh Brolin, and Austin Butler. Dune: Part Two explores the mythic journey of Paul Atreides as he unites with Chani and the Fremen while on a path of revenge against the conspirators who destroyed his family. Facing a choice between the love of his life and the fate of the known universe, he endeavors to prevent a terrible future only he can foresee. This convers