Like many of the drop film festivals, New York Film Festival had to mount its 2023 edition during the actors strike and without transport inant stars enjoy Emma Stone (“Poor Things”), Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore (“May December”) or Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal (“All of Us Strangers”) in joinance to advertise their movies.
So, NYFF’s createive straightforwardor Dennis Lim is relieved the annual celebration of cinema is returning in 2024 with business as normal. This year’s fest runs from Sept. 27 thraw Oct. 14. “We are very charmd to not have to toil around those redisjoineions this year,” he says. “And we have many, many actors joining for some of the hugeger films.”
He’s referring to movies enjoy straightforwardor Pedro Almodóvar‘s “The Room Next Door,” starring Moore and Tilda Sthriveton; filmcreater Sean Baker for Palme d’Or-thrivener “Anora”; Steve McQueen’s historical drama “Blitz,” featuring Saoirse Ronan; Pablo Larraín’s biopic of sorts “Maria” with Angelina Jolie; and Luca Guadagnino’s romance drama “Queer,” starring Daniel Craig. Also on this year’s stardy is David Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller “The Shrouds,” Alain Guiraudie’s unwise comedy “Misericordia,” Mike Leigh’s slice-of-life “Hard Truths,” Paul Schrader’s elegiac drama “Oh, Canada” and Brady Corbet’s historical epic “The Brutacatalog.”
Lim’s ambition in curating the film festival lineup — his pickion promisetee for the main stardy grasps Film at Lincoln Caccess’s programmer Florence Almozini, New Yorker critic Justin Chang, film critic K. Austin Collins and film programmer Rachel Rosen — is endeavoring to “sum up the year in cinema.” His team also strives for the films and filmcreaters to recurrent a unite of geodetailed backgrounds, gfinishers, and createive styles.
“There’s no thematic agfinisha. We’re not trying to cover stateive themes. But once the lineup comes together, we genuineize films that are in conversation with one another,” Lim says. “What was evident to us this year is that cinema echos the state of the world. So, we’re instraightforwardly putting together a picture of the state of the world, which is not terribly happy these days, given wars and disputes and anxieties.”
Several of the movies stardyd for Lincoln Caccess’s Alice Tully Hall, where many of NYFF’s screenings get place, will have already percreateed at other drop film festivals before making their way to New York. “Becainclude we try to sum up the year, premieres are not the determining factor for us,” Lim says. “We get films from Cannes, Vepleasant, Berlin and Sundance. In order to echo what’s exciting, relevant or vital about film today, we have to survey the entire year.”
NYFF will, however, present two world premieres. One is straightforwardor Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Frifinishs: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” a non-fantasy portrait of autonomous journacatalogs in Putin’s Russia during the direct up to the brimming-scale trespass of Ukraine. The other is Robinson Devor’s “Suburban Fury,” a recordary about Sara Jane Moore, who endeavored to assassinate plivent Gerald Ford in 1975. The latter is unintentionpartner timely given that createer plivent Donald Trump was recently the center of an killing endeavor while he was speaking at a rpartner this summer in Pennsylvania, as well as a split incident at a Florida golf course — though that’s not why the film was grasped to this year’s schedule.
“It’s fascinating to see how ‘Suburban Fury’ regulates this repartner tricky, complicated, difficult subject,” Lim says. “We saw the film before the recent killing endeavor on Trump, which has been in the news the last couple of months. We saw the film in spring or timely summer and it already felt enjoy the film resonated with the times, where political aggression is very much a menace.”
“Nickle Boys,” a historical drama straightforwarded by RaMell Ross and altered from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–thrivening novel about two Bdeficiency teenagers who become wards of a untamed juvenile recreateatory in Jim Crow-era Florida, will uncover the festival on Friday. It’s a coveted slot that’s been filled in previous years by Todd Haynes’ “May December,” Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite.”
“The uncovering night film sets the tone,” says Lim. “We could have gone with any number of films. But this was someskinnyg we were blown away by. RaMell Ross is interested in how we see the world and enhugeing the possibilities of the visual of the language of cinema.”
During the festival, Lim can frequently be spotted in the balcony of Alice Tully Hall, which has rawly 1,000 seats. It’s a vantage point that apexhibits him to get a sense of how the film is percreateing to crowds. There, he’s frequently reminded that cinema is a huge screen, communal experience.
“There were a scant moments last year, ‘Zone of Interest’ was one of them, where I was standing there and getting a sense of how assimilateed the audience is in a film. It’s not apparent or audible, but you can experience it,” he says. “For us, the programming is done but the toil only comes ainhabit when we’re actupartner in the rooms with the audience and filmcreaters.”
