NYFF50: Main Slate

Opening Night!  World Premiere!

Ang Lee's superb 3D adaptation of the great bestseller resembles no other film. A 20th Century Fox release.

Closing Night, World Premiere! Robert Zemeckis and members of the cast in person at Alice Tully Hall screenings!

Denzel Washington and Robert Zemeckis team on this tense dramatic thriller about an airline pilot who pulls off a miraculous crash landing... while flying under the influence. A Paramount Pictures release.

Centerpiece! World Premiere!

The debut feature from The Sopranos creator David Chase is a wise, tender and richly atmospheric portrait of a group of friends trying to start a rock band in 1960s suburban New Jersey. A Paramount Vantage release.

This film is screening as part of the Gala Tribute to Nicole Kidman!

Nicole Kidman, director Lee Daniels, and star Macy Gray in person!

Nicole Kidman gives one of her best performances in this steamy southern gothic directed by Lee Daniels (Precious) and co-starring Zac Efron and Matthew McConaughey. A Millennium Entertainment release.

At the 49th New York Film Festival it was Martin Scorsese's Hugo, at the most recent New Directors/New Films it was Beasts of the Southern Wild, what film will be surprising our audiences this time around?

Director Michael Haneke in person at both screenings!

Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner of Cannes 2012 is a merciless and compassionate masterpiece about an elderly couple dealing with the ravages of old age. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

North American Premiere!

Director Yeşim Ustaoğlu depicts with empathy and uncompromising honesty the fate of a teenaged girl when she becomes sexually obsessed with a long-distance trucker and the promise of freedom that he embodies.

Director Christian Petzold in person at 10/6 screening!

Christian Petzold’s perfectly calibrated Cold War thriller features the incomparable Nina Hoss as a physician planning to defect while exiled to a small town in East Germany. An Adopt Films release.

Director Cristian Mungiu in person at 10/7 screening!

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days director Cristian Mungiu returns with a harrowing, visually stunning drama set in a remote Romanian monastery. Winner, Best Actress and Best Screenplay, 2012 Cannes Film Festival. A Sundance Selects release.

Director Jun Robles Lana in person at all screenings!

A moving and funny surprise from the Philippines starring the great Eddie Garcia—and a truly unforgettable dog—in the story of an elderly loner going where he’s never dared venture before.

North American Premiere! Directors Paolo and Vittorio Taviani in person at 9/29, 9/30 and 10/1 screenings!

Convicted felons stage a production of Julius Caesar in this surprising new triumph for the Taviani Brothers, winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An Adopt Films release.

North American Premiere! Director and star Noémie Lvovsky in person at 9/29 and 10/1 screenings!

Noémie Lvovsky directs and stars in an ebullient comedy of remarriage that gives Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married  a sophisticated, personal, and decidedly French twist.

North American Premiere!

A dying hitman and a mysterious femme fatale set off on an oddball journey through Argentina’s interior in this playful and unexpectedly moving reverie on love, death and the open road.

With her first dramatic feature, writer-director Rama Burshtein has made a compelling, disconcerting view of Israel's orthodox Hassidic community from the inside.

World Premiere!

Alan Berliner creates a compelling, heartfelt chronicle of poet and translator Edwin Honig’s loss of memory, language and his past due to the onslaught of Alzheimer’s.

Lightning-in-a-bottle, Noah Baumbach’s love poem to his star and screenwriter Greta Gerwig recalls Godard’s early celebrations of Anna Karina, but, as a New York movie, it’s beautiful in a brand new way.

Director Dror Moreh in person for both screenings!

Six former heads of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, discuss their nation’s past, present and future, in what will surely be one of the most hotly discussed films of the year. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Director Sally Potter in person for all screenings!

Sally Potter’s riveting coming-of-age story, set in London in 1962, centers on two teenage best friends (played by the revelatory Elle Fanning and talented newcomer Alice Englert) who are driven apart by a scandalous betrayal.

North American Premiere!

After years in the U.S., Pedro returns home to his family in Mexico, but the lure of the north remains as strong as ever. A most impressive feature debut by Antonio Méndez Esparza.

Leos Carax’s unclassifiable, breathtaking, expansive movie—his first in 13 years—stars the great Denis Lavant as a man named Oscar who inhabits 11 different identities over a single day in Paris. An Indomina Releasing release.

Director Roger Michell and writer Richard Nelson in person for 10/13 screening!

Bill Murray caps his career with a wily turn as FDR in this captivating comedy-drama about the President’s relationship with his cousin Margaret “Daisy” Suckley (Laura Linney). A Focus Features release.

Perhaps the most ebullient “musical” you’ll see this year, Marc-Henri Wajnberg’s singular documentary/fiction hybrid follows a group of street children in the Congolese capital.

Directors João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata in person at both screenings!

This stunning amalgam of film noir and Chris Marker–like cine-essay poetically explores the psychic pull of the titular former Portuguese colony.

Directors Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel in person!

NYFF alumni Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Sweetgrass) and Véréna Paravel (Foreign Parts) team for another singular anthropological excavation, this time set inside the commercial fishing industry.

Director Abbas Kiarostmi in person at 10/4 screening!

Master Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostmi ventures to Japan for this mysterious beautiful romantic drama about the brief encounter between an elderly professor and a young student. A Sundance Selects release.

Director Valeria Sarmiento in person for both screenings!

Passionate romance, brutal treachery, and selfless nobility are set against the background of Napoleon’s 1810 invasion of Portugal in Valeria Sarmiento’s intimate epic.

Director Song Fang in person!

Song Fang’s remarkable first feature, in which she travels from Beijing to Nanjing for a visit with her family, perfectly captures the rhythms of brief sojourns home.

A final masterpiece from one of the cinema’s most magical artists, this chronicle of the final months of one Don Celso allows the late Raul Ruiz the chance to explore the thin line between fact and fiction, the living and the dead. A Cinema Guild release.

Pablo Larraín in person at both screenings!

Gael García Bernal stars as a Chilean adman trying to organize a campaign to unseat Pinochet in Pablo Larrain’s smart, engrossing political thriller. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

North American Premiere! Director Joachim LaFosse in person at both screenings!

Belgian director Joachim LaFosse turns a lurid European news story about a mad housewife into a classical tragedy. Émilie Dequenne more than fulfills the promise of her award-winning performance in Rosetta.

Brian De Palma in person at October 6 screening!

Brian De Palma brings great panache and a diabolical mastery of surprise to a classic tale of female competition and revenge. Noomi Rapace and Rachel McAdams are super-cool and oh so mean.

Director Olivier Assayas in person at 10/5 screening!

Too young to have been on the May ’68 barricades, a group of young people explore their options for continuing the political struggle in Olivier Assayas’ incisive portrait of a generation. A Sundance Selects release.

Director Miguel Gomes in person at both screenings!

An exquisite, absurdist entry in the canon of surrealist cinema, Tabu is movie-as-dream—an evocation of irrational desires, extravagant coincidences, and cheesy nostalgia grounded in serious feeling and beliefs. An Adopt Films release.

North American Premiere!

The latest from 90-year-old Alain Resnais is a wry, wistful and always surprising valentine to actors and the art of performance starring a who’s-who of French acting royalty