Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

Claire Denis, Isaach de Bankolé, Matt Dillon, and Tom Blyth discuss The Fence with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim at the 63rd New York Film Festival. In Claire Denis's absorbing and intimate film, set at a white-run construction site in West Africa, Albouny (Isaach de Bankolé) demands the return of his brother's body, killed in a mysterious work accident, but the site's foreman (Matt Dillon) is clearly hiding the truth. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Ben Stiller and Amy Stiller discuss Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim at the 63rd New York Film Festival. In this funny, moving documentary from director Ben Stiller—the most personal film of his career—he tells the story of his parents: the comedy duo of Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, who were a beloved mainstay of 1960s and '70s American culture. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Harry Lighton and Alexander Skarsgård discuss Pillion with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim at the 63rd New York Film Festival. In his unorthodox queer romance, Harry Lighton crafts a film about a sadomasochistic relationship that is both transgressive and disarming, starring Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård in fearless performances as a mild young man and his leather-clad dom lover. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Welcome to the daily 63rd New York Film Festival podcast. Today we're featuring two conversations with Richard Linklater and the teams of his two NYFF selections. First, NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim moderates a conversation with Linklater and Blue Moon's screenwriter Robert Kaplow, as well asd its stars Ethan Hawke, Bobby Cannavale, and Andrew Scott, followed by a conversation with Linklater and Nouvelle Vague's Zoey Deutch, Guillaume Marbeck, Aubry Dullin, and Michèle Pétin, moderated by NYFF programmer Florence Almozini. Blue Moon is a portrait of one crucial night in the melancholy life of legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart (played by Ethan Hawke, in a tour de force performance). The film is a surprising yet entirely fitting addition to the Richard Linklater canon. And the spirit of cinematic revolution is alive and well in Linklater's affectionate and wildly entertaining passion project, Nouvelle Vague, which transports the viewer back to a creative landmark: the 1959 making of Breathless by Jean-Luc Godard. Nouvelle Vague opens at Film at Lincoln Center on October 31st, with the first week of screenings presented on 35mm. Tickets are on sale now. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex. Get tickets at filmlinc.org.

Mary Bronstein, Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, and Christian Slater discuss If I'd Had Legs I'd Kick You with Film Comment editor and NYFF Talks programmer Devika Girish at the 63rd New York Film Festival. The nightmarish stresses of motherhood and work are pushed to their absurdist extremes in Mary Bronstein's stellar piece of cinematic anxiety, starring a bravura Rose Byrne (Berlinale Silver Bear winner) as a woman on the verge of something far beyond a nervous breakdown. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Welcome to the daily 63rd New York Film Festival podcast. On today's edition, Joachim Trier, Renate Reinsve, Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning, and Eskil Vogt join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss Sentimental Value. In Joachim Trier's Cannes Grand Prix–winning follow-up to The Worst Person in the World, Renate Reinsve burrows to the steely core of an acclaimed stage actress reconnecting with her estranged movie director father (played by Stellan Skarsgård). The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex. Get tickets at filmlinc.org Enjoy this conversation with Joachim Trier and the cast of Sentimental Value.

Jim Jarmusch, Adam Driver, Vicky Krieps, Tom Waits, Indya Moore, and Luka Sabbat join NYFF selection committee member Florence Almozini to discuss this year's Centerpiece selection, Father Mother Sister Brother. Winner of the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, Jim Jarmusch's perceptive study in familial dynamics is carefully constructed in the form of a triptych, with three chapters concerning the relationships between adult children reconnecting or coming to terms with aging or lost parents. Father Mother Sister Brother opens at Film at Lincoln Center on December 24, with tickets on sale soon. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Noah Baumbach, George Clooney, Laura Dern, Billy Crudup, and Riley Keogh join Film Comment Editor and NYFF Talks programmer Devika Girish to discuss Jay Kelly. Noah Baumbach's stellar character study gives George Clooney his best film role in years, as—fittingly—the last great movie star, who may be harboring more regrets than he cares to admit. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Kathryn Bigelow, Tracy Letts, Jared Harris, Noah Oppenheim, Paul N.J. Ottosson, Kirk Baxter, and Volker Bertelmann join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss A House of Dynamite, which had its North American premiere at the 63rd New York Film Festival.  The detection of an unidentified incoming missile sets in motion an escalating series of actions and reactions across all levels of the U.S. government in Kathryn Bigelow's kinetic thriller, featuring a terrific ensemble cast led by Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, and Gabriel Basso. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Scott Cooper and Jeremy Allen White join NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen to discuss Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, the Spotlight Gala selection of the 63rd New York Film Festival. Jeremy Allen White inhabits a legend in Scott Cooper's exceptionally moving biographical drama, chronicling the early-'80s crossroads in Bruce Springsteen's career when he crafted the intensely personal acoustic songs that would become his mythic album Nebraska. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Kleber Mendonça Filho, Wagner Moura, and Emilie Lesclaux join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss The Secret Agent at the 63rd New York Film Festival. Bacurau director Kleber Mendonça Filho returns with a thrillingly unpredictable, shape-shifting epic set in his hometown of Recife during the late 1970s, starring a magnetic Wagner Moura as a man on the run from his past. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex. The Secret Agent will open at Film at Lincoln Center on November 26.

We were delighted to welcome Kelly Reichardt, Bill Camp, Hope Davis, Gaby Hoffman, and John Magaro to the 63rd New York Film Festival to discuss The Mastermind in a conversation with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Reichardt's restrained and often funny anti-thriller is set against a Nixon-era backdrop of alienation and disillusionment, following a taciturn family man (Josh O'Connor) who makes the rash, largely inscrutable decision to orchestrate a heist at the local art museum. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex. The Mastermind opens at Film at Lincoln Center on October 17. Get tickets: https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2025/films/the-mastermind/

The 63rd New York Film Festival welcomed Ronan Day-Lewis, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Sean Bean for a press conference for the world premiere of Anemone, joined by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Daniel Day-Lewis roars back to the screen for his first role in eight years in this emotionally charged family drama—directed by Ronan Day-Lewis and co-written by father and son—about lives undone by seemingly irreconcilable legacies of political and personal violence on a path toward familial redemption. The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex.

Welcome to the daily 63rd New York Film Festival podcast. On today's edition, Luca Guadagnino, Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Nora Garrett join NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen at a press conference to discuss this year's Opening Night selection After the Hunt. In his razor-sharp new drama, Luca Guadagnino gives Julia Roberts one of the most complex and gratifying starring roles of her career as a philosophy professor whose life is thrown into chaos after her protégée (Ayo Edebiri) accuses her longtime colleague and friend (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. The 63rd New York Film Festival and Opening Night are presented in partnership with Rolex. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff Enjoy this conversation with Luca Guadagnino and the cast of After the Hunt.

This week we're excited to present a special preview of the 63rd New York Film Festival, beginning next Friday, September 26 and running through October 13. Tickets to this year's festival are still available but going fast! NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim is joined by Jordan Raup, Associate Director of Marketing at Film at Lincoln Center, to break down the films and events you can't miss throughout this year's 17-day festival, including Anemone, BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions, Dry Leaf, Gavagai, Last Night I Conquered the City of Thebes, Sholay, Sirât, What Does That Nature Say to You, and more. Opening with Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, this year's festival will feature screenings across New York City's five boroughs, talks with your favorite filmmakers, stimulating panel discussions, trivia nights, and much more. Don't forget to subscribe here for more daily filmmaker conversations throughout the festival. Learn more at filmlinc.org/nyff

This week we're excited to present an archival conversation from the 51st New York Film Festival in 2013 with Only Lovers Left Alive director Jim Jarmusch and lead actress Tilda Swinton. Jim Jarmusch returns to the New York Film Festival this October with the North American Premiere of our NYFF63 Centerpiece selection Father Mother Sister Brother. NYFF63 single tickets will go on sale this Thursday, September 18! Learn more at filmlinc.org/nyff This conversation was moderated by Amy Taubin Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston make a dashing and very literal first couple—centuries-old lovers Eve and Adam—in Jim Jarmusch's wry, tender take on the vampire genre. When we first meet the pair, he's making rock music in Detroit while she's hanging out with an equally ageless Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) in Tangiers. (Long-distance spells aren't such a big deal when you've been together throughout hundreds of years.) Between sips of untainted hospital-donated blood, they struggle with depression and an ever-changing world, reflect on their favorite humans (Buster Keaton, Albert Einstein, Jack White) and watch time go by, each finding stability in the other.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 13th edition of the recently concluded Scary Movies with Rabbit Trap director Bryn Chainey. Rabbit Trap opens in select theaters this Friday, September 12, courtesy of IFC Films. This conversation was moderated by FLC programmer Madeline Whittle. Joining the likes of Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie among the great troubled marriages of genre cinema, Dev Patel and Rosy McEwen disappear into the roles of Darcy and Daphne Davenport, a sound engineer and his experimental musician wife, freshly decamped from London and taking up residence in an isolated cottage deep in the Welsh countryside in search of creative renewal and acoustic inspiration. When the couple set about exploring their new environs, recording instruments in tow, Darcy stumbles upon a “fairy circle” that emits a strange, unidentifiable frequency; this odd discovery is followed closely by the appearance on their doorstep of an otherworldly child who claims to live nearby and is eager to befriend the Davenports. Soon the child has become a fixture in their household, alternately ingratiating himself and raising suspicions, and exposing unacknowledged rifts and unexamined secrets that threaten to wreak psychological and spiritual havoc in the lives of his makeshift adoptive parents. Bryn Chainey has crafted a sensorially vivid, darkly beguiling debut feature that's steeped in regional folklore, harnessing the uncanny undercurrents of occult tradition and mythology to illuminate obscure, irreducible mysteries of the human condition that stubbornly resist the flattening certainties of modernity.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with M. Night Shyamalan, the subject of our current series Night at the Movies: An M. Night Shyamalan Retrospective, on his 2004 feature The Village. Featuring 2-for-1 double bills that place Shyamalan's features alongside a film of his own choosing, the series runs through Thursday, September 4th. View remaining screening schedule and secure

This week we're excited to present a conversation with legendary French New Wave filmmaker and critic Luc Moullet and his creative and life partner Antonietta Pizzorno as they discuss the 1976 feature, Anatomy of a Relationship, with FLC programmer Dan Sullivan. This event took place as part of our recently concluded retrospective Luc Moullet: Anarchy in the Alps. Luc Moullet's follow-up to the far-out excursions of The Smugglers and A Girl Is a Gun grounds itself in the shared everyday life of a couple. Moullet himself plays a filmmaker who struggles to earn a living practicing his vocation; his professional frustrations are matched by his apparent inability to please his intellectual wife (Christine Hébert), sexually or otherwise. Moullet and Pizzorno (Moullet's real-life wife and creative partner) set the proceedings in spare, claustrophobic spaces, chronicling quarrels, cringe-inducing episodes, and fleeting moments of tenderness on the way to a comic meditation on filmmaking's capacity to complicate relationships.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with FLC Programmer Madeline Whittle about the 13th edition of Scary Movies. Taking place at Film at Lincoln Center from August 15-21, Scary Movies is New York City's premier showcase for the best in new genre (and genre-bending) cinema from around the globe alongside spine-tingling classics and rediscoveries conjured from the dark recesses of midnight-movie lore. To view the full screening schedule and to purchase tickets to this year's edition of Scary Movies, please visit filmlinc.org/scary Scary Movies XIII is sponsored by MUBI, the global streaming service, production company, and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with cinematographer Fred Murphy as he discusses Hoosiers. Hoosiers played as part of our recently concluded retrospective celebrating the career of the late, great Gene Hackman. This conversation was moderated by FLC Senior Programmer Tyler WIlson. Few sports films land with the clarity, grit, and emotional lift of Hoosiers. Gene Hackman brings flinty, lived-in authority to Norman Dale, a disgraced coach seeking a second act in 1950s Indiana, where basketball is practically a religion. Directed with unflashy conviction by David Anspaugh and shot in real Hoosier gyms, this underdog story favors restraint over bombast, with Jerry Goldsmith's elegiac score and a quietly shattering turn by Dennis Hopper as a washed-up assistant adding unexpected weight. At its core is one of Hackman's most cherished performances—contained, weathered, and quietly magnetic—in a film that's less about victory than the long, uncertain work of earning it.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of New Directors/New Films with No Sleep Till director Alexandra Simpson. No Sleep Till is now in select theaters, courtesy of Factory 25. This conversation was moderated by New Directors/New Films selection committee member Madeline Whittle. The slice-of-life indie is alive and well in Alexandra Simpson's feature debut, recipient of a Special Mention from the jury at the 2024 Venice Film Festival Critics' Week. While a looming hurricane spells doom for a sleepy Florida town, citizens carry on: two friends pull pranks and ponder life; another pair captures terrifying footage of the storm; a young woman harbors a deep crush. Through this fleet exploration Simpson keeps audiences on their feet, no two stories told at the exact same tempo and no composition easily anticipated. And backgrounding it all is a sun-soaked, palm tree-lined Florida that has seldom looked as beautiful as it does in No Sleep Till.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with legendary Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa as he discusses his new feature Cloud, currently playing daily at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/cloud This conversation was moderated by New York magazine and Vulture film critic Alison Willmore. Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure, Pulse) delivers one of his most chillingly prescient films with this riveting fusion of social satire, techno-thriller, and survival-action. Yoshii (Masaki Suda), a T-shirt factory worker, supplements his income by flipping merchandise online—dubious medical devices, counterfeit designer handbags, collectible figurines—until disgruntled customers begin organizing against him on an anonymous message board. As his profits grow and he quits his day job (even hiring an assistant), he becomes the target of a coordinated vendetta that ratchets into something increasingly brutal, absurd, yet eerily plausible. At once a pulse-pounding provocation and a cautionary tale for our atomized, hustle-economy era, Cloud—Japan's official submission for the 97th Oscars—is a genre-bending vision of virtual grievances mutating into real-world terror, orchestrated with Kurosawa's signature precision and nerve. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation between film scholars Shana L. Redmond, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Difference at Columbia University, and Michael Gillespie, Associate Professor in NYU's Department of Cinema Studies, as they discuss a double feature of Oscar Micheaux's 1925 silent film Body and Soul and Jordan Peele's 2019 sophomore feature Us. Hailed as “a colossal achievement” and “blissfully ambitious” upon its release, Jordan Peele's 2019 feature Us plumbed everything from American isolationist fears and labyrinthine power structures to the rich lineage of the doppelgänger motif and home-invasion thrillers. Now with the recent publication Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay by Inventory Press, in-depth footnotes, commentaries, and a constellation of images, definitions, and inspirations have untethered entirely new references orbiting the film. This past June, Film at Lincoln Center was thrilled to interpret the cosmology outlined in this book through a presentation of double features, supplementary reading material, in-person appearances from some of the book's contributing writers, and never-before-seen 35mm presentations of Us.

This week we're excited to present an archival conversation from the 52nd New York Film Festival in 2014 with Inherent Vice director Paul Thomas Anderson and his very large and talented cast. For one week only from July 4-10, join Film at Lincoln Center in revisiting this great American film on 70mm film, ahead of the director's highly anticipated new feature One Battle After Honor. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/vice This conversation was moderated by Kent Jones, former Director of the New York Film Festival. Paul Thomas Anderson's wild and entrancing Thomas Pynchon adaptation is a cinematic time machine, placing the viewer deep within the world of the paranoid, hazy L.A. dope culture of the early '70s. It's not just the look (which is ineffably right, from the mutton chops and the peasant dresses to the battered screen doors and the neon glow), it's the feel, the rhythm of hanging out, of talking yourself into a state of shivering ecstasy or fear or something in between. Joaquin Phoenix goes all in as Doc Sportello, the private investigator searching for his ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston), menaced at every turn by the telegenic police detective “Bigfoot” Bjornsen (Josh Brolin). Among the other members of Anderson's mind-boggling cast are Reese Witherspoon, Benicio Del Toro, Martin Short, Owen Wilson, and Jena Malone.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Afternoons of Solitude director Albert Serra. An NYFF62 Spotlight selection, Afternoons of Solitude opens at Film at Lincoln Center on June 28. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/solitude This conversation was moderated by FLC Vice President, Programming, Florence Almozini. Albert Serra trains a patient and poetic lens on the dazzling pomp and devastating brutality of bullfighting in his new documentary portrait of the charismatic Peruvian-born star torero Andrés Roca Rey. Intensely in-the-moment, Afternoons of Solitude expertly balances the visceral thrill of the battle inside the ring, pitting animal instinct against human technique, with a filmmaking style that allows the viewer to appreciate the emotional and physical toll the violence takes on both man and beast. Unflinching yet reflective, Serra's film is a monumental depiction of the persistence of the primitive in the present day, while acknowledging the extraordinary skill of the man who puts his life and spiritual endurance at risk as he faces down rampaging nature.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with cinematographer Peter Deming, who recently joined us for two special screenings of David Lynch's Lost Highway, courtesy of Deming's personally owned 35mm film print. This conversation was moderated by FLC programmer Dan Sullivan. Most of Lynch's later films straddle (at least) two realities, and their most ominous moments arise from a dawning awareness that one world is about to yield to another. In Lost Highway we are introduced to brooding jazz saxophonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) while he lives in a simmering state of jealousy with his listless and possibly unfaithful wife Renee (Patricia Arquette). About one hour in, a rupture fundamentally alters the narrative logic of the film and the world itself becomes a nightmare embodiment of a consciousness out of control. Lost Highway marked a return from the wilderness for Lynch, and the arrival of his more radical expressionism—alternating omnipresent darkness with overexposed whiteouts, dead air with the belligerent soundtrack assault of industrial metal bands, and the tactile sensation that everything is really happening with the infinite delusions of schizophrenic thought. Lost Highway is a Janus Films release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema with Meeting with Pol Pot director Rithy Panh and journalist Elizabeth Becker, moderated by FLC's Vice President, Programming, Florence Almozini. Meeting with Pol Pot will open at Film at Lincoln Center next Friday, June 13 with in-person Q&As at select screenings opening weekend. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/polpot In 1978, three French journalists arrive in Cambodia to survey the country and interview its leader, Pol Pot—but after a picture-perfect arrival, cracks begin to emerge in the murderous regime's facade of respectability. For Cambodian-born Rithy Panh, the damage inflicted upon his homeland by the Khmer Rouge has fueled a lifetime of innovative work in the vein of 2013's The Missing Picture, which reconstructed the period's events in part through clay-figurine dioramas. This real-life journalistic excursion, based on true events detailed in Elizabeth Becker's nonfiction book When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution, is brought to life thanks to exemplary lead performances from Irène Jacob, Grégoire Colin, and Cyril Gueï, meticulously conjuring the sights and sounds of 1978 Cambodia with the assistance of archival footage and more clay figurines. The result is a unique admixture—historical horror paired with a rich meditation on the impossibility of portraying it—that only Panh could make. A Strand Releasing release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema with Ghost Trail director Jonathan Millet. Ghost Trail is currently playing at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/ghost This conversation was moderated by FLC Vice President, Programming, Florence Almozini. Two years after being released from Syrian jail, Hamid (Adam Bessa) is making ends meet as a construction worker in the French city of Strasbourg, where, haunted by the memory of his imprisonment, the young man searches tirelessly for the man who tortured him, determined to get his revenge—but what's the real price of vengeance for the person seeking it? Inspired by true events, Jonathan Millet's deeply researched thriller excavates the too-little-examined moral dilemmas and political negligence that traumatized migrants must confront amid the struggle to rebuild their lives and take control of their destinies at the margins of contemporary French society, inviting audiences to better empathize with France's newest residents, and to better understand their place in the world—and our own. A Music Box Films release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Northern Lights directors John Hanson & Rob Nilsson and cast members Susan Lynch & Joe Spano. This conversation was moderated by NYFF62 Revivals programmer Dan Sullivan. An NYFF62 Revivals selection, Northern Lights is currently playing at Film at Lincoln Center, courtesy of Kino Lorber. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/lights Winner of the Camera d'Or at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival, the sui generis Northern Lights marks one of the most moving and committed works of political cinema from the late 1970s. Dramatizing the formation of the populist Nonpartisan League in North Dakota in the mid-1910s, Northern Lights captures the plight of immigrant Dakotan farmers as they toil and struggle against the combined forces of industry and finance. Amid this class tension, two young lovers find themselves swept up in the tide. Shot on location (on grain-rich black-and-white 16mm) in the dead of winter and featuring an astonishing cast of non-professional actors, this handmade masterpiece remains a stirring monument to collectivity.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of the New York African Film Festival with Black Tea director Abderrahmane Sissako and producer Kessen Tall. This conversation was moderated by Film Comment editor Devika Girish. After saying no on her wedding day, Aya leaves the Ivory Coast for a new life in the buzzing “Chocolate City” of Guangzhou, China. In this district where the African diaspora meets Chinese culture, she gets hired in a tea boutique owned by Cai, a Chinese man. In the secrecy of the back shop, Cai decides to initiate Aya to the tea ceremony. Through the teaching of this ancient art, their relationship slowly turns into tender love. But for their burgeoning passion to lead to mutual trust, they must let go of their burdens and face their past. Having made its New York Premiere at Film at Lincoln Center earlier this month, Black Tea is currently playing in select theaters, courtesy of Cohen Media Group.

This week we're excited to present a special episode featuring the star-studded speeches from our recent Chaplin Award Gala. FLC was pleased to honor Pedro Almodóvar as the recipient of the 50th Chaplin Award, presented in partnership with ROLEX, at a Gala evening on April 28. The full house at Alice Tully Hall was treated to a joyful celebration of the celebrated filmmaker's incredible body of work with hilarious and heartfelt tributes by Almodóvar's cast members, friends, admirers, and more, culminating in Dua Lipa presenting the Chaplin Award to Almodóvar himself. The evening's guest speakers included, in order of appearance, Secretary of our Board of Directors Wendy Keys, Former Film at Lincoln Center Programming Director & head of the New York Film Festival Richard Peña, acclaimed filmmaker, writer, & artist John Waters, actress and longtime Almodóvar muse Rossy de Palma, renowned performer & artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov, Emmy Award–winning actor, director, & writer John Turturro, and global pop powerhouse Dua Lipa.

This week we're excited to present a special programmer's preview of our upcoming retrospective, Kira Muratova: Scenographies of Chaos, taking place in our theaters May 16-25. The episode features a conversation between FLC programmer Madeline Whittle, Marta Kuzma (Professor of Art at Yale University), and film scholar and writer Ivan Kozlenk. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/muratova Kira Muratova: Scenographies of Chaos offers a rare opportunity to explore the complete body of work of a filmmaker who remained largely unknown to American audiences during her lifetime and has only recently come into widespread international acclaim. Muratova is now widely considered the greatest Ukrainian filmmaker of the last half century—and arguably one of the most influential women directors in cinema history. Deeply fascinated by eccentric characters and linguistic deviations, Muratova honed a distinctive style characterized by surreal and unexpected repetitions, refracting the experience of an unstable reality by way of outré storytelling devices. Caustic and misanthropic in life, Muratova nevertheless was touchingly humanistic in her films, radiating childish wonder, defiant hope, and sparkling irony.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from this year's edition of New Directors/New Films with Blue Sun Palace director Constance Tsang and cast members Ke-Xi Wu and Murielle Hsieh. This conversation was moderated by New Directors/New Films co-chair Dan Sullivan. Blue Sun Palace is now in select theaters, courtesy of Dekanalog. For more than 30 years the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng has forged an indelible, inimitable creative partnership with Tsai Ming-liang. Lee makes as big an impression in Constance Tsang's Blue Sun Palace, which relocates him to working-class Queens. When wayward Taiwanese immigrant Cheung (Lee) finds his life of part-time work and light extramarital affairs shattered by violence, he connects with workers at a small Queens salon, victims themselves to the indignities forced upon strangers in a strange land. But Blue Sun Palace is no misery showcase. Intimacy and warmth co-exist with economic anxieties and deep grief that are articulated with uncommon intelligence and understanding of how adults endure any given day. In this debut feature, awarded the French Touch Prize by the jury at the 2024 Cannes Critics' Week, Tsang shapes an immigrant's tale, a relationship drama, a workplace comedy, and a great New York story in one.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with The Shrouds writer & director David Cronenberg and lead actress Diane Kruger, moderated by FLC programmer Tyler Wilson. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection, The Shrouds is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets: https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-shrouds/ In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife's sister (also Kruger)—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy. Written following the death of the director's wife, the new film from David Cronenberg is both a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, set in an ominous world of self-driving cars, data theft, and A.I. personal assistants. Offering Cronenberg's customary balance of malevolence and wit, The Shrouds is a sly and thought-provoking consideration of the corporeal and the digital, the mortal and the infinite. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with Invention director Courtney Stephens and lead actress Calle Hernandez (moderated by FLC's Tyler Wilson) from this year's edition of New Directors/New Films. Presented by The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, the 54th edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF) takes place through April 13, and has, since 1972, showcased new and emerging filmmakers whose distinctive visions and risk-taking works highlight the vitality and potential of cinema. Personal anguish and noirish mystery are inextricably bound in Invention, wherein Callie Hernandez (who co-conceptualized the film, and plays a cross between herself and some other vision) seeks the truth about her father—an inventor of devices boasting untapped power—whose death is not what it seems. Traversing a backwoods America of oddballs, cretins, estate vultures, and even the occasional sweetheart, Hernandez's journey is a constant reminder of how much our loved ones hide from us in life and death alike. Courtney Stephens's years in experimental documentary cinema help turn this Super 16mm–shot investigation narrative on its head, while a commanding performance confirms Hernandez as a captivating screen performer and artist.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from this year's edition of New Directors/New Films with Familiar Touch director Sarah Friedland and cast members Kathleen Chalfant, Carolyn Michelle, and H. Jon Benjamin. This conversation was moderated by New Directors/New Films co-chair Dan Sullivan. Presented by The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center, the 54th edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF) takes place through April 13, and has, since 1972, showcased new and emerging filmmakers whose distinctive visions and risk-taking works highlight the vitality and potential of cinema. The Opening Night selection of this year's festival, Familiar Touch is about an octogenarian named Ruth (played by Kathleen Chalfant) who has been living independently, but cracks have started to emerge: toast is placed to dry in the dish rack, confusion rests on her face, the dead are spoken of in present tense while the living (such as a son right before her) go entirely unrecognized. Her entrance into an assisted-living facility begins the strange, transcendent journey that is Familiar Touch, Sarah Friedland's feature debut, which earned three awards at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, including the Lion of the Future, Best Director, and Best Actress for Chalfant's astonishing turn. Friedland builds her drama through sharp honesty, and tough as its material may be, few films are so tonally flexible, so able to turn on a dime: stray moments of tenderness, humility, even absurdity poke through, with a love and care for Ruth shown by characters and creators alike. Familiar Touch portends the arrival of major directorial talent and we were honored to have it as the opening night selection of the 54th edition of New Directors/New Films. Familiar Touch will open in select theaters beginning June 20th, courtesy of Music Box Films.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Grand Tour director Miguel Gomes. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection, Grand Tour is currently playing at Film at Lincoln Center, courtesy of Mubi. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/tour. In this fanciful and high-spirited cinematic expedition, the uncommonly ambitious Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (Tabu, NYFF50; Arabian Nights, NYFF53) takes a journey across East Asia, skipping through time and countries with delirious abandon to tell the tale of an unsettled couple from colonial England and the world as it both expands and closes in around them. It's 1918, and Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) has escaped the clutches of beckoning marriage, leaving his bemused fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), in indefatigable pursuit. Edward gives chase from Mandalay to Bangkok to Shanghai and beyond, while Gomes responds with a splendid and enthralling series of scenes that use a magic form of cinema to situate us in these places both then and now, keeping us at a knowingly exotic traveler's distance while also immersing us in rhythm, texture, and emotional reality. Whether black-and-white or color, zigzagging or meditative in tone, scripted or captured as documentary, Grand Tour is splendid, moving, and human-scaled. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. A MUBI release. This conversation was moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 20205 edition of the just-concluded Rendez-vous with French Cinema with Being Maria cast members Matt Dillon and Anamaria Vartolomei. Being Maria is now in select theaters, courtesy of Kino Lorber. Actors don't choose roles,” actor Daniel Gélin (Yvan Attal) tells his daughter Maria Schneider (Anamaria Vartolomei). “Roles choose them!” After her galvanizing performance as a young woman seeking out an illegal abortion in Audrey Diwan's Happening (ND/NF 2022), Vartolomei delivers another indelible portrait of a woman in extremis with writer-director Jessica Palud's second feature, moving beyond Schneider's encounter with director Bernardo Bertolucci on the set of Last Tango in Paris, during the shoot of the infamous “get the butter” scene (which the actress repeatedly identified as a violation of her consent), to contemplate the actress's larger life and legacy. The shoot itself is meticulously reconstructed—featuring a remarkable turn by Matt Dillon as Schneider's significantly more famous costar and scene partner, Marlon Brando—in order to contextualize the private and public fallout from Schneider's equally iconic and traumatizing breakout performance. Palud was herself an assistant director for Bertolucci at age 19 (the same age Schneider was during the production of Last Tango) and brings a welcome eye for complexity to an unsparing, compassionate reframing of a much-discussed incident—rooted firmly in the perspective of the actress at its center. This conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Who by Fire director Philippe Lesage and actor Noah Parker. An NYFF62 Main Slate selection, Who by Fire is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center with in-person Q&As at select screenings opening weekend. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/fire A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage (Genesis, New Directors/New Films 2019). Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) and his longtime friend and former collaborator Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), the vacation gradually becomes something far more complex and less stable, especially with the combustible admixture of Albert's teen son's best friend, Jeff (Noah Parker), and Albert's self-asserting daughter Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré). Long-simmering middle-aged resentments surface, set against the anxieties of the young, all captured sensitively by Lesage, who in recent years has proven unparalleled in evoking the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes. Featuring thrillingly choreographed dinner sequences of mounting tension, Who by Fire confirms Lesage as a major contemporary filmmaker, with its assured tonal negotiation of the naturalistic and the oneiric, the joyous (especially an epic dance interlude to The B-52s) and the ominous. This conversation was moderated by NYFF selection committee member K. Austin Collins.

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 the 2025 edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center present the 30th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, running from March 6 to March 16. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/rdv. This celebrated festival offers a dynamic showcase of contemporary French filmmaking, featuring an array of 23 films by both emerging voices—some selected as part of Unifrance's 10 to Watch 2025 Program, a yearly initiative honoring a new generation of directors and actors who contribute to the vitality of French creation—and seasoned directors that tackle relevant and enduring themes. This selection of North American, U.S., and New York premieres celebrates the energy, innovation, and range of French cinema. The conversation was moderated by Erik Luers, FLC's Digital Marketing Manager.

This week we're excited to present a recent conversation with Mickey 17 writer and director Bong Joon Ho, interpreted by Sharon Choi, and moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle. From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of “Parasite" (which was an NYFF57 Main Slate selection), Bong Joon Ho now presents his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, “Mickey 17,” based on the novel by Edward Ashton. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living. “Mickey 17” stars Robert Pattinson as the title character, well, characters, and also stars Naomi Ackie, Academy Award nominee Steven Yeun, Academy Award nominee Toni Collette, and Academy Award nominee Mark Ruffalo. Mickey 17 will open in theaters nationwide on Friday, March 7.

This week we're excited to present a recent conversation with legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, moderated by multiple-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker John Wilson Through March 5, Film at Lincoln Center presents “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution,” a retrospective featuring an extensive selection of films spanning decades of the iconic filmmaker's prolific career, all newly restored in 4K. With 11 of Wiseman's films having been selected for the New York Film Festival since 1967, this series signifies a celebration of the long-standing relationship between FLC and the renowned documentary filmmaker. Once limited to 16mm film prints rarely screened in theaters, these invaluable works can now be experienced in their fullest form at the Walter Reade Theater. To view the remaining screening schedule and to get tickets, please visit filmlinc.org/wiseman.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Universal Language director Matthew Rankin, cast members Ila Firouzabadi & Pirouz Nemati, and producer Sylvain Corbeil. A Currents selection of NYFF62, Universal Language is now in select theaters, courtesy of Oscilloscope. With deadpan, absurdist charm, Manitoban filmmaker Matthew Rankin triangulates a group of interconnected storylines set in a wintry, bleakly beautiful Winnipeg. Two kids discover a bank note frozen in a block of ice, which they hope to retrieve to buy their classmates a new pair of glasses. A tour guide brings befuddled visitors on a walking tour of the city's modest environs. A melancholy man (Rankin, in an autobiographical role) returns home from Montreal to reunite with his family after many years. Imagining a city in which Farsi is the predominant language, Rankin's visually and narratively inventive film was inspired by Iranian films of the 1970s, frequently humanistic children's fables, in this case transferred to a world of beige, concrete brutalist buildings and increasingly surreal, Tati-esque humor. Universal Language was the winner of the Directors' Fortnight Audience Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by Mubi.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of the New York Jewish Film Festival with Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire director Oren Rudavsky and co-producer Annette Insdorf. This conversation was moderated by Rachel Chanoff. With his unforgettable and shattering 1958 memoir Night, Elie Wiesel forever changed the way the Holocaust would be written about. A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a teenager, the Romanian-born Wiesel became an international spokesperson and renowned author, eloquently transforming his trauma into literature of the highest and most profound order. In this enthralling new documentary, filmmaker Oren Rudavsky goes deeper into Wiesel's philosophically abundant inner life, depicted with nuance and tenderness, and enriched by access to his personal archives. In many ways a private man despite being one of the most public voices of Holocaust remembrance, Wiesel is presented here in newly intimate ways known only to his closest friends. Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire stands as a crucial testament to an extraordinary man who helped shape our collective memory of the darkest chapter of the 20th century.

Director Zeinabu irene Davis, writer Marc Arthur Chéry, and cast members Michelle A. Banks & John Earl Jelks discuss Compensation, an NYFF62 Revivals selection, with moderator Racquel Gates. Compensation opens at Film at Lincoln Center on February 21. Learn more at filmlinc.org/compensation Inspired by Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem of the same title, Zeinabu irene Davis's debut feature is an exploration of language, migration, illness, love, and ritual that likewise illuminates unique Black histories, cultures, and artistry. Starring Michelle A. Banks and John Earl Jelks, the film follows two couples in different time periods between the early and late 20th century who must contend with their emotions, tensions between Deaf and hearing experiences, and the toll of structural racism on Black lives during major medical epidemics. Shot in luminous black-and-white and incorporating a rich trove of historical photos, an original ragtime score, and title cards, Compensation evokes both a sense of tragedy and a hopefulness for life that remains persistent in the hearts of Black Americans today. A Janus Films release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with I'm Still Here director Walter Salles, lead actress Fernanda Torres, and Brazilian journalist & author Marcelo Rubens Paiva. This conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle. An NYFF62 Spotlight selection, I'm Still Here is now nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, Best International Feature, and Best Picture. One afternoon in 1971, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil's newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva's memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens's wife, Eunice (a shattering Fernanda Torres), whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. A devastating true story, I'm Still Here is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice. Featuring a deeply affecting appearance from Fernanda Montenegro, Oscar nominee for Salles's Central Station. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui of the new hit documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story. The story of Christopher Reeve is an astonishing rise from unknown actor to iconic movie star, and his definitive portrayal of Clark Kent/Superman set the benchmark for the superhero cinematic universes that dominate cinema today. Reeve portrayed the Man of Steel in four Superman films and played dozens of other roles that displayed his talent and range as an actor, before being injured in a near-fatal horse-riding accident in 1995 that left him paralyzed from the neck down. After becoming a quadriplegic, he became a charismatic leader and activist in the quest to find a cure for spinal cord injuries, as well as a passionate advocate for disability rights and care - all while continuing his career in cinema in front of and behind the camera and dedicating himself to his beloved family. From the directors of McQueen, Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui, this film includes never-before-seen intimate home movies and an extraordinary trove of personal archive material, as well as the first extended interviews ever filmed with Reeve's three children about their father, and interviews with the A-list Hollywood actors who were Reeve's colleagues and friends. The film is a moving and vivid cinematic telling of Reeve's remarkable story. This conversation was moderated by Melena Ryzik. Super/Man is now streaming on Max.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with Hard Truths actresses Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Michele Austin. A Main Slate selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, Mike Leigh's latest film Hard Truths is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/truths Mike Leigh returns to a contemporary milieu for the first time since Another Year for this raw, uncompromising domestic drama that continues the great British filmmaker's inquiries into the possibility for happiness and the limits of human connection. In a gutsy, excoriating performance, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Oscar nominee for Leigh's Secrets & Lies) absorbs herself completely into the role of Pansy, a middle-aged, working-class woman whose emotional and physical health problems have metastasized into a profound and relentless anger that's become toxic for everyone around her, including her husband, grown son, doctors, and even strangers on the street. Raging against every aspect of her domestic life and fearful of the world beyond, Pansy only finds potential solace in the unwavering love of her sister. Bringing his customary, thrilling eye for the details of human behavior and the complexities of social interaction, Leigh has created in close collaboration with his extraordinary cast a rigorous and unflinching look at a life in freefall. This conversation between was moderated by Madeline Whittle.

This week we're excited to present a conversation with writer/director Robert Eggers who recently joined us for a Q&A following a screening of his highly anticipated new feature Nosferatu. Across four intensely stylish, powerfully atmospheric and richly detailed feature films, Robert Eggers has established himself as one of contemporary cinema's most singular auteurs. His work looks to different historical periods, folkloric traditions, and the abject and the arcane alike to craft enigmatic and utterly gripping parables about madness, the antagonism between man and nature, and desire as all-consuming compulsion. But his films, while deeply researched and steeped in worlds that themselves predate the advent of cinema, are nevertheless plainly the output of a passionate cinephile, an artist both in conversation with film history and in conversation with the the history of the occult. This is particularly evident in his latest, Nosferatu, which takes up the challenge of reinventing the story of Dracula after the seminal treatments by F.W. Murnau, Tod Browning, Werner Herzog, and Francis Ford Coppola, to name a few. This February, Film at Lincoln Center is excited to present Conjuring Nosferatu: Robert Eggers Presents, a special series made up of the films that inspired Eggers's spellbinding new take on fiction's most famous monster, an eclectic can't-miss array of gothic Hollywood deep cuts, rare works of Eastern European folk horror, and captivating evocations of 18th-century England, as well as a special screening on 35mm of his own Nosferatu. Stay tuned to filmlinc.org for more information. This conversation was moderated by FLC programmer Dan Sullivan.

This week we're excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with author Sigrid Nunez. With her novels The Friend (winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction) and What Are You Going Through, New York–based author Sigrid Nunez has supplied the extraordinarily rich source material for not one, but two films in the NYFF62 lineup: Scott McGehee and David Siegel's Spotlight standout The Friend, starring Naomi Watts as a writer mourning the complicated loss of a beloved mentor; and Pedro Almodóvar's Centerpiece selection The Room Next Door, which follows another writer (Julianne Moore) as she reconnects with a friend from her past (Tilda Swinton) who approaches her with an unusual request. We were honored to welcome Nunez for a special conversation about her prismatic literary meditations on grief, friendship, and the passage of time; the experience of seeing her creative work adapted into other mediums; and cinema's alchemical capacity to both translate and transform a novel's meaning. This conversation was moderated by A.O. Scott, critic at large for The New York Times Book Review. A New York Times Critic's Pick, Pedro Almodovar's The Room Next Door is now playing at FLC. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/room NYFF Free Talks are presented by HBO.