The Close-up

Director Carson Lund and actor Keith William Richards joined NYFF selection committee member Justin Chang for the North American premiere of Eephus at the 62nd New York Film Festival.  Set in autumnal Massachusetts, sometime in the 1990s, Carson Lund’s poignant and gracefully accomplished debut feature lovingly nestles in with a pair of amateur recreation league baseball teams as they play one last game at their beloved Soldiers Field before it’s torn down for the construction of a middle school. Eephus opens on March 7, 2025 at Film at Lincoln Center.

Director Steve McQueen joins NYFF62 Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss Blitz, the Closing Night selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival. Blitz opens at Film at Lincoln Center on November 1st. Tickets are now on sale: filmlinc.org/blitz An authentic and astonishing recreation of London during its blitzkrieg, Blitz pushes the artistry of Steve McQueen to ever more impressive levels. Working on a vast scale, McQueen sets things at human eye level, telling his original tale from the parallel perspectives of working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her 9-year-old son, George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), as they become separated within the labyrinth of a city under siege. Alternately overwhelming and tender, McQueen’s dazzling film offers a multicultural portrait of 1940s London too infrequently seen on screens.

Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel, author Sigrid Nunez, and cast members Naomi Watts, Sarah Pidgeon, Carla Gugino, Noma Dumezweni, Constance Wu, Owen Teague, and Bing join NYFF62 programmer Florence Almozini to discuss The Friend, a Spotlight selection at the 62nd New York Film Festival. This deeply fulfilling adaptation of Nunez’s beloved, slyly shape-shifting National Book Award winner features Naomi Watts as a novelist who finds her comfortable, solitary New York life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor (Bill Murray) commits suicide and bequeaths his beloved Great Dane to her.

On today’s NYFF62 edition of our podcast, director Jesse Eisenberg, cast members Kieran Culkin and Jennifer Grey, and producers Emma Stone and Dave McCary discuss A Real Pain, a Spotlight selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. In A Real Pain, cousins David (Eisenberg) and Benji (Culkin), having drifted apart over the years, attempt to reconnect on a pilgrimage to the Polish hometown of their grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Eisenberg’s work of compassion and maturity alternates nimbly between anxious comedy and meditative drama. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis by visiting filmlinc.org/tix.

On today’s NYFF62 edition of our podcast, director David Cronenberg discusses The Shrouds with NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim at its U.S. Premiere. In David Cronenberg’s sly and thought-provoking latest, techno-entrepreneur 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 reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger), Karsh uncovers a potentially vast conspiracy. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis by visiting filmlinc.org/tix.

On today’s NYFF62 podcast, we welcome director Luca Guadagnino, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, costume designer Jonathan Anderson, and cast members Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey to discuss Queer, the Spotlight Gala of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Written in the early 1950s yet not published until 1985, William S. Burroughs’s Queer has come to be considered a canonical work in the career of the Beat Generation author and a cornerstone of transgressive gay literature. In his wildly ambitious adaptation, Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, NYFF55) expertly evokes the book’s post–World War II time period and cinematically translates Burroughs’s iconoclasm with panache. In a transformative role, Daniel Craig immerses himself into Burroughs’s alter ego William Lee, a habitual heroin user luxuriating in freedom and desiccation among a disconnected group of gay American expatriates in Mexico City in the late 1940s. When enigmatic, preppy ex-military kid Eugene Allerton

On today’s NYFF62 podcast, we welcome director Paul Schrader and cast members Uma Thurman and Michael Imperioli to discuss their film Oh, Canada, which made its U.S. Premiere in the Main Slate of this year's festival. The discussion was moderated by NYFF programmer K. Austin Collins. In an unvarnished, commanding performance, Richard Gere plays Leonard Fife, a celebrated political documentarian who has reached the end of his life. Constructed with nonlinear flashbacks featuring Jacob Elordi as a young Leonard, the film passes in and out of different time periods, back to the 1960s, matching the slippery consciousness of its storyteller. Adapted from the book Foregone by Russell Banks, Paul Schrader’s emotionally naked drama feels like a direct address to the viewer, a filmmaker’s reckoning with his formidable status and persona. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis by visiting filmlinc.org/tix. Oh, Canada will be release

On today’s NYFF62 podcast, we welcome director Leos Carax to discuss his film It’s Not Me, in an extended conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and director Annie Baker. In his new film, the French cinema firebrand lovingly evokes the aesthetics of Jean-Luc Godard, paying aptly cheeky respect to the late New Wave master, his own career, and cinema itself, rummaging through a century of movies to situate his work within a continuum of the medium. To learn more and get tickets for this year's New York Film Festival, visit filmlinc.org. Enjoy this conversation with Leos Carax and Annie Baker.

On today’s NYFF62 podcast, we present the press conference from this year's Centerpiece selection The Room Next Door, featuring director Pedro Almodóvar and cast members Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, and John Turturro, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. Pedro Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker, a hushed and humane portrayal of the beauty of life and the inevitability of death, graced with incandescent performances by Moore and Swinton that tap the very essence of being. Winner of the Golden Lion at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, Almodóvar has exquisitely reframed his career-long fascination with the lives of women for an American vernacular, capturing Manhattan and upstate New York with enraptured affection. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis by visiting filmlinc.org/tix. The Room Next Door will open at Film at Lincoln Ce

On today’s NYFF62 podcast, director Alex Ross Perry, producer/editor Robert Greene, and members of the band Pavement (Stephen Malkmus, Scott Kannberg, Mark Ibold, Steve West, and Bob Nastanovich) join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss Pavements at its North American Premiere. Fueled by a sardonic, tricky sense of humor, Alex Ross Perry’s very funny sorta-documentary about the beloved indie rock band integrates archival footage of Pavement at the height of their cult popularity, newly shot material following them during their recent comeback tour in 2022, and a kaleidoscope of semi-scripted contemporary scenes about the shooting of a movie within the movie starring Jason Schwartzman, Fred Hechinger, Nat Wolff, Tim Heidecker, Logan Miller, and a hilarious Joe Keery as an actor seeking awards glory. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis by visiting filmlinc.org/tix.

For today’s daily NYFF62 podcast, Jacques Audiard and cast members Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Édgar Ramírez discuss Emilia Pérez, a Spotlight selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF programmer Justin Chang. From the moment it introduces its titular antiheroine, a Mexican drug-cartel boss seeking gender-affirming surgery, this boldly genre-dissolving tour de force is predicated on the power of astonishing transformations. The most ambitious and exuberant film to date by Jacques Audiard, one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile filmmakers, Emilia Pérez is at once a darkly funny crime drama and a jaw-dropping musical, powered by a quartet of superb actors—Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz—whose fearless performances defy every expectation. Winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where its four leads also shared the Best Actress prize. A Netflix release. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fas

For today’s daily NYFF62 podcast, director Pablo Larraín, cast members Angelina Jolie and Alba Rohrwacher, cinematographer Ed Lachman, production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas, and editor Sofía Subercaseaux join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss Maria.  In an all-consuming performance at once poignant and imperious, Angelina Jolie becomes Maria Callas, the American-born, Greek opera singer whose voice and intensely dramatic life captivated millions before her death from a heart attack at the age of 53.  Maria opens in theaters on November 27 and arrives on Netflix on December 11. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis by visiting filmlinc.org/tix.

For today’s daily NYFF62 podcast, directors Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, & Galen Johnson, and cast members Cate Blanchett and Denis Menochet discuss Rumours, a Spotlight selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen. The world’s wealthy democratic world leaders have come together for the annual G7 summit, trading quips and nervous smiles as they do their best to diplomatically discuss vague matters of international emergency and draft statements of import between sips of wine. Yet a major, unforeseen crisis looms on the horizon for the presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors—nothing less than potential human apocalypse, hastened by the arrival of unearthed “bog men” from the Iron Age and a giant pulsating brain perched ominously in the woods. This sci-fi pulp satire finds Canadian trickster extraordinaire Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) and fellow Manitoban co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson in a particularly wacky mood, corralling an outstanding, starry cast—including

On this episode of our daily 62nd New York Film Festival edition, writer-director Sean Baker and stars Mikey Madison, Karren Karagulian, and Vache Tovmasyan, join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss the NYFF62 Main Slate selection Anora. Anora opens at Film at Lincoln Center on October 18, with select screenings on 35mm through October 20 only, courtesy of Neon. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/anora This year’s rambunctious Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival is a pure shot of frenetic pleasure, a New York odyssey that is the most immersive and accomplished comic adventure yet from American original Sean Baker. In a thrilling, star-making performance, Mikey Madison plays Ani, a tough-as-nails exotic dancer from Brighton Beach suddenly thrust into the lap of luxury when she’s whisked away on a whirlwind romance with a wealthy young customer at her strip club. Baker always takes a good-natured, sociological approach to his subject matter and milieu, and here he has created an authentic 21st-cen

For today’s daily NYFF62 podcast, director Brady Corbet, co-writer Mona Fastvold, composer Daniel Blumberg, production designer Judy Becker, and cast members Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Alessandro Nivola, Isaach de Bankolé, Emma Laird, and Stacy Martin discuss The Brutalist, a Main Slate selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. An accomplished Hungarian Jewish architect and World War II survivor (Adrien Brody) reconstructs his life in the U.S. and enters the orbit of an obscenely wealthy captain of industry (Guy Pearce) in Brady Corbet’s richly detailed, brilliantly acted recreation of postwar America. Interweaving a provocative tapestry of ideas around privilege, money, religious identity, architectural aesthetics, and the persistence of historical trauma, The Brutalist is an absorbing, brilliantly acted American epic that reminds us the past is always present. The Brutalist opens in select theaters on December 20th, courtesy of A24. To learn more and get tic

For today’s daily NYFF62 podcast, director RaMell Ross and cast members Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Fred Hechinger, and Hamish Linklater join NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim to discuss Nickel Boys, the Opening Night selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival. Nickel Boys screens again on October 3, 5, and 9. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff Rare is the film of a major book that maintains the power and precision of its source material while also generating its own singular aesthetic. Yet RaMell Ross’s extraordinary realization of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2019 novel, about two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida, achieves just this. In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th centur

On the first episode of our daily 62nd New York Film Festival edition of the FLC podcast, director Julia Loktev and subjects Anna Nemzer, Ksenia Mironova, and Olga Churakova join Rachel Rosen to discuss My Undesirable Friends Part I – Last Air in Moscow, world premiering in the Main Slate of this year's festival. American filmmaker Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, NYFF49), born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist for TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev ends up immersing herself with a group of young women fighting to ensure the vocalization of dissent and outspoken criticism of the country—even as they are branded by the government as “foreign agents,” their careers and lives increasingly at risk as the country creeps toward war. Structured in fiv

This week we’re excited to present a special preview of the 62nd New York Film Festival, beginning this Friday, September 27 and running through October 14. 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 Nickel Boys, The Room Next Door, Blitz, Queer, April, My Undesirable Friends: Part I – Last Air in Moscow, Transamazonia, Afternoons of Solitude, exergue – on documenta 14, Jimmy, The Sealed Soil, and more. Opening with RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, this year’s festival will feature screenings across New York City’s five boroughs, free 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 a conversation with His Three Daughters director Azazel Jacobs and cast members Natasha Lyonne, Elizabeth Olsen, and Carrie Coon during a special advance screening at FLC. His Three Daughters is now streaming on Netflix. From writer-director Azazel Jacobs comes this bittersweet and often funny story of an elderly patriarch and the three grown daughters who come to be with him in his final days. Katie (Carrie Coon) is a controlling Brooklyn mother dealing with a wayward teenage daughter; free-spirited Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is a different kind of mom, separated from her offspring for the first time; and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne) is a sports-betting stoner who has never left her father’s apartment—much to the chagrin of her half-sisters, who share a different mother and worldview. Continuing his astute exploration of family dynamics in close-knit spaces, Jacobs follows the siblings over the course of three volatile days, as death looms, grievances erupt, and love seeps thr

This week we’re excited to present an archival conversation from 2012 at the 50th New York Film Festival with No director Pablo Larraín and lead actress Antonia Zegers. Larraín returns to the New York Film Festival this fall with the NYFF62 Spotlight selection Maria. Don’t miss the NYFF premiere of Maria and many more great films at this year's festival. Single tickets will go on sale this Tuesday, September 17! Learn more at filmlinc.org/nyff In 1988, Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet, due to international pressure, is forced to call a plebiscite on his presidency. The country will vote YES or NO to Pinochet extending his rule for another eight years. Opposition leaders for the NO persuade a brash young advertising executive, Rene Saavedra (Gael Garcia Bernal), to spearhead their campaign. Against all odds, with scant resources and under scrutiny by the despot's minions, Saavedra and his team devise an audacious plan to win the election and set Chile free. The conversation was moderated by Richar