The 64th New York Film Festival opens on Friday 25 September with Naza, a documentary directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, receiving its North American premiere weeks after its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, as part of a programme bringing together films from several leading international festivals.
The festival programme and figures for its 64th edition
Film at Lincoln Centre is organising the new edition from 25 September to 12 October. The festival’s main selection includes 34 films representing 31 countries, including four world premieres, nine North American premieres and 12 US premieres.
Naza is based on investigations published by +972 Magazine, Local Call and The Guardian, examining the decision-making system linked to Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip and the deaths of Palestinian civilians. British director Jonathan Glazer serves as an executive producer, while The Guardian and James Wilson are producing the film.
New York’s model for presenting the season’s leading films
The New York Film Festival does not follow the competition model that ends with the presentation of awards. Instead, it builds its programme by selecting some of the year’s leading films. Its relatively late position on the festival calendar allows it to bring together films previously shown at major international events, before some move into commercial distribution in the United States.
This year, New York will host films that appeared at Cannes in the spring, others that left Venice weeks ago with awards, and films that screened at Toronto and Locarno. At the same time, four films have chosen New York as their starting point, receiving their world premieres in the main programme.
James Gray to open festival with Paper Tiger
The festival will open with American director James Gray’s Paper Tiger, which will receive its North American premiere after competing for the Palme d’Or at the 79th Cannes Film Festival last May. The film stars Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson.
Set in New York in 1986, it follows a former police officer who draws his brother into a deal with Russian criminals, before the arrangement leads to consequences that threaten the family. Cannes films will feature beyond the opening film, with the New York festival also screening several films that received major awards at the French festival.
They include Minotaur by Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes, and Homeland by Paweł Pawlikowski, who shared the Best Director award. German director Valeska Grisebach will also present her film The Adventure She Dreamed Of, winner of the Jury Prize.
The selection also includes Suddenly by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, whose two leading actresses, Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, shared the Best Actress award for their performances at Cannes. Suddenly follows the director of a care home for older people as she tries to implement a new care programme. Japan has selected the film to represent it in the Best International Feature category at the 2027 Academy Awards.
Venice films move to New York after critical and international acclaim
This group arrives at the New York Film Festival with a record of screenings, critical reception and awards, rather than presenting itself to critics for the first time. The same path extends to films from the 83rd Venice Film Festival, which ended on 12 September.
Among the highlights is South Korean director Lee Chang-dong’s Possible Love, winner of the Silver Lion, the Grand Jury Prize. The film sets a working-class couple against a wealthier couple after a documentary filmmaker decides to film the former pair for a project about job losses.
As the project progresses, the social relationships between the four characters become intertwined. The film reaches New York after also screening at the Toronto Film Festival, following the route taken by some autumn-season films between major festivals before they are shown to American audiences. Alongside films arriving from earlier festivals, the main programme presents four world premieres.
The selection includes Ava DuVernay’s The Fourteenth, Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!, and Iranian director Mani Haghighi’s I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Awakening Sets Portents of Doom in the Sky. Behemoth! occupies the festival’s centrepiece slot, receiving its world premiere.
Pedro Pascal plays a cellist trying to put his life back in order after it collapses, alongside Will Arnett and Eva Victor. Gilroy and Pascal are scheduled to attend the main screening and take part in a discussion with the audience. Artificial addresses a subject linked to ongoing debates about technology by tracing two decades of machine-learning and artificial-intelligence research.
Yura Borisov plays Ilya Sutskever, while Mark Rylance portrays Geoffrey Hinton and Andrew Garfield appears as Sam Altman. The film runs for 140 minutes and receives its world premiere on 5 October. It thus combines the course of technological research with figures associated with the development of artificial intelligence, in Guadagnino’s cinematic treatment presented to a New York audience for the first time.
The programme has set aside 9 October for the closing film, The Fourteenth, which will receive its world premiere in New York. The film comes 10 years after DuVernay’s Thirteenth opened the festival in 2016, marking the director’s return to US constitutional issues.
The film examines the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted after the Civil War, focusing on birthright citizenship, due process and equality before the law. It features politicians, legal experts and commentators from different political perspectives.
Participants include Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Anna Paulina Luna, Senator Alex Padilla, former Senator Jeff Flake and civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill. DuVernay said the film seeks to examine a constitutional “promise” that has remained contested for more than 150 years, while Netflix is handling its distribution. The map of films arriving in New York is not limited to Cannes, Venice and Toronto.
South Korean director Hong Sang-soo’s I Have Nowhere to Put My Eyes arrives after screening at the Locarno Film Festival, where Hong won the Best Director award and Kim Min-hee won the Best Performance award. Hong’s film will receive its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival. The festival will also screen Sandra Wollner’s Every Time, winner of the Un Certain Regard award at Cannes, in its US premiere.
Germany had selected it to represent the country in the Best International Feature category at the 2027 Academy Awards. Because it takes place late in the film season, the New York Film Festival receives films that previously held their world premieres at Cannes and Venice, some of which then moved to Toronto and other festivals after receiving awards and earlier critical acclaim.
At the same time, the festival provides a platform for new works beginning their international journey in New York through their world premieres.
