Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Music director Angela Schanelec following her film’s U.S. premiere in the Main Slate at the 61st New York Film Festival. Music opens at Film at Lincoln Center next Friday, June 28 with introductions by Doug Tielli, the singer-songwriter featured in the film, at the 6:15pm screenings on June 28 and 29. Get tickets to Music! Leading contemporary German filmmaker Angela Schanelec is singularly adept at creating dramas of unexpected catharsis via the most oblique narrative strategies. Her latest film, Music, pushes this approach to new levels of emotionality. Using abstract gestures and broad narrative ellipses, yet still managing to plumb the depths of its characters’ complicated traumas, Music tells the story of a young man and woman unknowingly united by the same violent death. Brought together by fate and horrible irony, Ion (Aliocha Schneider) and Iro (Agathe Bonitzer) first meet in prison, where he’s an inmate and she’s a guard; they kindle a romance fomented by passion for classical music and opera, followed by marriage and children. Yet as in all tragedies, the past returns to haunt them. Inspired by the Oedipus myth, Schanelec has created an alternately austere and vivid portrait of grief and redemption through art told with her distinctive compositional rigor. This conversation was moderated by NYFF Advisor Michelle Carey.

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 FLC’s new series Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Baker. A series of 17 films handpicked by acclaimed playwright Annie Baker that engage with theater as a cinematic theme, Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Bakera runs from June 14-20 in anticipation of the release of Baker’s directorial debut, Janet Planet, on June 21. Get tickets to Angels and Puppets: The Stage on Screen with Annie Baker! Get tickets to Janet Planet! Many films in the series will be shown on 35mm and Baker will join us in-person for select introductions and Q&As, including a sneak preview of Janet Planet on June 20. Opening Night of the series will feature Louis Malle’s iconic collaboration with André Gregory and Wallace Shawn, My Dinner with André (1981) and Vanya on 42nd Street (1994), both presented on 35mm. Baker will also engage in a discussion with Shawn about each film’s perspective on theater as an art form and its translation to the big screen. The conversation was moderated by Erik Luers, FLC's Digital Marketing Manager.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Another End director Piero Messina from Opening Night of this year’s edition of Open Roads: New Italian Cinema. A melancholic, philosophical take on science fiction, Piero Messina’s ensemble drama contemplates a futuristic twist on the afterlife and its implications for those whom the deceased have left behind. Gael García Bernal stars as Sal, who has recently lost his partner Zoe in a car accident. When Sal’s sister Ebe (Bérénice Bejo) suggests he use a new technology to transplant Zoe’s memories into the mind and body of a stranger (Renate Reinsve), he finds himself confronted with a new opportunity to say goodbye to his love—but at what price? A rare blend of high-concept and deep feeling, Another End is a moving work on human connection in an increasingly virtual world. This conversation was moderated by FLC programmer Tyler Wilson.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 61st New York Film Festival with Green Border director Agnieszka Holland, cinematographer Tomasz Naumiuk, and cast members Behi Djanati Atai & Joely Mbundu. This conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle. Green Border was a Main Slate selection of NYFF61 and will open in select theaters on June 19th. A Syrian family leaves the violence of their country behind, hoping to cross from Belarus into Poland and then onto the safe haven of Sweden. But, like so many lost souls, they end up caught in a political maelstrom, demonized by the Polish government and press and used as pawns in an inhumane, deadly border game. This harrowing, urgent drama from the veteran Polish director Agnieszka Holland constructs an intricate account of the contemporary global humanitarian crisis, expanding out to encompass the interconnected lives of security patrol officers, activist lawyers, and civilians who put themselves on the line for strangers. With the sobering and sometimes shocking Green Border, Holland reaffirms both her unyielding commitment to political filmmaking and the ability of immersive storytelling to illuminate the darkest corners of the world.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Over the Bridge director Tolu Ajayi from a recent Q&A at the Opening Night of the 2024 edition of the New York African Film Festival. Since its inception in 1993, the festival has been at the forefront of showcasing African and diaspora filmmakers’ unique storytelling through the moving image. In Over the Bridge, a man named Folarin is an accomplished investment banker with a beautiful wife and a life most people can only dream of. When a high-profile government project his company was hired to manage goes awry, he starts to question everything he’s ever known to be true. After going missing, he discovers himself in a remote fishing village and starts to put together the missing pieces—but will he ever find his way back home?

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, lead actor Hitoshi Omika, and composer Eiko Ishibashi from a recent Q&A for Evil Does Not Exist, an NYFF61 Main Slate selection currently playing in our theaters. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/evil Deep in the forest of the small rural village Harasawa, single parent Takumi lives with his young daughter, Hana, and takes care of odd jobs for locals, chopping wood and hauling pristine well water. The overpowering serenity of this untouched land of mountains and lakes, where deer peacefully roam free, is about to be disrupted by the imminent arrival of the Tokyo company Playmode, which is ready to start construction on a glamping site for city tourists—a plan, which Takumi and his neighbors discover, that will have dire consequences for the ecological health and cleanliness of their community. The potent and foreboding new film from Oscar-winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, both NYFF59) is a haunting, entirely unexpected cinematic experience that reconstitutes the boundaries of the ecopolitical thriller. Intensified by a rapturous, ominous score by Eiko Ishibashi, this mesmeric journey diverges from country-vs-city themes to straddle the line between the earthy and the metaphysical. An NYFF61 Main Slate selection. A Sideshow/Janus Films release. This conversation was moderated by FLC Vice President of Programming Florence Almozini.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes from a recent advance screening of the highly anticipated new film Challengers. From visionary filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, Challengers stars Zendaya as Tashi Duncan, a former tennis prodigy turned coach and a force of nature who makes no apologies for her game on and off the court. Married to a champion on a losing streak (Mike Faist, West Side Story), Tashi’s strategy for her husband’s redemption takes a surprising turn when he must face off against the washed-up Patrick (Josh O’Connor, The Crown)–his former best friend and Tashi’s former boyfriend. As their pasts and presents collide, and tensions run high, Tashi must ask herself, what will it cost to win? The conversation was moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle.

This week we’re excited to present a special podcast episode featuring the star-studded speeches from our recent Chaplin Award Gala. FLC was pleased to honor Jeff Bridges as the recipient of the 49th Chaplin Award, presented at a gala evening on April 29. The full house at Alice Tully Hall was treated to a joyful celebration of the actor’s incredible body of work with hilarious and heartfelt tributes by Bridges’s costars, culminating in Chris Pine presenting the Chaplin Award to the Dude himself. The evening’s guest speakers included, in order of appearance, FLC President Lesli Klainberg; Sharon Stone, who starred in two 1999 films with Bridges: Matthew Warchus’s Simpatico and Albert Brooks’s The Muse; Rosie Perez, who appeared with Bridges in Peter Weir’s Fearless, for which Perez received a 1993 Academy Award nomination; Blythe Danner, who starred alongside Bridges in the 1975 film Hearts of the West; and Chris Pine, who co-starred with Bridges in the Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water in 2016.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 2024 edition of New Directors/New Films with Exhibiting Forgiveness director Titus Kaphar and lead actor André Holland. One of the contemporary art world’s most important painters, Titus Kaphar creates powerful work that is multidisciplinary in nature and profound in historical meaning, often incorporating multiple layers and sculptural dimensions to his canvases. Kaphar brings the same sense of profoundly felt dynamism to his startlingly accomplished cinematic debut, Exhibiting Forgiveness, a wrenching work of emotional depth and visual flair starring the magnificent André Holland in one of the actor’s greatest screen roles so far. Painter Tarrell Rodin (Holland) is a loving and grounded husband to singer Aisha (Andra Day) and father to young Jermaine (Daniel Berrier), but he’s violently haunted by nightmares of his childhood. While preparing for a new gallery show, Tarrell finds his life upended by the sudden return of his father, La’Ron (John Earl Jelks). His mother, Joyce (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), has forgiven La’Ron for the abuse and addiction of their family’s troubled past, but Tarrell cannot bring himself to do the same. While working on his large-scale canvases, Tarrell journeys to his past, wondering if he can alter the pain of his present. Kaphar’s film—as provocative in its depiction of unresolvable familial crises as it is about the meaning and co-opting of Black voices in the contemporary art scene—wrestles with difficult, personal questions without settling on easy answers. The conversation was moderated by New Directors/New Films selection committee member Madeline Whittle.

This week we’re excited to present two conversations: the first with Stress Positions director Theda Hammel, co-writer Faheem Ali, & lead actor John Early from Closing Night of the 2024 edition of New Director/New Films, and the second with The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed director Joanna Arnow & her cast from the 61st New York Film Festival. The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed will open at Film at Lincoln Center on Friday, April 26 with Q&As at select screenings opening weekend. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/feeling Our Stress Positions conversation was moderated by ND/NF selection committee member Madeline Whittle. Our The Feeling that the Time for Doing Something Has Passed conversation was moderated by NYFF61 Currents programmer Tyler Wilson.