Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

We welcomed director James Gray and cast members Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong, Banks Repeta, and Jaylin Webb to present and discuss Armageddon Time, the 60th Anniversary Celebration and Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. The most personal film yet from James Gray (The Immigrant, The Lost City of Z) is also one of his greatest, an exquisitely detailed and deeply emotional etching of a time and place: Queens, 1980. Set against the backdrop of a country on the cusp of ominous sociopolitical change, Armageddon Time follows Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a sixth grader who dreams of becoming an artist. At the same time that Paul builds a friendship with classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), who’s mercilessly targeted by their racist teacher, he finds himself increasingly at odds with his parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway), for whom financial success and assimilation are key to the family’s Jewish-American identity. Paul feels on firmest ground with his kind grandfather (a marvelous Anthony Hopkins), whose life experiences have granted him a weathered compassion. Rejecting easy nostalgia for a more difficult, painful form of recall, Gray’s film—shot with intimate naturalism by Darius Khondji—is a perceptive and humane coming of age story that does what only cinema can do, elevating the smallest moments into the greatest drama. A Focus Features release.

We welcomed director Chris Smith and producers Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Kevin Ford to present and discuss "Sr.", a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. Rarely do films about artists allow the kind of poignant intimacy seen in this tender yet fittingly irreverent portrait of the life and career of Robert Downey Sr., the fearless, visionary American director who set the standard for counterculture comedy in the sixties and seventies. An inspired collaboration between celebrated documentarian Chris Smith (American Movie); the subject’s son, Robert Downey Jr.; and the man himself, who’s occasionally shown working on his own version of the movie we’re watching, “Sr.” functions both as an elegy for the rule-flouting underground icon, who passed away at age 85 in July 2021, and as a testament to his tireless creative spirit. Capturing its subjects’ refreshing candor about aging, past struggles with addiction, and the ups and downs of working in Hollywood, Smith’s film is an emotional depiction of a father-son bond that remained strong, pragmatic, and deeply loving to the end. A Netflix release. All NYFF60 Documentaries are presented by HBO.

We welcomed director Sarah Polley, cast members Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Judith Ivey, Sheila McCarthy, Michelle McLeod, Kate Hallett, & Liv McNeil, and producer Dede Gardner to present and discuss Women Talking, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Executive Director, Eugene Hernandez. Sarah Polley brings ferocious honesty and restrained urgency to her screen adaptation of Miriam Toews’s acclaimed novel about of a group of women from a remote religious community dealing with the aftermath of sexual assault perpetrated by the colony’s men. A film of ideas brought to life by Polley’s imaginative direction and a superb, fine-tuned ensemble cast—including Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Frances McDormand, Ben Whishaw, and Judith Ivey—Women Talking is a deep and searching exploration of self-determination, group responsibility, faith and forgiveness, philosophically engaging and emotionally rich in equal measure. A United Artists release.

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF60 edition, director Elvis Mitchell and executive producer Steven Soderbergh discuss Is That Black Enough For You?!?, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, with NYFF Executive Director Eugene Hernandez. American film critic Elvis Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic documentary creates a definitive narrative of the Black revolution in 1970s cinema, from genre films to social realism, from the making of new superstars to the craft of rising auteurs. With Is That Black Enough for You?!? (the title referencing a recurring line from Ossie Davis’s 1970 benchmark Cotton Comes to Harlem), Mitchell takes a personal and panoramic approach, expressing his own experiences as a viewer while detailing the cinematic and political histories that led to this extraordinary flowering of a newly ascendant Black heroism. The Learning Tree, Watermelon Man, Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Cool Breeze, Sounder, Super Fly, Coffy, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Claudine, Uptown Saturday Night, Cornbread, Earl and Me, Killer of Sheep, and dozens more are analyzed with Mitchell’s customary verve and perspicacity. This is a work of painstaking scholarship that’s also thoroughly entertaining, an essential archival document and testament to a period of American film history unlikely to be repeated. Featuring interviews with Margaret Avery, Harry Belafonte, Charles Burnett, Laurence Fishburne, Whoopi Goldberg, Samuel L. Jackson, Suzanne de Passe, Glynn Turman, Billy Dee Williams, Zendaya, and more. A Netflix release. To learn more and get tickets for this year's NYFF, taking place through October 16 in all five boroughs of NYC, visit filmlinc.org/tix.

We welcomed director Charlotte Wells and actress Frankie Corio to NYFF60 to present and discuss Aftersun, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. In one of the most assured and spellbinding feature debuts in years, Scottish director Charlotte Wells has fashioned a textured memory piece inspired by her relationship with her dad, taking place over the course of a brooding weekend at a coastal resort in Turkey. The charismatic Paul Mescal and naturalistic newcomer Francesca Corio fully inhabit Calum and Sophie, a divorced father and his daughter often mistaken for brother and sister, who share a close and loving bond that creates an entire world unto itself. Wells employs an unusual and gorgeous aesthetic that brings us into the interior space of this parent and child, even as she judiciously withholds details, an approach that finally grants the film a singular emotional wallop. Aftersun reimagines the coming-of-age narrative as a poignant, ultimately ungraspable chimera, informed by the present as much as the past. Winner of the French Touch Prize of the Jury at this year’s Cannes Festival. An A24 release. Aftersun opens at Film at Lincoln Center on Friday, October 21st. Tickets are now on sale.

We welcomed director Luca Guadagnino and actors Taylor Russell and Chloë Sevigny to NYFF60 to present and discuss Bones and All, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, moderated by NYFF Executive Director, Eugene Hernandez. In a startling, star-making performance, Taylor Russell plays Maren, a teenager who has just moved to a small town in Virginia with her father (André Holland). However, it’s only a matter of time before the frightening secret Maren harbors is revealed and she must hit the road again—on her own. Soon, she meets another young drifter, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who understands her more than anyone she’s ever met, and the two set out on a cross-country journey, satiating their dangerous desires and reckoning with their tragic pasts. Adapting a novel by Camille DeAngelis, director Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name) has crafted a work of both tender fragility and feral intensity, setting corporeal horror and runaway romance against a vividly textured Americana, and featuring fully inhabited supporting turns from Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jessica Harper, Chloë Sevigny, and Anna Cobb. A United Artists release.

Laura Poitras, artist Nan Goldin, P.A.I.N. activists Harry Cullen & Megan Kapler, and lawyer Mike Quinn discuss their NYFF60 Centerpiece selection All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim, at the press conference. In her essential, urgent, and arrestingly structured new documentary from Participant, Academy Award®–winning filmmaker Laura Poitras (Citizenfour) weaves two narratives: the fabled life and career of era-defining artist Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family, the pharmaceutical dynasty Goldin personally took on in her fight to hold accountable those responsible for the deadly opioid epidemic. Following her own personal struggle with opioid addiction, Goldin, who rose from the New York “No Wave” underground to become one of the great photographers of the late 20th century, put herself at the forefront of the battle against the Sacklers, both as an activist at art institutions around the world that had accepted millions from the family and as an advocate for the destigmatization of drug addiction. Illustrated with a rich trove of photographs by Goldin, who mesmerizingly narrates her own story, including her dysfunctional suburban upbringing, the loss of her teenage sister, and her community’s fight against AIDS in the 1980s, Poitras’s film is an enthralling, empowering work that stirringly connects personal tragedy, political awareness, and artistic expression. A NEON release. All NYFF60 documentaries are presented by HBO. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed opens on November 23rd at Film at Lincoln Center! Tickets on sale soon.

This week we welcomed director Kelly Reichardt and actress Hong Chau to NYFF60 to present and discuss Showing Up, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. Continuing one of the richest collaborations in modern American cinema, director Kelly Reichardt (Certain Women) reunites with star Michelle Williams for this marvelously particularized portrait of a sculptor’s daily work and frustrations in an artists’ enclave in Portland. Lizzy (Williams) struggles to put the finishing touches on her latest pieces for a gallery show, all the while juggling admin work at the local art school; dealing with the neglect of her well-meaning landlord (a funny and nuanced Hong Chau), who also happens to be a rising-star conceptual artist; and tending to the emotional well being of her increasingly fragmented family. Christopher Blauvelt’s patient camerawork, Reichardt’s precise cutting, and Williams’s physically transformative performance coalesce to create something remarkable in Showing Up, a delicately humorous drama of the experience of being a creative person that avoids all clichés that plague films about artists. An A24 release. Tickets to the 60th New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis at filmlinc.org/tix

This week we welcomed writer/director Todd Field, cast members Cate Blanchett, Nina Hoss, and Sophie Kauer, and composer Hildur Guonadóttir to the press conference for TÁR, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director, Dennis Lim. The charisma and emotional precision of Cate Blanchett are put to astounding use in this deft showcase for the actor’s musical artistry, a stinging portrait of a world-famous orchestra conductor’s gradual unraveling that is the first film in sixteen years from director Todd Field (In the Bedroom, Little Children). A Focus Features release. Tickets to the 60th New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis at filmlinc.org/tix

Last weekend we welcomed writer/director Frederick Wiseman and actress and co-writer Nathalie Boutefeu to NYFF60 to present and discuss A Couple, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival.  Countess Sophia Behrs married Leo Tolstoy when she was 18 and he was 34. They were husband and wife for 48 years, had 13 children, and she outlived him by nine years. Yet their relationship, among the most discussed and written about in literary history, was anything but harmonious, as Sophia, an artist in her own right—a photographer, memoirist, and editor—was constantly forced to negotiate her happiness with her husband’s infidelities. Inspired by Sophia’s story, legendary American documentarian Frederick Wiseman has made a film based on Sophia’s diaries and letters from Leo to Sophia, structured as a series of monologues delivered with magnificent poise and gathering intensity by star and co-writer Nathalie Boutefeu, pillowed by graceful images of natural beauty from the film’s bucolic French setting. Wiseman’s captivating one-woman portrait presents a remarkably contemporary rendering of a marriage. A Zipporah Films release. Tickets to the New York Film Festival are moving fast! Get up-to-date information on all available tickets on a daily basis at filmlinc.org/tix