Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 49th New Directors/New Films, with Los conductos director Camilo Restrepo and FLC’s Director of Programming Dennis Lim. A former criminal and cult member living under cloak of night in the crevices and corners of the Colombian city of Medellín makes his way back into civilization, yet is gripped by a shadowy past, in this fragmented first feature from Camilo Restrepo. After his memorable shorts Cilaos and La bouche, the director proves his mastery at economical yet expansive storytelling here, taking a complex narrative about the possibility of regeneration within a society all too willing to discard its outcasts and boiling it down to a series of precise shots, sounds, and gestures of off-handed beauty. Winner of the Best First Feature prize at the 2020 Berlin Film Festival and a New Directors/New Films 2020 selection, Los conductos opens exclusively in our theaters this Friday, with live Q&As with the director and cast during the opening weekend. For showtimes and tickets go to filmlinc.org/conductos.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special programmers preview of the 51st New Directors/New Films, our annual festival celebrating filmmakers who speak to the present and anticipate the future of cinema, and whose bold work pushes the envelope in unexpected, striking ways, co-presented with the Museum of Modern Art. Join FLC programmer Tyler Wilson and MoMA programmers La Frances Hui and Rajendra Roy as they highlight films from the 51st edition of the festival. This year’s lineup will introduce 26 features and 11 shorts, a total of 39 directors, 21 of which are women. New Directors/New Films takes place from April 20 - May 1. Explore the films and get tickets at newdirectors.org.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with The Tale of King Crab directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis and NYFF programmer Tyler Wilson. This rich, engrossing fiction feature debut from documentary filmmakers Rigo de Righi and Zoppis takes storytelling itself as its subject. Based on a legendary figure about whom the filmmakers first heard while making their previous collaboration, 2015’s Il Solengo, this rousing, bifurcated tale follows the improbable adventures of Luciano, played by a bewitching Gabriele Silli, a village outcast in late-19th-century rural Italy. In the film’s first half, set in the countryside near Rome, his life is undone by alcohol, forbidden love, and an escalating quarrel with a local aristocrat; in the second, Luciano is in the distant Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego, hunting for a mythic treasure with the help of a compass-like crab. Rigo de Righi and Zoppis have created a highly unconventional narrative of redemption, alternating images of grandeur and folkloric idiosyncrasy The Tale of King Crab opens exclusively in our theaters this Friday. Get showtimes and tickets at filmlinc.org/crab.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with Silvan Zürcher, one of the directors of The Girl and the Spider, and NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen. Everything is in its right place, yet nothing is ever what or where it seems in this alternately droll and melancholy new film from the Zürcher brothers, whose The Strange Little Cat was one of the most striking and original debut features of recent years. Their latest charts a few days in the lives of two young people on the verge of change: Lisa (Liliane Amuat), who is in the process of moving into a new apartment, and her current roommate, Mara (Henriette Confurius), who’s staying behind. Though its setup is simple, the film—and the ambiguous relationship between the women—is anything but. The architectural precision of the filmmaking belies the inchoate longings and desires that appear to course through Lisa and Mara, as well as the various characters who come in and out of their homes. The Girl and the Spider is a minor-key symphony of inscrutable glances and irresolvable tensions.  The NYFF59 Main Slate selection opens this Friday in our theaters! Get showtimes and tickets at filmlinc.org/spider

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a preview of the ninth Art of the Real, our annual festival highlighting the world’s most vital and innovative voices in nonfiction and hybrid filmmaking, with programmers Dennis Lim, Rachael Rakes, Dan Sullivan, and Almudena Escobar López. Art of the Real is now in full swing and playing through April 7! Get tickets at filmlinc.org/aotr. We're also featuring a Q&A from a recent patron event with director Eva Husson and star Odessa Young on their most recent film, Mothering Sunday. On a warm spring day in 1924, house maid and foundling Jane Fairchild, played by Odessa Young, finds herself alone on Mother’s Day. Her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Niven (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman), are out and she has the rare chance to spend quality time with her secret lover. Paul (Josh O’Connor) is the boy from the manor house near by, Jane’s long-term love despite the fact that he’s engaged to be married to another woman, a childhood friend and daughter of his parents’ friends. But events that neither can foresee will change the course of Jane’s life forever. Mothering Sunday  is now streaming and playing in theaters.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A from our one-night only 35mm screening of Licorice Pizza with Paul Thomas Anderson, Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, and Benny Safdie, moderated by FLC Senior Vice President Eugene Hernandez. Licorice Pizza is the story of Alana Kane and Gary Valentine growing up, running around, and falling in love in the San Fernando Valley in 1973. Written and Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, the film tracks the treacherous navigation of first love. PTA's Licorice Pizza is now playing in theaters.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a programmer’s preview on our Kinuyo Tanaka Retrospective, and a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with director Nadav Lapid on Ahed’s Knee,  moderated by NYFF Programmer Rachel Rosen. As an actress in over 250 films, Kinuyo Tanaka was one of the most celebrated and wildly popular artists of her time, regularly collaborating with consummate masters like Yasujirō Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Mikio Naruse. Between 1953 and 1962, Tanaka directed half a dozen films with a determined sense of freedom and touches of provocation, placing women at the forefront of her movies as mistresses, prostitutes, poets, heroines, and victims of social injustice. The Kinuyo Tanaka Retrospective, featuring brand new 4K restorations of her directorial work and 35mm screenings of her collaborations as an actor, takes place March 18 - 27! Listen to an introduction to the filmmaker from Assistant Programmer Tyler Wilson and rediscover the groundbreaking auteur at filmlinc.org/tanaka. Also opening this Friday, Ahed’s Knee is Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s shattering follow-up to his bat-out-of-hell Synonyms (NYFF57). A film of radical style and splenetic anger, Ahed’s Knee accompanies a celebrated but increasingly dissociated director to a small town in the desert region of Arava for a screening of his latest film. Already anguished by the news of his mother’s fatal illness (Lapid’s film was made soon after the death of his own mother, who had worked as his editor for many years), he grows frustrated with a speech-restricting form he is encouraged to sign by a local Ministry of Culture worker. The confrontation ultimately sends him into a spiral of rage aimed at what he perceives as the censorship, hypocrisy, and violence of the Israeli government. This boldly shot and conceived work, which won the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, feels as though it has welled up from the depths of its maker’s soul. Ahed’s Knee opens this Friday with filmmaker Q&As at the 6pm screenings on Friday and Saturday, and a special Film Comment Free Talk with Lapid at 8:30pm on Friday. Get showtimes and tickets at filmlinc.org/ahed.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk between Juliette Binoche and Déborah Lukumuena from the 27th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, moderated by FLC programmer Maddie Whittle. In a Rendez-Vous lineup that features an abundance of extraordinary performances from women, two names stand out: Juliette Binoche, a much-acclaimed icon of French and international cinema, anchoring new films from directors Claire Denis (Fire) and Emmanuel Carrère (Between Two Worlds); and Déborah Lukumuena, a singular talent and rising star who embodies the best of a new generation of young French actors, performing opposite Gérard Depardieu in Constance Meyer’s Robust. Their conversation explores the two women’s professional trajectories and creative influences, their philosophies and priorities in selecting new projects, and their respective relationships with the American film industry. Rendez-Vous with French Cinema continues to play in our theaters through March 13th. Explore the lineup and get tickets to the best contemporary French films at filmlinc.org/rdv22.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a programmers preview of the 27th Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, the celebrated annual festival that exemplifies the variety and vitality of contemporary French filmmaking, co-presented with UniFrance and taking place now through March 13. Join programmers Florence Almozini, Maddie Whittle, and Adeline Monzier in a preview of this year's impressive lineup where they discuss their favorite films, hidden gems, and more. Get tickets, explore the full lineup, filmmaker Q&As, and free live talks at filmlinc.org/rdv22.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a programmers preview of the seventh edition of Neighboring Scenes, the annual wide-ranging showcase of contemporary Latin American cinema featuring established auteurs as well as fresh talent from the international festival scene. The preview is led by Cinema Tropical programmers Carlos A. Gutiérrez and Cecilia Barrionuevo. Featuring premieres and filmmaker Q&As, Neighboring Scenes takes place from February 24 - 28. Go to filmlinc.org/NS2022 for showtimes and tickets. Following the preview is a special conversation from our To Sir, With Love free screening about the legacy of Sidney Poitier and the figure of the Black movie star with scholars Racquel Gates and Michael Gillespie, moderated by filmmaker and critic Tayler Montague.