We were thrilled to have screenwriter Josh Singer, producer Kristie Macosko Krieger, Leonard Bernstein’s daughter Jamie Bernstein, makeup designer Kazu Hiro, costume designer Mark Bridges, production designer Kevin Thompson, production sound mixer Steve Morrow, and Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the conducting consultant and conductor for new recordings and Music Director of The Metropolitan Opera, discuss their work on Bradley Cooper's Maestro, the Spotlight Gala selection of NYFF61, with NYFF Main Slate committee member Justin Chang. In his directorial follow-up to A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper dramatizes the public and private lives of legendary musician Leonard Bernstein with sensitivity, visual ingenuity, and symphonic splendor. Coasting on the boundless energy of its subject’s runaway genius, Maestro transports the viewer back to a vividly re-created postwar New York, when Bernstein (Cooper) began his stratospheric rise to international fame as both a conductor and composer, and also when he first met Felicia (Carey Mulligan), the actress whom he would marry and spend his life with. Maestro is a tender, often intensely emotional film about the different faces one wears when living in the public eye, depicting the complicated yet devoted decades-spanning relationship between Leonard and Felicia. Fueled by Cooper and Mulligan’s perfectly matched duet of towering performances, Matthew Libatique’s balletic cinematography, and, of course, Bernstein’s thrilling music, Maestro is a tour de force for its director. A Netflix release. Don’t forget to mark your calendars: Maestro opens in theaters on November 22 and on Netflix December 20. 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.

We were happy to have director Andrew Haigh and editor Jonathan Alberts at the New York Film Festival for All of Us Strangers, a Main Slate selection of this year's festival, where they recently discussed the film with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. British director Andrew Haigh, whose 2011 feature breakthrough Weekend is among the most widely beloved queer romances of the 21st century, has returned with an expertly modulated, emotionally overwhelming love story suspended in a metaphysical realm. Adam (Andrew Scott), a melancholy screenwriter living alone in a newly built, nearly empty high-rise on the outskirts of London, meets and tentatively begins a passionate relationship with the more extroverted Harry (Paul Mescal), his apparent only neighbor in the building. At the same time, Adam begins another, parallel journey, venturing out to the city’s suburbs to confront his troubled past and perhaps reconcile his unsettled present. Adapted from a 1987 novel by Taichi Yamada, All of Us Strangers is uncommonly perceptive about the desires, fears, and traumas of a specific generation of gay men while extending into the universal—or perhaps the cosmic—in its depiction of familial love and estrangement. And in a quartet of superb performances, Scott, Mescal, Jamie Bell, and Claire Foy pierce straight to the heart. A Searchlight Pictures release. Don’t forget to mark your calendars: All of Us Strangers opens in theaters on December 22. 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.

We were happy to have director Garth Davis make his New York Film Festival debut with the World Premiere of Foe, a Spotlight selection of this year’s festival, which he recently discussed with NYFF Main Slate committee member Florence Almozini. In the year 2065, a married midwestern couple, Hen (Saoirse Ronan) and Junior (Paul Mescal), live in Junior’s weather-beaten ancestral farmhouse. Their relationship seems to be on ground as unsolid as the expansive, desolate landscape that surrounds them, parched and mottled by decades of climate change. One night, a stranger (Aaron Pierre) arrives at their door with a surprising proposal, offering them the chance to change their own futures and perhaps alter the course of human existence. In this superbly rendered, sensationally acted science-fiction drama, adapted from the acclaimed novel by Iain Reid, director Garth Davis (Lion) brilliantly toys with viewers’ perceptions while interrogating essential questions of our time about environmental apocalypse and the rise of artificial intelligence, building in emotional intensity to a devastating climax. An Amazon Studios release. Don’t forget to mark your calendars: Foe opens in theaters this Friday, October 6. 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.

We were happy to have director Yorgos Lanthimos back at the New York Film Festival to discuss Poor Things, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival, as well as cinematographer Robbie Ryan, costume designer Holly Waddington, composer Jerskin Fendrix, and production designers James Price & Shona Heath, with NYFF programmer Rachel Rosen. In his boldest vision yet, iconoclast auteur Yorgos Lanthimos, previously featured in NYFF with The Lobster (NYFF57) and The Favourite (NYFF56), creates an outlandish alternate 19th century on the cusp of technological breakthrough, in which a peculiar, childlike woman named Bella (Emma Stone) lives with her mysterious caretaker, the scientist and surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). At once poignant and grotesque, Poor Things, based on a 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray, is a punkish update of the Frankenstein story that becomes a deeply feminist fairy tale about women taking back control of their own bodies and minds. A Searchlight Pictures release. Listen to the conversation with Lanthimos and his team as they discuss Poor Things. Don’t forget to mark your calendars: Poor Things opens in theaters on December 8. 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 61st edition of the New York Film Festival kicked off on Friday, September 29 with the North American premiere of May December, directed by Todd Haynes. From the sensational premise born from first-time screenwriter Samy Burch’s brilliant script, director Todd Haynes (Safe, Carol) has constructed an American tale of astonishing richness and depth, which touches the pressure and pleasure points of a culture obsessed equally with celebrity and trauma. Boasting a trio of bravura, mercurial performances by Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and Charles Melton, May December is a film about human exploitation, the elusive nature of performance, and the slipperiness of truth that confirms Todd Haynes’s status as one of our consummate movie artists. A Netflix release. Opening Night of NYFF61 is presented by Campari. Listen to the press conference featuring Haynes, Burch, and producers Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler, Jessica Elbaum, and Sophie Mas as they discuss May December. Don’t forget to mark your calendars: May December opens at FLC on November 17 and on Netflix December 1. 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.

This week we're excited to present a Programmers Preview of NYFF61 with NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim, Revivals Programmer Dan Sullivan, Currents & Shorts Programmer Tyler Wilson, and Talks programmers Devika Girish and Madeline Whittle. Opening with the North American premiere of Todd Haynes’s May December, 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. Learn more at filmlinc.org/nyff

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with director Yui Kiyohara, whose new film, Remembering Every Night was a 2023 New Directors/New Films selection that is now playing at Film at Lincoln Center along with the filmmaker’s first feature, Our House. And, if you purchase a ticket to one Yui Kiyohara film, receive a ticket to the other free! A film that moves on the rhythms of a gentle breeze, Yui Kiyohara’s follow-up to her acclaimed Our House is an evocatively quotidian film that’s as mysterious and beautiful as everyday life itself. Kiyohara immerses viewers in the quiet pursuits of several women, including a wandering university student, a helpful neighborhood meter reader, and a middle-aged gentle soul seeking employment but finding herself agreeably lost instead. Their paths converge or just miss one another over the course of a single sunny afternoon, captured by Kiyohara with calming long takes and the occasional drifting camera that seems to have a perspective all its own. Remembering Every Night is a treasure of unconventional filmmaking that abounds with simple pleasures, reminding the viewer of the fragility of time, happiness, and love.

Film critic Darcy Paquet and series co-curators, Korean Film Archive's Young Jin Eric Choi and Subway Cinema's Goran Topalovic, discuss the scathing critique of postwar reconstruction in the South Korean classic film Aimless Bullet from 1961. They also explore the challenges faced by filmmakers and the newfound freedom of speech in 1960s Korean cinema. The speakers delve into the regulations imposed by the government in the 1960s and the diverse genres in Korean cinema during that period. They also highlight the historical significance of 'A Woman Judge' directed by Holan Wan.

This week we’re excited to present an archival conversation with The Human Surge director Eduardo Williams. Eduardo Williams’s latest film,The Human Surge 3, will make its U.S. Premiere as the Opening Night selection in the Currents section of the 61st New York Film Festival. A twenty-something in Argentina loses his warehouse job. Boys in Mozambique perform half-hearted sex acts in front of a webcam. A woman in the Philippines assembles electronics in a small factory. The Human Surge, a Projections selection of NYFF54, features Eduardo Williams’s inquisitive camera in constant motion in, as are his rootless characters, who wander aimlessly, make small talk, futz with their phones, and search for a working Internet connection. Unfolding within the unfree time between casual jobs, this wildly original rumination on labor and leisure in the global digital economy seems to take place in both the immediate present and the far horizon of the foreseeable future. This conversation was moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.

This week we’re excited to present an archival conversation with Saint Laurent director Bertrand Bonello and cast members Gaspard Ulliel & Aymeline Valade. Bertrand Bonello’s latest film, The Beast, will make its U.S. Premiere at the 61st New York Film Festival in this year’s Main Slate. Saint Laurent, which had its North American premiere at the 52nd New York Film Festival in 2014, is a different kind of biopic, focusing on a particularly hedonistic time in the life of legendary fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent. The film playfully warps and obscures the passage of time, which results in a delirious viewing experience. Anchored by an enigmatic performance by Gaspard Ulliel, the fashion icon becomes a myth, a brand, and an avatar of his era. This conversation was moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim.