Culture Representation: Taking place in 1940s France and in 2020s New York City, the dramatic film “White Bird” (based on the graphic novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Asians) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A French Jewish grandmother tells her 15-year-old American grandson the story of when she was hidden from Nazis by a compassionate gentile family during World War II in France.
Culture Audience: “White Bird” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the novel on which the movie is based, the movie’s headliners, and stories of about the Holocaust.
“White Bird” might get some comparisons to “The Diary of Anne Frank,” but “White Bird” is a fictional story that won’t be considered a classic. This dramatic film has good performances from the principal cast, despite the movie’s treacly tone and drab dialogue. Overall, the message of “White Bird”—showing kindness and bravery when society becomes consumed by hate—transcends any noticeable flaws in the movie.
Directed by Marc Forster and written by Mark Bomback, “White Bird” is based on R.J. Palacio’s 2019 graphic novel of the same name. The “White Bird” novel was also turned into a regular novel that was published in 2023, the year that the “White Bird” movie was originally going to be released. After several delays, the “White Bird” movie was released in 2024.
The “White Bird” movie has two different timelines: The first timeline is in 2020s New York City. The second timeline is in 1940s France and is depicted in flashback scenes told through the memory of one of the story’s main characters. (“White Bird” was actually filmed in Prague, Czech Republic.)
In 2020s New York City, 15-year-old Julian Albans (played by Bryce Gheisar) is a new student at an elite prep school called Yates Academy. He is introverted and a little socially awkward. On his first day at Yates Academy, Julian is invited by a fellow student named Rahmiya (played by Priya Ghotane) to join the school’s social justice club. Rahmiya also invites Julian to sit with her at the same table for lunch. Julian politely declines to join the social justice club because he doesn’t seem to want to get involved in any political issues.
A stuck-up student named Dillon (played by Teagan Booth) introduces himself to Julian while Julian is sitting with Rahmiya. Dillon says Julian’s mother plays tennis wth Dillon’s mother, who told Dillon to protectively “look out for” Julian and befriend him. Dillon rudely tells Julian: “This is the loser table.” Dillon then says that Julian should have lunch with Dillon and his friends on the following day.
At Julian’s home, a family member makes a surprise visit: Julian’s French grandmother Sara Blum (played by Helen Mirren), who has arrived from Paris. Julian and Sara have not seen each other for years. Sara offers Julian a glass of wine, but he declines and reminds her that he’s too young to legally drink alcohol.
Julian tells Sara about how he’s a new student at Yates Academy because he was expelled from a previous school for being cruel to another boy. (This is in reference to Julian being a character in the 2017 movie “Wonder,” which is also based on a Palacio novel.) Julian says he has learned to be “normal,” which Julian defines as not being cruel or nice but just “minding your own business.” Sara looks slightly appalled that this is Julian’s definition of being “normal,” so she says she is going to tell him what happened to her when she was a child in France during the Nazi occupation of the 1940s.
Most of the movie consists of Sara’s childhood story told as flashbacks, beginning when Sara (played by Laura Hudeckova) was 5 and 8 years old. Sara describes her childhood before the Nazi occupation as happy and idyllic. She was an only child in a loving, middle-class household in the village of Aubervilliers-Aux-Bois.
Her happily married parents were surgeon Max Blum (played by Ishai Golan) and math teacher Rose Blum (played by Olivia Ross), who would take her on picnic trips. These picnics are Sara’s most treasured memories of Sara’s childhood, she tells Julian. Sara comments, “I was a bit spoiled, but I didn’t see it that way.”
But trouble began brewing for Jewish people in their community when the Nazis occupied France in 1940. The Nazi persecution of Jewish people began gradually. First, Jewish people began to lose their jobs and financial freedoms. (Nazis seized bank accounts of Jewish people.)
Then, Jewish people (who were often identified by neighbors who were paid to identify Jews) were rounded up by Nazis and usually separated from family members. Jewish people were then sent to be imprisoned, starved, tortured, and usually murdered in what the world now knows were death camps during this Holocaust. The Holocaust became a central cause during World War II.
At the beginnng of the Nazi occupation in France, teenage Sara (played by Ariella Glaser) is a student at a co-ed high school named École Lafayette, where most of the students are not Jewish. Her two best friends are “popular girls” in the school: Mariann (played by Selma Kaymakci) and Sophie (played by Mia Kadlecova), who are really “mean girls.” This clique and other students at the school sometimes bully a disabled student named Julien Beaumier (played by Orlando Schwerdt), who uses a cane to walk.
Other student bullies at the school are cruel Vincent (played by Jem Matthews) and his two sidekicks Jerome (played by Jordan Cramond) and Henri (played Yelisey Kazakevich). These bullies have given Julien the insulting nickname Tourteau (which means “crab” in French) because they think he walks like a crab sea creature. Sara doesn’t participate in the bullying of Julien, but she doesn’t do anything to stop it either. She can also sense that Julien has a crush on her.
Sara has a talent for drawing. And one day in a classroom, one of her teachers notices an illustration that Sara has made of a white bird. The teacher advise Sara: “A gift is a treasure. Never stop drawing, Sara.”
Sara first begins to suspect that something wrong is happening in the community when her mother Rose announces during dinner one evening that she was abruptly fired from her job for no credible reason. Sara’s father Max has been hearing stories about Jewish people in France being rounded up by Nazis and disappearing. Max thinks Rose was fired because she’s Jewish. He’s alarmed enough to suggest that the family flee as soon as possible to a nation that isn’t occupied by Nazis.
Rose is adamantly against the idea. She thinks what is happening with the Nazi occupation will eventually subside and go away. Rose says she doesn’t want to uproot her life to move to another country. And she doesn’t want to frighten Sara, so Rose scolds Max for even talking about their lives possibly being in danger in front of Sara.
Sara soon finds out that her father was correct about his fears. At school, she notices that she is beng treated differently for being Jewish. This bigotry then escalates until one day, Nazi soldiers show up at the school and take away all students, faculty and staff who are Jewish. Through a series of harrowing circumstances and actions, Sara manages to escape in the Mernuit forest nearby. The Nazi soldiers can’t find her, so they leave. It should come as no surprise that school bully Vincent becomes a Hitler youth informant for the Nazis.
The trailer for “White Bird” already reveals the essence of the story. Julien (who is an only child) comes to Sara’s rescue and brings her to his home to hide. Julien’s parents Jean Paul Beaumier (played by Jo Stone-Fewings) and Vivienne Beaumier (played by Gillian Anderson) show her kindness and compassion by deciding to hide Sara in a barn near the family house, which is somewhat isolated in the rural town of Dannevilliers. Jean Paul is a sewer worker, which is why Julien is familiar with the sewage tunnels in the area.
Sara learns through the Beaumier family that her parents were taken by the Nazis. Jean Paul and Vivien promise Sara that they will do everything they can to find out what happened to Sara’s parents and reunite Sara with her parents. During the time that Sara is hidden in the Beaumier family barn, she and Julien become closer. And their friendship turns into a chaste and tentative romance.
In an attic window, Sara can see a white bird that appears in a tree directly across from the window. This white bird becomes a symbol of hope and freedom for Sara, who does not know how long she will be sequestered and hidden and if she will ever see her parents again. Jean Paul and Vivien also put their lives at risk when the Beaumier family’s upstairs neighbors Monsieur Lafleur (played by Miroslav Taborsky) and Madame Lafleur (played by Zuzana Hodkova) begin to suspect the Beaumier family of hiding a Jewish person.
“White Bird” has some suspenseful moments but offers no real surprises. Perhaps the weakest part of the movie involves a risky trek through the snow-filled forest and an encounter with a wolf. The wolf looks very fake, with substandard visual effects. This phony-looking scene lowers the quality of the movie.
However, the acting in most of the movie is earnest, even if it at times it seems like the cast is trying too hard in their acting instead of performing more naturally. Mirren has played the role of a wise grandmother in so many other movies, what she does in “White Bird” is competent and effective but not anything extraordinary. The other principal cast members also give capable performances, with Glaser aand Schwerdt performing in their roles quite nicely as teenagers who grow close and find love under these horrible circumstances.
“White Bird” could have used more authenticity in depicting French people. Most of the principal cast members are obviously not French and don’t have convincing French accents. It’s a noticeble discrepancy that doesn’t ruin the film but it’s an example of how “White Bird” lacks certain attention to realistic details that prevent it from being a completely well-made film. However, most viewers of “White Bird” will find something to appreciate about it so that it shouldn’t be considered a waste of time to watch this somewhat formulaic movie.
Lionsgate released “White Bird” in U.S. cinemas on October 4, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in mostly in the New York City area, the horror film “Smile 2” (a sequel to 2022’s “Smile”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people, Asian people and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Pop music superstar Skye Riley, who is about to start a comeback tour after recovering from a tragic car accident, becomes haunted by a demon that causes her to have nightmarish hallucinations that people are giving her sinister smiles.
Culture Audience: “Smile” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the first “Smile” movie and stylish horror films that are effective in being creepy and gruesome.
As flashy as it is gory, Smile 2 is a rare sequel that’s better than the original movie. Naomi Scott gives an impressive performance as a pop diva haunted by a sinister demon spirit. This movie improves from 2022’s “Smile” in almost every way, although it would help if viewers say the first “Smile” movie to understand many of the scenes in “Smile 2,” especially the opening scene.
Parker Finn wrote and directed “Smile” and “Smile 2.” Instead of copying its predecessor, “Smile 2” goes further in character development, production design, visual effects, cinematography and the movie’s overall story. The “Smile” movies are about a demon spirit that gets passed on to a different person after that person goes insane within a week (including hallucinating that people have sinister smiles), and the possessed person commits suicide while smiling, which is the demon’s intention. The demon then possesses the person who was the last one to see the dead person alive in the same room, even if the possessed person dies from something other than suicide.
The first “Smile” movie (which takes place in New Jersey) was mainly about solving the mystery behind these mysterious deaths. A police detective named Joel (played by Kyle Gallner) was investigating. Mild spoiler alert: By the end of “Smile,” Joel became possessed by the demon. This is necessary information to understand the full context of the opening scene of “Smile 2.”
“Smile 2” (which takes mostly in the New York City area) begins six days after the events at the end of the first “Smile” movie. Joel is desperate to find someone who will become posssessed by the demon because Joel knows that he will die soon. He has chosen a ruthless drug dealer/murderer named Yev (played by Roberts Jekabsons), who lives and works with his brother Alexi (played by Zebedee Row). Wearing a hooded mask and armed with a gun, Joel goes to the criminals’ house and does a home invasion that goes horribly wrong.
There’s a shootout that leaves both brothers dead (the demon can only possess people who are alive) in the living room area. Joel is wounded in one of his shoulders. Just as he is about to leave, a drug dealer who buys from Alexi and Yev suddenly appears and startles Joel. The other drug dealer is named Lewis Fregoli (played by Lukas Gage), who understandably gets freaked out by this crime scene that he sees in this room.
Some colleagues of Yev and Alexi also show up shortly afterward. These cohorts see Joel and the bloodbath inside the house, but Joel is in another room. Another shootout ensues, but Joel escapes into the street outside, only to be hit by a car. Lewis was the last person to see Joel alive in the same room. And you know what that means.
“Smile 2” then introduces viewers to the movie’s main character: a pop music superstar named Skye Riley (played by Naomi Scott), who is on the verge of starting a comeback tour. Skye has an image and style that is very similar to Lady Gaga. During a talk show interview on “The Drew Barrymore Show” (Barrymore portrays herself in this cameo role in “Smile 2”), it’s mentioned that this is the first interview that Skye has done since she was in a car accident the previous year. The car crash killed her actor boyfriend Paul Hudson (played by Ray Nicholson), who was driving the car. Skye was the only passenger.
A toxicology report determined that Paul and Skye both had intoxication levels of cocaine and alcohol in their systems at the time of the accident. Skye’s interview on “The Drew Barrymore Show” is a way to redeem herself, promote her upcoming comeback tour, and introduce her new hairstyle. At the time the accident happened, Skye had long black hair. Now, she has a short blonde hairstyle. In some scenes in the movie, it’s shown that Skye has a nervous tic of pulling out strands of her hair when she’s feeling stress or anxiety.
In “The Drew Barrymore Show” interview, Skye admits that she was abusing drugs and alcohol during the period of time when the car accident happened. Skye says that she’s been to rehab and is now clean and sober. She also makes public apologies to her fans, her family and her business team. Skye noticeably leaves out any apologies to Paul’s loved ones. (Paul is prominently featured in marketing materials for “Smile 2,” but he’s not in the movie as much as those marketing materials suggest. Ray Nicholson, a son of Jack Nicholson, will remind some people of Jack Nicholson’s performance in the 1980 horror film “The Shining” in how Ray Nicholson does Paul’s creepy smile.)
The car accident left Skye with long scars on her front torso and on her back. She is very self-conscious about these scars and is still suffering from back pain. Due to her history of substance addiction, Skye cannot get a drug prescription for the pain. And so, out of desperation, Skye secretly goes to the home of her former drug dealer Lewis (who is also her former classmate from high school) to illegally buy Vicodin, after she gets a message from Lewis on her phone.
When Skye arrives at Lewis’ place, she sees him very strung-out on cocaine and babbling about how he’s seeing strange visions. Lewis also tells Skye that whatever is haunting him is in the same room with them. The trailer for “Smile 2” already reveals that Lewis commits suicide in front of Skye by bashing his own head in with a cylinder block from a weightlift. And because Skye was the last person to see Lewis alive in the same room, you know what that means.
The rest of “Smile 2” shows what happens as Skye begins to mentally unravel. With the wrong screenplay, sloppy direction or an untalented cast, “Smile 2” could have been very tedious and badly performed. However, this movie maintains its suspense throughout with good acting and has some truly impactful and memorable scenes that might be too unsettling for sensitive viewers. Some of Skye’s nightmares include flashback memories to what happened in the moments right before the car crash that killed Paul.
In addition to Scott’s standout performance, “Smile 2” has solid performances from supporting characters who are close to Skye. They include her caring and ambitious mother/manager Elizabeth Riley (played by Rosemarie DeWitt); Skye’s sardonic best friend Gemma (played by Dylan Gelula), who reconciles with Skye after they were estranged; Skye’s loyal personal assistant Joshua (played by Miles Gutierrez-Riley); and a record company executive named Darius Bravo (played by Raúl Castillo), who works with Skye and greatly admires her.
The scenes depicting the music industry and concert performances are very realistic. Scott (as Skye) performs some original songs in “Smile 2,” including “New Brain,” “Grieved You,” “Just My Name” and “Blood on White Satin.” At a meet-and-greet backstage with fans, Skye has an encounter with a creep named Alfredo (played by Ivan Carlo), who has to be escorted out by security when he gets too aggressive with Skye. It won’t be the last time that Skye sees Alfredo.
Later in the movie, Skye meets a stranger named Morris (played by Peter Jacobson), who says he’s an emergency room nurse with an idea to help her. This is the most awkward part of the movie because Skye meets Morris at a diner after he randomly texted her messages indicating that he knows her secret. Morris says his brother died of the same curse that he knows that Skye has. He suggests a radical solution to get rid of the demon.
“Smile 2” has enough to satisfy fans of the first “Smile” and win over fans who are new to the “Smile” franchise. There are a few parts of the movie that become repetitive in hammering home the point that Skye is having these terrible hallucinations. What’s realistic is that Skye is not a completely sympathetic character and is prone to having diva tantrums. Even though the odds are stacked against Skye for her to survive the curse, “Smile 2” does a skillful job of keeping viewers guessing about what will happen until the visually stunning last 15 minutes of the movie.
Paramount Pictures will release “Smile 2” in U.S. cinemas on October 18, 2024.
Celebrating its 15th edition in 2024, the annual DOC NYC, which is headquartered in New York City, is one of the world’s leading documentary festivals, with a slate of more than 200 films (of which more than 100 are feature-length films) from a diverse array of topics. In 2024, DOC NYC takes place from November 13 to December 1, and continues the festival’s tradition of offering an outstanding variety of feature films and short films, with several of the movies focusing on under-represented people and marginalized communities. In-person screenings will take place at IFC Center, SVA Theatre and Village East by Angelika from November 13 to November 21. All of the festival’s movies will be available to view online to the general public from November 13 to December 1. Tickets are available on the official DOC NYC website.
For the fifth year in a row, DOC NYC is having competitions for U.S. documentaries, international documentaries and short films, among other categories. All competitive awards are voted for by appointed juries, except for the Audience Award.
DOC NYC’s annual Short List spotlights movies (features and shorts) that are considered top contenders to get Oscar nominations. This year, the Short List for features are “The Bibi Files,” “Black Box Diaries,” “Dahomey,” “Daughters,” “Ernest Cole: Lost and Found” “Frida,” “Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa,” “No Other Land,” “Queendom,” “The Remarkable Life of Ibelin,” “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat,” “Sugarcane,” “Union” and “Will & Harper.” The Short List: Features jury gives awards in the categories of Director, Producer, Editor and Cinematographer. The Short List: Shorts jury gives a Director Award.
For the fifth year in a row, the festival is presenting DOC NYC’s Winner’s Circle collection, which spotlights movies that have won awards at other film festivals, but might be underrated or overlooked for Oscar nominations. Winner’s Circle documentaries this year are “Hollywoodgate,” “A New Kind of Wildnerness,” “Nocturnes,” “The Last of the Sea Women,” “Patrice: The Movie,”
DOC NYC, which was co-founded by Thom Powers and Raphaela Neihausen, also has special events in addition to screenings. Even though most of the movies at DOC NYC have had their world premieres elsewhere, DOC NYC has several world premieres of its own. A complete program can be found here.
The following is a press release from the Critics Choice Association:
The Critics Choice Association (CCA) has announced the nominees for the Ninth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards (CCDA). The winners will be revealed at a gala event on Sunday, November 10, 2024 at The Edison Ballroom in Manhattan. The ceremony will be hosted by longtime event supporter and actor Erich Bergen.
Sugarcane leads the pack with eight nominations including in the category of Best Documentary Feature. The film’s other nominations are Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie for Best Director and Best New Documentary Filmmakers, Christopher LaMarca and Emily Kassie for Best Cinematography, Nathan Punwar and Maya Daisy Hawk for Best Editing, Best Historical Documentary, Best Political Documentary, and Best True Crime Documentary.
Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story, Daughters, and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story received six nominations each. The nominations for Billy & Molly are Best Documentary Feature, Charlie Hamilton James for Best New Documentary Filmmaker, Charlie Hamilton James, Johnny Rolt and Bertie Gregory for Best Cinematography, Erland Cooper for Best Score, Best Narration (Written by Charlie Hamilton James and Performed by Billy Mail and Susan Mail), and Best Science/Nature Documentary. The nominations for Daughters are Best Documentary Feature, Natalie Rae and Angela Patton for Best Director and for Best New Documentary Filmmakers, Michael Cambio Fernandez for Best Cinematography, Troy Lewis and Adelina Bichiș for Best Editing, and Kelsey Lu for Best Score. The nominations for Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story are Best Documentary Feature, Ian Bonhôte & Peter Ettedgui for Best Director, Otto Burnham for Best Editing, Ilan Eshkeri for Best Score, Best Archival Documentary, and Best Biographical Documentary.
Erich Bergen is best known for his groundbreaking performance as Blake Moran on the television show Madam Secretary, as well as his critically-acclaimed performance as Bob Gaudio in Jersey Boys, a role he performed on stage and reprised in Clint Eastwood’s film adaptation. Broadway audiences also know Erich from the hit musicals Waitress and Chicago, and he will be seen on Broadway again next year in Boop! The Musical. Other television credits include BULL, The Good Fight, Gossip Girl, and more. Erich is the creative force behind 6W Entertainment, a full-service production company that has produced over 250 projects for television and live events, including work with Clive Davis, President Barack Obama, John Legend, Cher, Anna Wintour, Michael Kors, and many more luminaries.
The Critics Choice Documentary Awards will be live-streamed through YouTube, X and Facebook.Viewing links will be available on the Critics Choice Association website at 7:00 PM ET on Sunday, November 10.
The Critics Choice Associationhonors the year’s finest achievements in documentaries released in theaters, on TV, and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of qualified CCA members. The ninth annual awards ceremony is produced by Bob Bain of Bob Bain Productions and Joey Berlin of Berlin Entertainment.
The Catalyst Sponsors for the event are Amazon MGM Studios, National Geographic Documentary Films, and Netflix.
At the Eighth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie took home five trophies including the top award of the evening, Best Documentary Feature. The film’s other victories were Best Director for Davis Guggenheim, Best Editing for Michael Harte, Best Narration for Michael J. Fox, and Best Biographical Documentary.
Nominees for the Ninth Annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (National Geographic) Daughters (Netflix) The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix) Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+) Music by John Williams (Walt Disney Studios) Piece by Piece (Focus Features) The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix) Sugarcane (National Geographic) Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films, CNN Films) Will & Harper (Netflix)
BEST DIRECTOR Ian Bonhôte & Peter Ettedgui – Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films, CNN Films) Josh Greenbaum – Will & Harper (Netflix) Ron Howard – Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+) Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie – Sugarcane (National Geographic) Natalie Rae & Angela Patton – Daughters (Netflix) Benjamin Ree – The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix)
BEST NEW DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKER(S) Brendan Bellomo & Slava Leontyev – Porcelain War (Picturehouse) Carla Gutiérrez – Frida (Amazon MGM Studios) Charlie Hamilton James – Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (National Geographic) Sue Kim – The Last of the Sea Women (Apple TV+) Julian Brave NoiseCat & Emily Kassie – Sugarcane (National Geographic) Natalie Rae & Angela Patton – Daughters (Netflix)
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Michael Cambio Fernandez – Daughters (Netflix) Charlie Hamilton James, Johnny Rolt, Bertie Gregory – Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (National Geographic) Christopher LaMarca, Emily Kassie – Sugarcane (National Geographic) Iris Ng, Eunsoo Cho, Justin Turkowski – The Last of the Sea Women (Apple TV+) Zoë White – Will & Harper (Netflix) Jessica Young – The Blue Angels (Amazon MGM Studios)
BEST EDITING Otto Burnham – Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films, CNN Films) Rik Chaubet – Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Kino Lorber) Paul Crowder – Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+) Troy Lewis, Adelina Bichiș – Daughters (Netflix) Nathan Punwar, Maya Daisy Hawke – Sugarcane (National Geographic) Robert Stengård – The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix)
BEST SCORE Erland Cooper – Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (National Geographic) Ilan Eshkeri – Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films, CNN Films) Nathan Halpern – Will & Harper (Netflix) Uno Helmersson – The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix) Kelsey Lu – Daughters (Netflix) Marc Shaiman – Albert Brooks: Defending My Life (HBO | Max)
BEST NARRATION Bad River (50 Eggs Films) Written by Mary Mazzio Performed by Quannah ChasingHorse & Edward Norton
Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (National Geographic) Written by Charlie Hamilton James Performed by Billy Mail & Susan Mail
Dahomey (Mubi) Written by Makenzy Orcel Performed by Lucrece Houegbelo, Parfait Viayinon, Didier Sedoha Nassegande, and Sabine Badjogoumin
Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (Cohen Media Group) Written and performed by Martin Scorsese
Queens (National Geographic) Written by Chloë Sarosh Performed by Angela Bassett
Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces (Apple TV+) Written and performed by Steve Martin
BEST ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTARY Black Twitter: A People’s History (Hulu/Onyx Collective) The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix) Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+) Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (Cohen Media Group) Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Kino Lorber) Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films, CNN Films)
BEST HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARY Bad River (50 Eggs Films) Dahomey (Mubi) The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix) Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (Cohen Media Group) Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Kino Lorber) Sugarcane (National Geographic)
BEST BIOGRAPHICAL DOCUMENTARY Frida (Amazon MGM Studios) I Am: Celine Dion (Amazon MGM Studios) Jim Henson Idea Man (Disney+) The Remarkable Life of Ibelin (Netflix) Steve! (Martin) A Documentary in 2 Pieces (Apple TV+) Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (Warner Bros. Pictures, DC Studios, HBO Documentary Films, CNN Films)
BEST MUSIC DOCUMENTARY The Greatest Night in Pop (Netflix) I Am: Celine Dion (Amazon MGM Studios) Music by John Williams (Walt Disney Studios) Piece by Piece (Focus Features) Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band (Hulu) Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (Kino Lorber)
BEST POLITICAL DOCUMENTARY Bad River (50 Eggs Films) Girls State (Apple TV+) Porcelain War (Picturehouse) Stopping the Steal (HBO | Max) Sugarcane (National Geographic) The Truth vs. Alex Jones (HBO | Max)
BEST SCIENCE/NATURE DOCUMENTARY Apollo 13: Survival (Netflix) Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story (National Geographic) Blink (National Geographic) The Last of the Sea Women (Apple TV+) Secrets of the Octopus (National Geographic) The Space Race (National Geographic)
BEST SPORTS DOCUMENTARY Copa 71 (New Black Films) The Dynasty: New England Patriots (Apple TV+) Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa (Netflix) Mr. McMahon (Netflix) Simone Biles Rising (Netflix) The Turnaround (Netflix)
BEST TRUE CRIME DOCUMENTARY American Nightmare (Netflix) Black Box Diaries (MTV Documentary Films/Paramount+) Incident (The New Yorker) The Jinx – Part Two (HBO | Max) Stopping the Steal (HBO | Max) Sugarcane (National Geographic)
BEST SHORT DOCUMENTARY I Am Ready, Warden (MTV Documentary Films/Paramount+) Incident (The New Yorker) Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World (Netflix) Once Upon a Time in Ukraine (Earle Mack Productions, Storyville Films, Goldcrest Films) The Only Girl in the Orchestra (Netflix) The Turnaround (Netflix)
BEST LIMITED DOCUMENTARY SERIES America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (Netflix) Black Twitter: A People’s History (Hulu/Onyx Collective) Mr. McMahon (Netflix) Ren Faire (HBO | Max) Secrets of the Octopus (National Geographic) Simone Biles Rising (Netflix)
BEST ONGOING DOCUMENTARY SERIES 30 for 30 (ESPN) America’s Most Wanted (Fox Broadcasting Company) The Food That Built America (History) Independent Lens (PBS) The Jinx – Part Two (HBO | Max) POV (PBS)
The Critics Choice Association recognizes the year’s finest achievements in documentaries released in theaters, on TV and on major digital platforms, as determined by the voting of qualified CCA members.
About the Critics Choice Awards The Critics Choice Documentary Awards are an offshoot of the Critics Choice Awards, which are bestowed annually by the CCA to honor the finest in cinematic and television achievement. Historically, the Critics Choice Awards are the most accurate predictor of Academy Award nominations.
The 30th annual Critics Choice Awards ceremony will be held on January 12, 2025 at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, CA, hosted by Chelsea Handler. It will air live on E! and will be available the next day on Peacock.
About the Critics Choice Association (CCA) The Critics Choice Association is the largest critics organization in the United States and Canada, representing more than 600 media critics and entertainment journalists. It was established in 2019 with the formal merger of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, recognizing the intersection between film, television, and streaming content. For more information, visit: CriticsChoice.com.
The 19th annual New York Comic Con takes place October 17 to October 20, 2024, in New York City. In 2023, New York Comic Con was affected by strikes by the the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and the Writers Guild of America. The striking actors and actresses in attedance either did autograph or photo sessions, or they if they did panel/Q&A discussions, they had to limit the topics to things that didn’t promote work owned or produced by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers companies that they were striking against.
In 2022, New York Comic Con returned to being an in-person-only event, after being a hybrid event (where people could attend in person or virtually) in 2021. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Comic Con was cancelled as an in-person event in 2020, and instead presented as a scaled-down virtual-only event. Before the pandemic, New York Comic Con attracted about 250,000 people per year since 2017, according to ReedPOP, the company that produces the event. The first New York Comic Con took place in 2006.
In 2024, New York Comic Con’s main hub remains the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. New this year, according to a ReedPOP press release: A lineup of professional programming will take place on October 16. The press release says: “This marks the first year that ReedPop will be extending its content into Wednesday, just ahead of opening day for the convention … On Wednesday, October 16 from 12 p.m. to 9 p.m., comic book retailers, industry professionals, and sponsors of NYCC will be able to participate in a closed event full of panels, interactive programming, free swag, and private signings in the Javits Center’s River Pavilion before NYCC fully opens on Thursday, October 17. Programming will be offered by ComicsPro, Lunar, Tiny Onion, and more, covering a wide range of topics including ‘Get Your Shop on the News: PR Basics,’ ‘Working With Schools and Libraries,’ and ‘Speed Networking with Comic Book Retailers.'”
TV shows continue to dominate the most high-profile panels and activities. New York Comic Con in 2024 has the following TV shows with panel showcases in the event’s largest rooms: On October 17, HBO will have separate panels for the supervillain drama “The Penguin” and the sci-fi/fantasy series “Dune Prophecy.” On October 20, HBO’s “House of the Dragon” stars Matt Smith, Fabien Frankel and Tom Glynn-Carney sit down for a Q&A discussion. Meanwhile, the AMC series “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches” has a panel on October 17.
Fans of series about detectives and crimes have several options. On October 18, Prime Video will have a panel for the detective drama “Cross.” On October 20, NBC’s serial killer drama “Hannibal” gets the spotlight for a panel. Also on October 20, is a panel for CBS’s attorney comedy/drama “Elsbeth.”
Animation enthusiasts can look forward to Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” 25th Anniversary Celebration panel on October 18, the same day that Toei Animation’s “One Piece” panel will take place. On October 17, there will be panel for “Dragon Ball: DAIMA” and a panel for Adult Swim’s “Rick and Morty.” Hulu’s “Futurama” has a panel on October 19. Also on October 19, there will be a panel for “Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War.” Fox is offering panels for “The Simpsons” (on October 19) and “Grimsburg” (on October 20). Also on October 20: Max’s animated series “Creature Commandos” has a panel.
Starz’s “Outlander,” a longtime popular attraction at New York Comic Con, returns for a panel discussion on October 17. AMC’s “The Walking Dead” Universe, another longtime fan fave at New York Comic Con, will showcase “The Walking Dead: Dead City” and “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol” for a panel taking place on October 18. “Star Trek” Universe series on Paramount+ will once again get a spotlight at New York Comic Con, with a panel discussion on October 19. “Goosebumps: The Vanishing” the TV series version of R. L. Stine’s book series gets a spotlight with a panel on October 20.
For people who like comedy series, New York Comic Con has some panels to offer. Apple TV+’s psychiatric sitcom “Shrinking” gets a spotlight on October 17. FX’s vampire comedy series “What We Do in the Shadows” has a panel October 18. CBS’s “Ghosts” is being showcased for a panel on October 19.
MOVIES
Most of the feature films that have panels at New York Comic Con this year are animated films, action films and horror movies. On October 18, sneak preview footage will be shown during a session for Sony Pictures’ “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Karate Kid: Legends” and “Kraven the Hunter.” Netflix’s sci-fi/action film “The Electric State” gets a showcase an October 17 panel. On October 18, prolific horror movie/TV producer Jason Blum will talk about his current and upcoming movies for his BlumFest panel, including “Wolf Man,” “Drop,” “The Woman in the Yard” and “M3GAN 2.0.”
Animated films with panels include “Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League” and “Batman Azteca: Choque De Imperios” (“Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires”) sharing a panel on October 17. Also on October 17: New Line Cinema’s “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” gets its own panel.
OTHER PROGAMMING
The 2024 Harvey Awards Hall of Fame ceremony will be take place during New York Comic Con for a virtual screening on October 18. The recipients are Akira Toriyama, Arthur Adams, Larry Hama, Sergio Aragonés and John Buscema.
And, of course, there will be plenty of panels, exhibits and previews for comic books, video games, podcasts, fantasy novels and other pop-culture attractions.
New York Comic Con also offers specialty areas for attendees with specific identity needs. Returning after its 2022 debut is the Pride Lounge (located in Room 1C01-02), for people with LGBTQ interests, with some LGBTQ-themed discussion panels and guest appearances. Family HQ (in Room 1E03-05) is a family-friendly environment, with an emphasis on activities for pre-teen children. In addition, there are spaces for gamers in the Side Quest rooms offering a variety of gaming options. Interactive activities (such as dance lessons and Jedi light saber training) are located in the River Pavilion. Professional Programming (for industry professionals) will also take place in the River Pavilion.
It wouldn’t be a Comic Con without cosplaying and merchandise sales. The Cosplay Central area returns to the River Pavilion at the Javits Center. While at Cosplay Central, cosplayers can mingle, pose for photos, use the dressing rooms and attend panel discussions. The New York Comic Con finalist round for the Cosplay Central Costume Showcase will take place on October 20 at the Main Stage. New York Comic Con also has an enormous amount of merchandise for sale for numerous types of entertainment.
AUTOGRAPH SESSIONS AND PHOTO OPS
Several stars from movies and TV shows will have individual autograph sessions and/or photo opportunities with fans, for a fee. Prices will vary, according to the celebrity. Participants include:
Hayley Atwell (“Agent Carter,” ” Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs only.)
Paul Bettany (Marvel Cinematic Universe) on October 18 and October 19. (Autographs only.)
Orlando Bloom (“The Lord of the Rings” movies, “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies) on October 19 and October 20. (Autographs only.)
John Boyega (“Star Wars” movies, “Pacific Rim”) on October 18 and October 19. (Autographs only.)
Josh Brolin (Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Dune” movies) on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs and photos.)
Walton Goggins (“Fallout,” “Justified”) on October 18. (Autographs only.)
Kyle MacLachlan (“Twin Peaks,” “Dune”) on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs and photos.)
Mads Mikkelsen (“Doctor Strange,” “Hannibal”) on October 19 and October 20. (Autographs and photos.)
Elizabeth Olsen (Marvel Cinematic Universe, “Godzilla”) on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs only.)
Ella Purnell (“Fallout,” Arcane,” “Yellowjackets”) on October 18. (Autographs and photos.)
Jack Quaid (“The Boys,” “Star Trek: Lower Decks”) on October 17. (Autographs and photos.)
Denise Richards (“Starship Troopers,” “Wild Things”) on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs only.)
Andy Serkis (“The Lord of the Rings” movies, “Planet of the Apes” movies) on October 19 and October 20. (Autographs only.)
Kevin Smith (“Clerks,” “Mallrats”) on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs and photos.)
Matt Smith (“House of the Dragon,” “Doctor Who”) on October 19 and October 20. (Autographs and photos.)
Marisa Tomei (“Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “My Cousin Vinny”) on October 19. (Autographs and photos.)
Casper Van Dien (“Starship Troopers,” “Sleepy Hollow”) on October 17 and October 18. (Autographs only.)
TELEVISION AND WEB SERIES PANELS
(All panel descriptions are courtesy of New York Comic Con.)
“The Penguin”
October 17, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM
Main Stage
Join cast and creatives for a mid-season discussion and extended sneak peek of episode five of HBO’s original limited series “The Penguin” from Warner Bros. Television and DC Studios. Panelists include Colin Farrell (Oz Cobb aka “The Penguin” and Executive Producer), Cristin Milioti (Sofia Falcone), Rhenzy Feliz (Victor Aguilar), Deirdre O’Connell (Francis Cobb), Michael Kelly (Johnny Viti), Clancy Brown (Sal Maroni), Lauren LeFranc (Showrunner and Executive Producer) and Mike Marino (Prosthetic Makeup Designer).
“Shrinking”
October 17, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM
Main Stage
Apple’s acclaimed, hit comedy “Shrinking” follows a grieving therapist who starts to break the rules and tell his clients exactly what he thinks. Ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making huge, tumultuous changes to people’s lives … including his own. Join us for an exclusive panel with some of the brilliant minds behind the camera and the ensemble cast who make the Apple TV+ fan-favorite series so beloved. Panelists will include Emmy-Award winner, co-creator and executive Producer Brett Goldstein, executive producer, co-creator and star Jason Segel, as well as Emmy-Award nominee Christa Miller, Emmy-Award nominee Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Michael Urie, Lukita Maxwell and Ted McGinley. “Shrinking” season two will premiere globally with the first two episodes on Wednesday, October 16.
“Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches”
October 17, 2024, 12:45 PM – 2 PM
Main Stage
An advance screening of the season two premiere episode of “Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches,” followed by a panel with the cast and executive producers to discuss the highly-anticipated new season ahead of its return on AMC and AMC+ early next year.
“Dragon Ball: DAIMA”
October 17, 2024, 12:45 PM – 2:15 PM
Empire Stage
After the reveal at NYCC last year, the all-new original anime series “Dragon Ball: DAIMA” is kicking off this October! To celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Dragon Ball”, we will share the details of the creation behind this wonderous new world. Joined by Akio Iyoku (Executive Producer of Dragon Ball series), we’re also welcoming Monica Rial, English voice actor of Bulma as our host and other special guests. Attendees will be able to see the first episode.
“Dune: Prophecy”
October 17, 2024, 3 PM – 4 PM
Empire Stage
The first-ever panel discussion for the highly anticipated HBO Original drama series “Dune: Prophecy” co-produced with Legendary Television, will include showrunner and executive producer Alison Schapker, executive producer Jordan Goldberg, and cast members Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Travis Fimmel, Sarah-Sofie Boussnina, Josh Heuston, Chloe Lea and Jessica Barden. From the expansive universe of “Dune,” created by acclaimed author Frank Herbert, and 10,000 years before the ascension of Paul Atreides, “Dune: Prophecy” follows two Harkonnen sisters as they combat forces that threaten the future of humankind and establish the fabled sect that will become known as the Bene Gesserit.
“Outlander”
October 17, 2024, 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Empire Stage
When we last left Jamie and Claire Fraser, they had just returned home to Scotland for the first time in years, momentarily escaping the perils of the American Revolution and excited to reunite with the loved ones they’d left behind. But they soon learn not everything has stayed the same in their absence. After all, home is where the heart is but it’s also the place where it can be broken.
Jumping Jellyfish! Grab a spatula and get ready to celebrate 25 years of one of the most popular characters and beloved animated series of all time – SpongeBob SquarePants. Join the legendary voice cast and producers as they pay tribute to the popular origins and reveal what’s happening next in Bikini Bottom. It’s going to be F.U.N.
“One Piece”
October 18, 2024, 12:45 PM – 1:45 PM
Empire Stage
Join the legendary anime studio Toei Animation, as they invite the team behind the hit series One Piece to discuss the animation and behind the scenes of the series. Joining the discussion, Colleen Clinkenbeard (English Voice Actor of Luffy) and Christopher Sabat (English Voice Actor of Zoro).
“Cross”
October 18, 2024, 4:15 PM – 5:15 PM
Main Stage
Prime Video’s “Cross,” based upon the characters from James Patterson’s iconic bestselling book series, stars Aldis Hodge in the titular role as decorated D.C. homicide detective and forensic psychologist, Alex Cross. Join Hodge, Isaiah Mustafa, Alona Tal, Samantha Walkes, Ryan Eggold, and executive producer/showrunner Ben Watkins, as they tease the mystery thriller. In it, Alex Cross faces a sadistic serial killer and deals with a mysterious threat from his past that aims to destroy his grieving family, career, and his life. Prepare your questions and get ready to meet the stars of this exciting new series!
“What We Do in the Shadows”
October 18, 2024, 4:45 PM – 6:15 PM
Empire Stage
FX’s Emmy®-nominated vampire comedy “What We Do in the Shadows” returns to New York Comic Con by popular demand! Join America’s favorite vampire roommates as they continue their farewell tour with an unforgettable LIVE discussion with the cast and creative team and be among the first to see the first two episodes from the sixth and final season. What We Do in the Shadows is a documentary-style look into the daily (or rather, nightly) lives of vampires who’ve “lived” together for hundreds of years. Season six premieres October 21 at 10pm ET/PT on FX and streams the next day on Hulu. Raise your fangs as the Staten Island vampires take the stage in New Yawk Citay one last time!
“The Walking Dead: Dead City” and “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol”
October 18, 2024, 6 PM – 8 PM
Main Stage
First, the cast and executive producers of “The Walking Dead: Dead City” discuss the highly-anticipated upcoming season ahead of its return on AMC and AMC+ next year. Then, the cast and executive producers of “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol” discuss what’s to come for the rest of the currently airing season.
“The Simpsons”
October 19, 2024, 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Main Stage
The Simpsons are coming to New York City! America’s Favorite Family will be visiting New York Comic Con, bringing their unique, subversive, 35-year-old brand of humor to the Big Apple for the first time! The show’s producers, actors, special guests — as well as series creator Matt Groening himself — will share never-before-told stories, show never-before-seen exclusive clips, and give away never-before-given-away prizes! This is it, New York fans, you’ve been choo-choo-chosen to experience the live Simpsons panel thrills that up until now only have only been enjoyed by fans at San Diego Comic Con! It’s unpossible! It’s embiggened! It’s The Simpsons in New York!
“Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Conflict”
October 19, 2024, 12:45 AM – 1:45 PM
Empire Stage
Prepare for the Clash of the Quincies and celebrate the launch of “Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – The Conflict” with iconic voice actors Masakazu Morita (voice of Ichigo Kurosaki) and Noriaki Sugiyama (voice of Uryu Ishida), presented by VIZ Media! Don’t miss out on exclusive sneak peek content, conversation with the voice actors, and exciting live voice acting from our guests!
“Star Trek Universe”
October 19, 2024, 2:30 AM – 4 PM
Empire Stage
The fan-favorite Star Trek universe panel returns to New York Comic Con, featuring exclusive sneak peeks and conversations with cast members and producers from “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” “Star Trek: Section 31” and more. Plus, more exciting reveals and surprises for fans in attendance that you won’t want to miss!
“Creature Commandos”
October 19, 2024, 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Empire Stage
Featuring can’t-miss sneak peeks from the first title kicking off the new DC Universe, join the cast and creators for an exclusive discussion about the Max Original adult animated series “Creature Commandos,” from DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation. Panelists include James Gunn (DC Studios Co-Chair and CEO; Executive Producer and Writer), Dean Lorey (Executive Producer), Frank Grillo (Rick Flag Sr.), David Harbour (Frankenstein), Zoë Chao (Nina Mazursky), Steve Agee (Economos), Maria Bakalova (Princess Ilana), Alan Tudyk (Dr. Phosphorus) and Sean Gunn (GI Robot and Weasel). Moderated by Josh Horowitz (Host, Happy Sad Confused podcast).
“Ghosts”
October 19, 2024, 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Main Stage
“Ghosts,” one of television’s top comedies on CBS and Paramount+, follows Samantha and Jay, a couple running a bed and breakfast inhabited by ghosts that only Samantha can see and hear. Please join series stars Rose McIver, Brandon Scott Jones, Asher Grodman and Sheila Carrasco for an advanced episode screening followed by a lively and spirited panel conversation moderated by Tony Dokoupil (CBS Mornings) discussing what’s ahead in season four.
“A Conversation with Matt Smith, Fabien Frankel and Tom Glynn-Carney”
October 20, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM
Empire Stage
Join “House of the Dragon” stars Matt Smith (Daemon Targaryen), Fabian Frankel (Criston Cole), and Tom Glynn-Carney (Aegon II Targaryen) at New York Comic Con for a Season 2 retrospective! Sitting down with moderator Josh Horowitz of Happy Sad Confused, the cast will share behind-the-scenes stories, reflect on the season’s key moments, and answer fan questions about the Targaryen drama. Don’t miss this chance to hear from the stars of HBO’s epic series as they dive deep into the world of Westeros!
“Futurama”
October 20, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM
Main Stage
Sci-fi-comedy classic “Futurama” has exploded back into existence! With new seasons now streaming on HULU, the heroic Planet Express crew is infinitely less canceled than usual. Please join creator Matt Groening and Futurama cast and crew LIVE for sneak peeks and spoilers lovingly smuggled back from the year 3024. If you’re only going to see two panels this year, see this one twice!
“Hannibal”
October 20, 2024, 12:45 PM – 1:45 PM
Empire Stage
Prepare yourself for a deep dive into the chilling world of “Hannibal” with an exclusive panel featuring two of the show’s most captivating stars, Mads Mikkelsen (Dr. Hannibal Lecter) and Hugh Dancy (Will Graham.) Join us for a riveting discussion as Mads and Hugh share their experiences working on the critically acclaimed series. From the intense psychological drama to the art of crafting memorable performances, get the inside scoop on what it took to bring these iconic characters to the screen. Expect an engaging conversation about the series’ unique blend of horror and intrigue, behind-the-scenes stories, and perhaps even some insights into the creative decisions that shaped the show’s unforgettable moments. This is a must-attend event for fans (and Fannibals!) eager to learn more about the dark allure of Hannibal and the actors who made it a truly unforgettable experience.
“Grimsburg”
October 20, 2024, 12:45 PM – 1:45 PM
Main Stage
Grimsburg centers on Marvin Flute (Emmy winner Jon Hamm, who also executive produces the series), who may be the greatest detective ever to catch a cannibal clown and correctly identify a mid-century modern armoire. But there’s one mystery he still can’t crack — himself. To do that he must return to Grimsburg, a town where everyone has a secret or three, and redeem himself in the eyes of his fellow detectives, his ferocious ex-wife and his lovably unstable son. Join panelists Jon Hamm, Alan Tudyk, showrunner Chadd Gindin and more for a behind-the-scenes look at Season Two of Grimsburg, followed by a Q&A. The panel will be moderated by Michael Schneider (Variety).
“Goosebumps: The Vanishing”
October 20, 2024, 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM
Main Stage
Join the cast and creative team behind the highly-anticipated new season of the Disney+ and Hulu anthology series “Goosebumps: The Vanishing,” based upon R.L Stine’s worldwide bestselling book series, as they share a never-before-seen sneak peek and discuss the new mysteries to come. Panelists include (subject-to-change): cast members David Schwimmer, Ana Ortiz, Sam McCarthy, Jayden Bartels, Elijah Cooper, Galilea La Salvia, Francesca Noel, and Stony Blyden; as well as executive producers Hilary Winston and Rob Letterman.
MOVIE PANELS
(All panel descriptions are courtesy of New York Comic Con.)
“Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League” and “Batman Azteca: Choque De Imperios” (“Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires”)
October 17, 2024, 3 PM – 4 PM
Main Stage
An exclusive look at two upcoming animated Batman movies – “Batman Ninja vs. Yakuza League” and “Batman Azteca: Choque De Imperios” (“Aztec Batman: Clash of Empires”)”. Join creative team members of each film as they share footage and discuss the process of crafting original Batman stories through the lense of each region’s unique stories, mythologies, and culture.
“The Electric State”
October 17, 2024, 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM
Empire Stage
Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt join filmmakers Anthony and Joe Russo for a first look at the epic, heartfelt action-adventure “The Electric State.” Set in a retro-futuristic past, the Netflix and AGBO-produced film follows an orphaned teenager (Brown) who traverses the American West with a sweet but mysterious robot and an eccentric drifter (Pratt) in search of her younger brother.
“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim”
October 18, 2024, 11 AM – 12 PM
Main Stage
Return to Middle-earth for an all-new tale in “The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.” The Warner Bros. Pictures presentation at NYCC will explore the first-ever feature length animated film—rendered in beautiful anime—through a robust conversation with filmmakers and voice talent, moderated by Stephen Colbert.
“Blumfest NYCC”
October 18, 2023, 2:30 PM – 4 PM
Empire Stage
BlumFest – the annual October celebration of all things Blumhouse – makes its much-anticipated return to NYCC with its biggest slate of movies ever. Jason Blum, the visionary producer behind some of the most electrifying films in modern horror, reveals plans for Blumhouse’s 15th anniversary in 2025 and it’s going to be BIG. Be the first to see the world premiere of the trailer for “Wolf Man,” directed by Leigh Whannell, chilling first-look footage from Christopher Landon’s “Drop,” Jaume Collet-Serra’s “The Woman in the Yard,” a look at the highly-anticipated “M3GAN 2.0” and many other surprises you won’t want to miss.
Sony Pictures Panel and Footage
October 18, 2023, 7 PM – 8 PM
Empire Stage
Sony Pictures will host a panel with special guests and showcase new footage from “Venom: The Last Dance,” “Karate Kid: Legends” and “Kraven: The Hunter” all soon to be released exclusively in movie theaters. Please be advised that materials shown at this presentation are intended for mature audiences.
Culture Representation: Taking place in 2018 in New York City and in Las Vegas, the comedy/drama film “Anora” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A 23-year-old sex worker/stripper thinks she’s hit the jackpot when she marries a 21-year-old customer, who is the son of a billionaire Russian mogul, but her dream turns into nightmare when her new husband’s family pressures her to annul the marriage.
Culture Audience: “Anora” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of filmmaker Sean Baker, star Mikey Madison, and movies that tell sordid stories from a sex worker’s perspective.
“Anora” takes viewers on a frenetic and wild ride that goes on for a little too long as it zig zags to an inevitable outcome in this story about a sex worker and a Russian heir who have a quickie marriage. This foul-mouthed movie’s best asset is the acting. There’s really not much to the comedy/drama plot, which is stretched nearly to the breaking point during the movie’s 138-minute runtime.
Written and directed by Sean Baker, “Anora” is another movie in Baker’s filmography about people (usually sex workers) who live in the margins of society and are financially struggling or struggling to make a lot more money than they are now. Baker’s movies are filled with people shouting, cursing, getting naked, hustling, lying, and doing drugs. The characters in his movies are presented in a way that is not judgmental or exploitative but as a way to show how people like this live with a combination of self-absorbed survival skills and a yearning for some type of human connection underneath their “tough” exteriors.
“Anora” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or (the festival’s top prize), the equivalent of Best Picture for the festival. “Anora” has also made the rounds at other major festivals, including the Telluride Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Unlike other movies that have previously won the Palme d’Or, “Anora” isn’t particularly innovative, and the movie’s story is quite predictable. But for viewers who can tolerate some of the repetitive nature of the story, “Anora” is worth watching for the principal cast members’ captivating performances, particularly from Mikey Madison, who portrays the movie’s title character.
The movie (which takes place over a few weeks in 2018) begins with a scene in New York City, where much of “Anora” was filmed on location. A 23-year-old Russian American named Anora (played by Madison), who prefers to be called Ani (pronounced Annie), is shown working at her job at a dark and seedy strip club that tries to look more upscale than it really is. Ani, who does topless dancing, is a pro at flirting with customers and is very skilled at convincing many of them to spend more money on her by going in the back room for lap dances. Most of her customers are men who are in their 30s, 40s and 50s.
But one night, a 21-year-old Russian immigrant named Ivan “Vanya” Zakharov (played by Mark Eydelshteyn) goes to the club with his best friend Tom (played by Anton Bitter), who is also Russian and about the same age. Ani immediately catches the eye of Vanya, who doesn’t speak English very well. Ani happens to be fluent in Russian because, as she tells Vanya, she had a Russian grandmother who never learned English.
It doesn’t take long for Vanya to invite Ani to party with him the next day at the Brooklyn waterfront home where he lives by himself. She eagerly accepts his invitation. When Ani goes to this home, she is in awe when she sees that Vanya must be very affluent to live in this sleek and luxurious house.
At first, Vanya plays games with Ani when she asks him how he could afford this place. He lies to her and says he’s a drug dealer. And then he says he’s an arms dealer. Finally, he tells her the truth: His father is a famous Russian billionaire named Nikolai Zakharov (played by Aleksey Serebryakov), and Vanya has been in the United States as a university student.
Vanya has recently dropped out of school, so he is under orders by his father to return soon to Russia to start working in the family business. Ani knows exactly why she was invited to party with Vanya. He tells her he wants to have sex with her. They negotiate the price that he will pay her. They smoke some marijuana and get down to business.
Vanya is 21 years old, but he’s immature and acts more like someone who’s about 16 or 17 years old. He has a teenager’s fascination with playing video games. He’s impulsive and irresponsible. He’s also very sexually inexperienced. (Ani sometimes tries not to laugh at how quickly Vanya finishes during sex.) But Vanya becomes immediately infatuated with Ani, who teaches him how to improve his sexual performance.
Vanya invites Ani back to his place for a big party the following night. Ani brings along her best friend from work: another sex worker named Lulu (played by Luna Sofia Miranda), who’s about the same age as Ani. Vanya introduces Ani and Lulu to some more of his partier friends, who have already heard that Ani is a paid escort.
Vanya and Ani continue to have sex with each other, get drunk and stoned (on marijuana and cocaine), and hang out and goof around together with their friends on Coney Island. By the time Vanya and Ani have had a few sexual encounters, he tells her that he will pay her to be his “horny girlfriend” for a week. After they negotiate on a price ($15,000), Vanya admits he would’ve paid up to $35,000 if Ani had asked.
And so begins a binge of sex and partying, fueled by alcohol and drugs, that leads Vanya and Ani to go to Las Vegas and live like visiting high rollers. Vanya surprises Ani by proposing marriage to her. She thinks he’s joking at first, but he’s not. She gleefully accepts his proposal. Ani and Vanya then quickly elope (without a prenuptial agreement) at a small wedding chapel in Las Vegas.
Now that she’s married to the heir of a billionaire fortune, Ani quits her job at the strip club, where her co-worker rival Diamond (played by Lindsey Normington) is very jealous and declares that the marriage won’t last long. Ani doesn’t want to listen and essentially struts out of the club like someone who has won the lottery. Ani also makes plans to move out of her rented apartment as she envisions a life of being a pampered and jetsetting wife of a billionaire.
You know where all of this is going, of course. When Vanya’s family members in Russia find out that he has married an American sex worker, they immediately set out to get the marriage annulled. An aggressive Armenian thug named Garnik (played by Vache Tovmasyan) and his more mild-mannered sidekick Igor (played by Yura Borisov) have been dispatched to track down Ani and Vanya and end the marriage.
Garnik and Igor report to a “fixer” named Toros (played by Karren Karagulian), who reports directly to Vanya’s father Nikolai. Vanya seems to be afraid of Nikolai. But when Vanya’s mother Galina Zakharov (played by Darya Ekamasova) gets involved, it’s easy to see who is the more ruthless parent.
“Anora” has a lot of expected hijinks and mishaps, as Ani and Vanya (who gets intoxicated to the point of being incoherent and barely conscious) encounter the people who want to end the marriage. The marketing materials for “Anora” have described this movie as a “love story.” But make no mistake: This is a gold digger story. “Anora” fails to convince any viewer with enough life experience that what Ani and Vanya have is more than drug-fueled lust. And in Ani’s case, that lust includes lust for money.
“Anora” gets a little bit ridiculous with some of the sitcom-like scenarios in the last third of the movie. However contrived these scenarios are, the talented cast members make their characters’ personalities convincing enough to maintain viewer interest. “Anora” invites viewers to question if Ani really is capable of having lasting love if there isn’t some transactional financial benefit for her and if she isn’t offering herself for sale as a sexual plaything. The impact of the movie is when Ani begins to understand that she herself doesn’t know the answer to that question.
Neon will release “Anora” in select U.S. cinemas on October 18, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state, the dramatic film “The Room Next Door” (based on Sigrid Nunez’s novel “What Are You Going Through”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Latin people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A woman with cervical cancer reconnects with a close friend and enlists her to go on a monthlong retreat, where the cancer patient plans to kill herself and wants her friend to keep this plan a secret.
Culture Audience: “The Room Next Door” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar; stars Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton; and well-made movies about human euthanasia.
“The Room Next Door” raises thought-provoking issues about euthanasia for terminally ill people who want to choose when they will die. This well-acted, gorgeously filmed drama also has a lot to say about friendships and loyalty. “The Room Next Door” might inspire debates about these issues, but there’s no question that the movie is a compelling story about what could happen in real life under the circumstances portrayed in the film.
Written and directed by Oscar-winning Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, “The Room Next Door” is his first English-language movie. Almodóvar adapted “The Room Next Door” screenplay from Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel “What Are You Going Through.” “The Room Next Door” had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival, where it won the Golden Lion (top prize), which is the festival’s equivalent of Best Picture. “The Room Next Door” subsequently had its North American premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2024 New York Film Festival.
“The Room Next Door” begins in New York City, by showing a successful author named Ingrid (played by Julianne Moore), who is signing autographs of her most recent book at a personal appearance event. Although she was only obligated to be there for one hour, and that hour has passed, Ingrid says she will stay until all the people who are waiting in line will get their books autographed. It’s the first sign that Ingrid is a caring and compassionate person.
Ingrid’s latest non-fiction book is about how people should try to live their best lives for as long as possible. Ingrid openly says that she has a fear of dying. She views death as inevitable but a negative and sad part of existence. One of the people waiting in line to get her book autographed is a friend she hasn’t seen a while named Stella (played by Sarah Demeestere), who lives in the Boston area. Stella tells Ingrid some surprising news: Their mutual friend Martha (played by Tilda Swinton), a retired journalist, has cancer.
Ingrid and Martha haven’t seen or spoken to each other for years because they simply drifted apart. But this news about Martha’s health has prompted Ingrid to get in touch with Martha, who also lives in New York City. Ingrid visits Martha at the hospital where Martha is getting medical treatments.
They catch up on what’s been going on in their lives since they previously saw each other. Martha tells Ingrid that she has Stage 3 cervical cancer. “I swing between euphoria and depression,” Martha says of her state of mind. “Survival feels almost disappointing.”
Through conversations in the movie, it’s revealed that Martha and Ingrid used to work together in the 1980s at Paper magazine, during the “party girl” phases of their lives. Ingrid and Martha were lovers for period of time. Their sexual relationship didn’t last, but they remained close friends. Ingrid lived for several years in Paris but has been living in New York City in more recent years.
During the 1980s, Martha and Ingrid also dated writer Damian Cunningham (played by John Turturro) at different times. However, their dating relationships with Damian didn’t last either. Damian is also now a well-known author who is still a trusted friend of Ingrid.
Ingrid and Martha are both bachelorettes who don’t have a special love in their lives. Ingrid does not have children. Martha has one child: a daughter named Michelle, who was born from a short-lived fling that Martha had with a schoolmate named Fred, who was in his late teens when Martha was also a teenager. Martha and Fred started dating each other shortly before he went off to serve in the military in the Vietnam War, not long before the war ended in 1975.
For years, Martha lied to Michelle by saying that she didn’t know who Michelle’s father was. It was only after Michelle became an adult that Michelle found out the truth. According to Martha, after Fred came back from the Vietnam War, he was a different person and had issues with his mental health. Fred knew about Michelle, but he wasn’t involved with raising Michelle and stayed out of her life after he and Martha ended their relationship. Fred then got married to another woman and died in his 20s, when he rushed into a burning house to save what he thought were people who need rescuing. (This scene is shown as a flashback in the movie.)
The relationship between Martha and Michelle has also been strained because, by Martha’s own admission, Martha made her career a priority over being a parent. Martha worked for years as a war journalist. This demanding work schedule meant that she often had to travel and be away from home. Martha admits that Michelle still has a lot of resentment toward Martha because of Martha being a frequently absent parent.
Martha and Ingrid are opposites in many ways. Ingrid is nurturing, sincere and open with her feelings. Martha can be prickly, dishonest and emotionally guarded. They also have very different views about death. Martha doesn’t want pity but she wants to choose how and when she will die and has meticulously planned it. Ingrid believes that people should try to live as long as they can and try to avoid death for as long as possible.
Martha tells Ingrid that she wants Ingrid’s help with a big secret: Martha has rented a luxury vacation home for a month in New York state. (Most of “The Room Next Door” was actually filmed in Spain.) Martha bought a euthanasia pill on the black market and plans to take this pill on a day that only Martha will know. Martha asks Ingrid to accompany her on this trip for support and as a last goodbye. Martha insists to Ingrid that Ingrid can’t tell anyone else about this plan.
Ingrid is horrified but agrees to this request to go on this retreat, out of loyalty to Martha. Ingrid also thinks she can change Martha’s mind about ending Martha’s life. When they get to the rented house, Martha tells Ingrid that Ingrid can stay in the room next door to the room where Martha will be staying. Martha says that if Ingrid sees that the door to Martha’s room is closed, it means that Martha has taken the euthanasia pill and is probably dead.
The rest of “The Room Next Door” is an emotional rollercoaster for Ingrid, who is conflicted about this entire plan. As a safety measure, she confides in Damian about Martha’s plan. Damian says that he can recommend a good attorney for Ingrid, in case Ingrid needs an attorney. Ingrid is adamant that she is not going to help Martha commit euthanasia, but Ingrid’s advance knowledge of Martha’s plan would make Ingrid an accessory to this unlawful act. Alessandro Nivola has a small supporting role as a police investigator named Flannery who gets suspicious and questions Ingrid about matters related to Martha.
“The Room Next Door” is a very talkative and occasionally boring movie that consists mainly of the conversations between Martha and Ingrid, as they reconnect under these unusual and stressful circumstances. Now that Martha has decided when she will end her own life, she has become reflective about her life and wonders about things that she could have done differently. Ingrid offers advice and comfort but is also worried about Martha’s safety and emotional well-being.
Martha has a tendency to be self-absorbed and scatter-brained, which leads to some darkly comedic moments in the movie. For example, upon arriving at the rental home, Martha finds out that she left the euthanasia pill at her home in New York City. Martha insists that she and Ingrid drive all the way back to New York City to retrieve the pill, which takes a while because Martha forgot where she put the pill.
“The Room Next Door”—which has exquisite cinematography from Eduard Grau—juxtaposes the ideal beauty of the upscale location with the unpleasant sense of foreboding that Martha and Ingrid have that one of them plans to die before this trip is over. At times, Ingrid is in deep denial that Martha will follow through with this plan. Other times, Ingrid goes into a panic over it.
During this bittersweet reunion, this question looms: Will Martha reach out to Michelle one last time in an attempt to reconcile or at least say goodbye? Martha says that Michelle has rejected Martha’s previous attempts to communicate with Michelle. Moore and Swinton give riveting performances that stay authentic to their characters’ personalities.
No matter how viewers feel about terminally ill people who want to choose when to end their own lives, “The Room Next Door” presents these issues in a non-judgmental way by showing two friends who are directly affected by this issue. Some people try to avoid death, while others run toward it or don’t try to fight death. “The Room Next Door” is an impactful reminder that how people choose to live is remembered much more than how people die.
Sony Pictures Classics will release “The Room Next Door” in select U.S. cinemas on December 20, 2024.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, on October 11, 1975, the comedy film “Saturday Night” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: In the 90 minutes leading up to sketch comedy/variety series “Saturday Night Live” debuting on NBC, the cast and crew experience various mishaps, conflicts and setbacks.
Culture Audience: “Saturday Night” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, “Saturday Night Live” and large ensemble films with a talented cast.
Whether people like or dislike the live sketch comedy/variety TV series “Saturday Night Live,” there’s no denying it’s become an American institution in pop culture. Much like the real “Saturday Night Live,” this comedic film about “SNL’s” TV premiere is hit and miss with its jokes, full of manic energy that sometimes fizzles. However, the performances are entertaining to watch, with many transcending mere impersonations. The movie’s scenarios veer into ridiculous sitcom territory, but much of the dialogue is snappy, if at times a little too contrived-sounding.
Directed by Jason Reitman (who co-wrote the “Saturday Night” screenplay with Gil Kenan), “Saturday Night” had its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie takes place in the frantic 90 minutes before the New York City-based weekly series debuted at 11:30 p.m. Eastern Time on NBC on Saturday, October 11, 1975. Viewers will have to keep up with the intense flurry of activities and numerous cast members who populate the movie. Obviously, people who are familiar with who was in the original “Saturday Night Live” cast will have the most appreciation for this semi-factual re-enactment of the show’s series premiere.
Much of what’s in “Saturday Night” is obviously exaggerated for the movie, but there are other parts of the movie that look toned down, especially when it comes to the notorious drinking and drugging that took place behind the scenes. There are some references to people taking illegal drugs (cocaine snorting, spiking someone’s marijuana joint with an animal tranquilizer), but they’re very tame references, compared to the reported realities of the backstage debauchery and addictions. For example, “Saturday Night Live” creator/showrunner Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) isn’t even shown smoking a cigarette or drinking coffee during his clearly sleep-deprived, stressed-out state of being as several things go wrong before the show goes on the air.
Curiously, John Belushi (played by Matt Wood) and Gilda Radner (played by Ella Hunt), who were widely considered to be the most talented and funniest members of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast, are treated like supporting characters in “Saturday Night.” Instead, the “Saturday Night” movie gives most of the cast-member screen time to smirking playboy Chevy Chase (played by Cory Michael Smith) and fast-talking Canadian wisecracker Dan Aykroyd (played by a Dylan O’Brien, doing a spot-on portrayal), who happens to openly be having an affair with Lorne’s wife: “Saturday Night Live” writer Rosie Shuster (played by Rachel Sennott), a hard-working and sarcastic feminist. Lorne knows about the affair, but he’s more concerned with launching “Saturday Night Live.”
Through conversations in the movie, viewers find out that Lorne and Rosie (who’ve been married for eight years at this point) have an unconventional, open marriage that is more like a business arrangement. What they have in common is a passionate belief that “Saturday Night Live” will be a success, even though the odds were stacked against this show that starred a then-unknown group of comedians in their 20s. The background on the relationship between Rosie and Lorne is Lorne and Rosie started off as friends, he fell more in love with her than she fell in love with him, and it seems like they got married because Lorne kept pursuing Rosie, and she finally gave in to his persistence.
“Saturday Night” begins by showing Lorne anxiously going outside of Rockefeller Center in Manhattan (where the “Saturday Night Live” studio is) to look for a special guest he wants to have on the show’s first episode: a then-unknown eccentric comedian named Andy Kaufman (played by Nicholas Braun), who emerges from a cab, much to Lorne’s relief. Lorne has also ordered a pet llama to be in this episode. Why? Because he can.
Meanwhile, Lorne gets nervous when he notices an NBC page (played by Finn Wolfhard), who’s handing out flyers on the street to invite people to be in the studio audience, isn’t having much luck. Almost everyone whom this page approaches doesn’t seem interested in going to see an unknown show at 11:30 p.m., even if it’s going to be on national TV. Inside the studio, various mishaps and meltdowns happen. A lighting rig falls down from a ceiling and narrowly misses injuring people. The show’s only trained lighting director quits in disgust.
Lorne is under pressure to cut the length of some of the sketches, but he refuses to do it. Various cast members trick the very unhip, middle-aged script supervisor Joan Carbunkle (played by Catherine Curtin) into keeping racy slang in the script, such as “golden showers” and “clam digger,” by lying to her with fake definitions for these terms. John throws a fit and disappears because he doesn’t want to wear a bee costume. Mild-mannered puppeteer Jim Henson (also played by Braun, who’s better in his portrayal of Henson than as Kaufman) defensively worries that “Saturday Night Live” won’t take his Muppets seriously.
Drug-addled guest comedian George Carlin (played by Matthew Rhys) storms off the set because he thinks he’s too good for the show. Lorne frantically tries to find someone who can be the new lighting director as the clock keeps ticking toward showtime. (And there’s literally a time stamp showing the time at various parts of the movie.) Musical guest Janis Ian (played by Naomi McPherson) is one of the few people on the show’s first episode who isn’t depicted as a complainer or someone who causes problems.
The other original “Saturday Night Live” cast members who are portrayed in the movie are laid-back Jane Curtin (played by Kim Matula); neurotic Laraine Newman (played by Emily Fairn); and frustrated Garrett Morris (played by Lamorne Morris, no relation), a Juilliard graduate who goes through a range of emotions when it dawns on him that he’s being treated like a token black person who is deliberately being sidelined and not given much to do. Garrett repeatedly asks no one in particular why he’s just being expected to stand around and not do much, in a tone that suggests he knows exactly why, but he doesn’t want to say the word “racism” out loud. Garrett is never asked for any comedic input and instead has to show his comedic talent when he jokes around during rehearsals with musical guest Billy Preston (played by Jon Batiste), the only other black person in the movie who gets a significant speaking role.
Also featured in the movie is Dick Ebersol (played by Cooper Hoffman), NBC’s director of weekend late night programming, who is Lorne’s closest business confidant and the person credited with helping Lorne develop “Saturday Night Live.” Years later, Ebersol would become an executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” (from 1981 to 1985) and chairman of NBC Sports (from 1998 to 2011). Lorne is an ambitious dreamer, while Dick is more of practical realist. Dick is the one who tells Lorne that NBC executives are expecting that “Saturday Night Live” will fail because the show is being used as a pawn in contract renegotiations with “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson, who wants reruns of his “Tonight Show” episodes to air in the time slot that “Saturday Night Live” has.
One of those NBC executives who thinks “Saturday Night Live” will be a flop is NBC talent chief Dave Tebet (played by Willem Dafoe), a ruthless cynic who lurks around and makes cutting remarks about how the show is being run by people who don’t really know what they’re doing. Dave isn’t completely wrong. Lorne is like an inexperienced fire chief who has to lead a team putting out one fire after another, even before the fire engine can leave the station. Dave is also on edge because he’s invited several executives from local NBC affiliate stations to watch the debut of this unproven new show.
“Saturday Night” has brief depictions of people who would end up becoming longtime associates of “Saturday Night Live”: musical director Paul Shaffer (played by Paul Rust); announcer Don Pardo (played by Brian Welch); writer Alan Zweibel (played by Josh Brener); writer/actor and eventual “Saturday Night” Live cast mate (and later disgraced politician) Al Franken (played by Taylor Gray); and writer/actor Tom Davis (played by Mcabe Gregg), who was one-half of the Franken & Davis duo on “Saturday Night Live.” These appearances are fleeting and only seem to be there to check some boxes in the long list of people that the “Saturday Night” filmmakers wanted to include in the movie.
As overcrowded as “Saturday Night” is with its ensemble cast, the movie is at its best when there is snappy dialogue between two or three people. One of the funniest scenes in the film is when guest star Milton Berle (played by a scene-stealing J.K. Simmons) trades very hostile insults with Chevy when Milton begins flirting with Chevy’s fiancée Jacqueline Carlin (played by Kaia Gerber), who is the latest of many wannabe actress girlfriends whom Chevy insists should be hired to work with him. Chevy calls Milton an old has-been. Milton calls Chevy an irrelevant nobody. And then, elderly Milton (nicknamed Uncle Milty) does something that’s even more shocking and outrageous than anything that the young rebels in the “Saturday Night Live” cast would do.
LaBelle’s magnetic portrayal of Lorne is a combination of cocky and idealistic—someone who forges ahead with his visionary goals, even when Dick tells him that NBC executives have set up “Saturday Night Live” to fail. Under pressure, Lorne is willing to entertain ideas that other people tell him won’t work at all. And all these years later, when the Emmy-winning “Saturday Night Live” has lasted longer than most TV shows that will ever exist, it’s easy to see who has the last laugh. Nicknamed as the show for the “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” of television, “Saturday Night Live” has become the very “insider” establishment that these TV outsiders used to sneer at and mock.
As much as “Saturday Night” seems to be a love letter to the first version of “Saturday Night Live,” it’s a love letter that has some blind spots that lower the quality of the movie. The movie portrays but doesn’t have a critical look at how women and people of color are treated as inferior to white men in the business of comedy. The female characters in the movie are literally supporting characters, who are depicted as catering to the needs and whims of whatever the men are deciding.
For example, instead of showing anything about why Gilda Radner was the type of brilliant comedian who could create unique characters, Gilda’s biggest moment in the movie is when she persuades a petulant John (who’s hiding out at the Rockefeller Center ice skating rink) to come back to the “Saturday Night Live” set and wear the bee costume that he hates. Instead of showing why Gilda was a talented comedian in her own right who would become in real life one of the breakout stars of “Saturday Night Live,” she is relegated to being a quasi-therapist to John.
Laraine’s big moment comes when she opens a long coat to reveal she’s wearing a bikini. Jane is so bland and generic, she doesn’t make much of an impression, and she’s still in the role of being a helper to the men on the show. To put it bluntly: The men in “Saturday Night” get the best lines, the most memorable character personalities and the most attention.
Rosie is the only female character who is depicted as having a full life (the movie shows or tells nothing about the female “Saturday Night Live” cast members’ personal lives), but the movie repeatedly points out that Rosie is in a position of authority because she’s married to Lorne. Rosie is supposed to be one of the top writers on the staff, but the biggest decision she is shown making is whether or not she should use her maiden surname or Lorne’s last name for her surname on the “Saturday Night Live” credits. As one of the top writers on the show, she is never shown making any real writing decisions when the first episode gets shaken up with various revisions on short notice.
In real life, “Saturday Night Live” has also had a very problematic history when it comes to race and racism. The “Saturday Night” movie rightly points out that Garrett Morris was used as a token (he was the only person of color in the original “Saturday Night Live” cast), but the movie’s approach to this uncomfortable subject matter is a bit timid. Garrett makes a thinly veiled diatribe (cloaked in a comedy bit) against white supremacist racism when he jokes that he wants to kill white people. Garrett gets all the white people in the room to laugh at this joke, but then it’s back to business as usual, and Garrett is mostly ignored.
Women of color in the “Saturday Night Live” world of 1975, as in this movie, just simply don’t exist as valuable team members and aren’t considered important enough to be included as decision makers in this world. Because as much as “Saturday Night” wants to portray this ragtag group of “outsiders” as the “rebel underdogs,” within that group of “rebel underdogs,” the sociopolitical hierarchy was the same as the establishment they wanted to rail against: White men get to have almost all of the power, and everyone else has whatever the white men will decide they’ll have.
Reitman and Kenan have previously collaborated on 2021’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and 2024’s “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.” The “Ghostbusters” franchise was co-created by Aykroyd, who has starred in most of the “Ghostbusters” movies with Bill Murray, another “Saturday Night Live” alum. “Ghostbusters” co-creator Harold Ramis was the third main star of the franchise, while Ernie Hudson (just like Garrett Morris) was treated as an inferior sidekick, even though Hudson was an official Ghostbuster too. Jason Reitman’s father Ivan Reitman directed the first two “Ghostbusters” movies and was a producer of all the “Ghostbusters” movies until his death in 2022, at the age of 75.
“Saturday Night” has some of the same problems that “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” has: In its eagerness to cover a lot of bases in fan service, it gets overstuffed and unfocused when trying to show off how many quipping (and sometimes annoying) characters it can cram into a movie. However, “Saturday Night” has the advantage of having main characters as people who became celebrities in real life, so viewers already know what to expect from a lot of these characters. “Saturday Night” is a zippy and sometimes-messy nostalgia piece that is like a series of sketches rather than a comprehensive overview of what went into the launch of “Saturday Night Live.” As long as viewers don’t expect to see an in-depth history of “Saturday Night Live” in this movie, it works just fine as a film that’s somewhere in between lightweight and substantial.
Columbia Pictures released “Saturday Night” in select U.S. cinemas on September 27, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on October 4 and October 11, 2024.
The following is a combination of press releases from Film at Lincoln Center:
Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) announces the 32 films that comprise the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival (NYFF), taking place September 27–October 14 at Lincoln Center and in four partner venues across the city: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) (Brooklyn), The Bronx Museum (Bronx), and the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens).
Secure your seats with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now. Single tickets go on sale September 17 at noon ET.
This year’s Main Slate features films across 24 countries, 18 directors making their NYFF Main Slate debut, celebrated films from festivals worldwide, and two World, five North American, and 16 U.S. premieres. Films from festivals worldwide include Cannes prizewinners Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light (Grand Prize), Sean Baker’s Anora (Palme d’Or), Roberto Minervini’s The Damned (Best Director, Un Certain Regard, shared with Rungano Nyoni), Miguel Gomes’s Grand Tour (Best Director), Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Best Director, Un Certain Regard, shared with Roberto Minervini), and Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Special Prize). At this year’s Berlinale, Mati Diop’s Dahomey won the Golden Bear; Hong Sangsoo’s A Traveler’s Needs received the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize; No Other Land, directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor, took the Panorama Audience Award and the Berlinale Documentary Award; and Philippe Lesage’s Who by Fire won the Grand Prize of the Generation section.
“The festival’s ambition is to reflect the state of cinema in a given year, which often means also reflecting the state of the world,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “The most notable thing about the films in the Main Slate—and in the other sections that we will announce in the coming weeks—is the degree to which they emphasize cinema’s relationship to reality. They are reminders that, in the hands of its most vital practitioners, film has the capacity to reckon with, intervene in, and reimagine the world.”
World premieres from two uncompromising U.S. directors will be featured: Robinson Devor’s Suburban Fury, a nonfiction portrait of would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore dramatized against the background of 1970s political unrest and militancy; and Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow, a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia during the period leading up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Beyond these two timely films, the festival lineup directly and indirectly addresses a range of socio-political concerns from the legacy of war and colonialism to the impact of a globalized economy to contemporary anxieties over authoritarianism and surveillance.
Of special note, two esteemed directors will each bring two films to the festival: Hong Sangsoo’s 22nd and 23rd Main Slate appearances with A Traveler’s Needs and By the Stream; and following Wang Bing’s U.S. premiere of Youth (Spring) at NYFF61, the remaining chapters of the “Youth” trilogy: Youth (Hard Times) and Youth (Homecoming), which will have respective world premieres at the Locarno Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. FLC also welcomes the return of many acclaimed filmmakers, among them David Cronenberg with The Shrouds; Alain Guiraudie with Misericordia; Mike Leigh with Hard Truths; and Paul Schrader with Oh, Canada.
Directors making their NYFF Main Slate debut are Brady Corbet, Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias, Payal Kapadia, Philippe Lesage, Carson Lund, Pia Marais, Roberto Minervini, Rungano Nyoni, Mohammad Rasoulof, RaMell Ross, Neo Sora, Trương Minh Quý, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Yeo Siew Hua, and the collective of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, and Rachel Szor. De los Santos Arias, Kapadia, Minervini, Sora, Trương, and Tsangari have previously shown their work in other sections of NYFF; Lesage, Marais, Ross, and Yeo have been featured in New Directors/New Films.
As previously announced, the Opening Night selection is RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys; Pedro Almodóvar’s 15th NYFF selection, The Room Next Door, is the Centerpiece; and Steve McQueen’s eighth NYFF selection, Blitz, is Closing Night. Currents, Revivals, Spotlight, and Talks sections will be announced in the coming weeks—sign up for NYFF updates for the latest news.
The NYFF Main Slate selection committee is chaired by Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director, and includes Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, K. Austin Collins, and Rachel Rosen.
NYFF62 is generously supported by Co-Chairs Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Imelda and Peter Sobiloff, and Nanna and Dan Stern; and Vice-Chairs Susannah Gray and John Lyons, and Tara Kelleher and Roy Zuckerberg.
All NYFF62 documentaries are presented by HBO®.
Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival is an annual showcase of the best in world cinema. Since 1963, NYFF has shaped film culture and continues an enduring tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The 62nd edition of the festival takes place September 27–October 14, 2024.
Centerpiece The Room Next Door Dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Closing Night Blitz Dir. Steve McQueen
All We Imagine as Light Dir. Payal Kapadia
Anora Dir. Sean Baker
April Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
The Brutalist Dir. Brady Corbet
By the Stream Dir. Hong Sangsoo
Caught by the Tides Dir. Jia Zhangke
Dahomey Dir. Mati Diop
The Damned Dir. Roberto Minervini
Eephus Dir. Carson Lund
Grand Tour Dir. Miguel Gomes
Happyend Dir. Neo Sora
Hard Truths Dir. Mike Leigh
Harvest Dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari
Misericordia Dir. Alain Guiraudie
My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow Dir. Julia Loktev
No Other Land Dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Oh, Canada Dir. Paul Schrader
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl Dir. Rungano Nyoni
Pepe Dir. Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias
The Seed of the Sacred Fig Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
The Shrouds Dir. David Cronenberg
Stranger Eyes Dir. Yeo Siew Hua
Suburban Fury Dir. Robinson Devor
Transamazonia Dir. Pia Marais
A Traveler’s Needs Dir. Hong Sangsoo
Việt and Nam Dir. Trương Minh Quý
Who by Fire Dir. Philippe Lesage
Youth (Hard Times) Dir. Wang Bing
Youth (Homecoming) Dir. Wang Bing
62nd New York Film Festival Main Slate Films and Descriptions
Opening Night Nickel Boys RaMell Ross, 2024, U.S., 140m
Rare is the film of a major book that maintains the power and precision of its source material while also generating its own singular aesthetic. Yet RaMell Ross’s extraordinary realization of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2019 novel, about two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida, achieves just this. In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century. Ross, whose unforgettable Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (Closing Night of New Directors/New Films, 2018) portrayed an Alabama community in moments of revelatory intimacy, has here fashioned a film of equal daring and intensity, buoyed by expressive, shallow-focus cinematography by Jomo Fray (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), pinpoint-precise editing by Nicholas Monsour (NOPE), and deeply felt supporting performances from Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, and Daveed Diggs. Inspired by actual events, this harrowing tale comes to vivid life via an ingenious visual approach that brilliantly adapts the novel’s exercise in subjectivity. Ross’s Nickel Boys sets the beauty of the natural world against the cruel realities of American racism, and confirms its maker’s status as a visionary cinematic artist. An Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios release.
Centerpiece The Room Next Door Pedro Almodóvar, 2024, Spain, 106m U.S. Premiere
Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with whom she has lost touch for a number of years. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, sharing memories, anecdotes, art, movies—yet Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. Pedro Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker, a hushed and humane portrayal of the beauty of life and the inevitability of death, graced with incandescent performances by Moore and Swinton that tap the very essence of being. Adapting Sigrid Nunez’s treasure of a novel, What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar has exquisitely reframed his career-long fascination with the lives of women for an American vernacular, capturing Manhattan and upstate New York with enraptured affection. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Closing Night Blitz Steve McQueen, 2024, U.K., 114m North American Premiere
Blitz, an authentic and astonishing recreation of London during its blitzkrieg by the Germans during World War II, pushes the artistry of Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, NYFF51) to ever more impressive levels. Working on a vast scale, McQueen sets things at human eye level, telling his original tale from the parallel perspectives of working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her 9-year-old son, George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), as they become separated within the labyrinth of a city under siege. Alternately overwhelming and tender, McQueen’s dazzling film offers a multicultural portrait of 1940s London too infrequently seen on screens. While Ronan and Heffernan emotionally match one another beat for beat, the supporting cast, including Kathy Burke, Benjamin Clémentine, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, Hayley Squires, and Paul Weller, is uniformly superb, fleshing out a film that feels positively Dickensian in its scope and storytelling. An Apple Original Films release.
All We Imagine as Light Payal Kapadia, 2024, France/India/Netherlands/Luxembourg, 118m Malayalam and Hindi with English subtitles
The light, the lives, and the textures of contemporary, working-class Mumbai are explored and celebrated with a vivid, humane richness by Payal Kapadia, who won the Grand Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her revelatory fiction feature debut. Centering on two roommates who also work together in a city hospital—head nurse Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and recent hire Anu (Divya Prabha)—and a newly retired coworker Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), Kapadia’s film alights on prosaic moments of connection and heartache, hope and disappointment. Prabha, her husband from an arranged marriage living in faraway Germany, is pursued by a courtly doctor; Anu carries on a romance with a Muslim man, which she must keep a secret from her Hindu family; Parvaty finds herself dealing with a sudden eviction from her apartment. Kapadia captures the bustle of the metropolis and the open-air tranquility of a seaside resort with equal radiance, articulated by her superb actors with an unforced expressivity and by the camera with a lyrical naturalism that occasionally drifts into dreamlike incandescence. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.
Anora Sean Baker, 2024, U.S., 138m English and Russian with English subtitles
This year’s rambunctious Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival is a pure shot of frenetic pleasure, a New York odyssey that is the most immersive and accomplished comic adventure yet from American original Sean Baker (The Florida Project, NYFF55; Red Rocket, NYFF59). In a thrilling, star-making performance, Mikey Madison plays Annie, a tough-as-nails exotic dancer from Brighton Beach suddenly thrust into the lap of luxury when she’s whisked away on a whirlwind romance with Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), an obscenely wealthy young customer at her strip club. However, Ivan turns out to be the spoiled scion of Russian oligarchs, and Annie’s wild ride is anything but your average rags-to-riches story. Baker always takes a good-natured, sociological approach to his subject matter and milieu, and here he has created an authentic 21st-century screwball comedy that tackles sex, love, class, and money with matter-of-fact directness. A NEON release.
April Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2024, France/Georgia/Italy, 134m Georgian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili follows her striking debut feature Beginning (NYFF58), which told the story of a wife and mother persecuted for her religious beliefs in a provincial village, with this tenebrous, provocative drama about the precarious social position of a woman living in an isolated community. When a newborn baby dies after an otherwise routine delivery, obstetrician Nina (Ia Sukhitashvili) falls under suspicion for negligence, her standing in the small town further jeopardized by people’s knowledge that she also provides illegal abortion services to local women. Shot by Arseni Khachaturan (Bones and All), balancing long-take realism and nightmarish expressionism, April is a complex and disquieting depiction of a caregiver in crisis, rich with haunting, metaphorical imagery that feels emanated from its maker’s subconscious.
The Brutalist Brady Corbet, 2024, U.S., 215m (incl. 15m intermission) English, Hungarian, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Italian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
In this towering vision from American director Brady Corbet (Vox Lux), an accomplished Hungarian Jewish architect and World War II survivor named László Toth (Adrien Brody) reconstructs his life in America, reconnecting with family in Pennsylvania. While awaiting news of his wife’s relocation from Budapest, fate leads the Bauhaus-instructed genius into the orbit of the volatile Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce), an obscenely wealthy captain of industry, who leads him to both professional success and personal chaos. Co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold, this richly detailed recreation of postwar America is alternately hopeful and nightmarish in its portrayal of immigrant living, accruing in meaning and power as it builds to its overwhelming final passages. Interweaving a provocative tapestry of ideas around privilege, money, religious identity, architectural aesthetics, and the persistence of historical trauma, The Brutalist is an absorbing, brilliantly acted American epic that reminds us the past is always present. Also starring Felicity Jones, Joe Alwyn, Isaach De Bankolé, Stacy Martin, and Alessandro Nivola.
By the Stream Hong Sangsoo, 2024, South Korea, 111m Korean with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Successful former director Chu Sieon (Kwon Haehyo), now working quietly as a bookshop owner, has arrived at a university to direct a short theater piece after its student director has been let go from the project. He appears at the invitation of his niece, Jeonim (Kim Minhee), an artist and teacher whom he hasn’t seen in 10 years. Living with regrets about decisions made at this very university decades earlier, Chu Sieon both rebuilds his family bond and forges a new one with the admiring Professor Jeong (Cho Yunhee). Hong Sangsoo’s latest portrait of people discovering emotional kinship and recharging their creative selves is wondrous in its simplicity yet expansive in feeling. By the Stream is a deeply affectionate rendering of the constant process of self-actualization, whether in youth or late middle-age, and features one of Hong’s most poignant scenes to date, in which Chu Sieon and the student actors share their hopes and promises for the future. A Cinema Guild release.
Caught by the Tides Jia Zhangke, 2024, China, 111m Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
The preeminent dramatist of China’s rapid 21st-century growth and social transformation, Jia Zhangke has taken his boldest approach to narrative yet with his marvelous Caught by the Tides. Assembled from footage shot over a span of 23 years—a beguiling mix of fiction and documentary, featuring a cascade of images taken from previous movies, unused scenes, and newly shot dramatic sequences—Caught by the Tides is a free-flowing work of unspoken longing, carried along more by music than dialogue as it looms around the edges of a poignant love story. The film mostly adheres to the perspective of Qiaoqiao (Jia’s immortal muse Zhao Tao) as she wanders an increasingly unrecognizable country in search of long-lost lover Bin (Li Zhubin), who left their home city of Datong seeking new financial prospects. The always captivating Zhao carries the film with her delicate expressiveness, while Jia constantly evokes cinema’s ability to capture the passage of time and the persistence of change: of people, landscapes, cities, politics, ideas. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.
Dahomey Mati Diop, 2024, France/Senegal/Benin, 67m French with English subtitles
The African kingdom of Dahomey, which ruled over its region at the west of the continent until the turn of the 20th century, saw hundreds of its splendid royal artifacts plundered by French colonial troops in its waning days. Now, as 26 of these treasures are set to return to their homeland—now within the Republic of Benin—filmmaker Mati Diop documents their voyage back. As with her layered, supernaturally tinged Atlantics (NYFF57), Diop takes a singular approach to contemporary questions around belonging in our postcolonial world, transforming this rich subject matter into a multifaceted examination of ownership and exhibition, and employing multiple points of view, including—most strikingly—those of the artifacts themselves as they sail in darkness over the ocean to their rightful home. Alternating images of nocturnal melancholy and debates among students at Benin’s University of Abomey-Calavi about what should be done with the objects, Dahomey brilliantly negotiates a lost past and an unsure present. Winner of the Golden Bear at the 2024 Berlin Film Festival. A MUBI release.
The Damned Roberto Minervini, 2024, Italy/U.S./Belgium, 88m U.S. Premiere
A regiment of battle-fatigued Union soldiers makes its way west, forging ahead to survey the forbidding landscape of the Northwest frontier, in this transporting, existential Civil War drama from Italian-born director Roberto Minervini. The maker of What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? (NYFF56) and Stop the Pounding Heart (New Directors/New Films 2014), gripping, idiosyncratic portraits of struggle on the margins of American life, Minervini applies his accomplished minimalist naturalism to the period war film, forgoing genre markers for an absorbing plunge into undying questions of morality and American identity. Punctuated by images of jarring violence and eerie beauty, and effectively cast with a troupe of compelling non-professional performers with weather-beaten faces, The Damned engages in the emotional and moral quandaries of fighting a homeland war whose purpose grows hazier as it trudges on. Winner of the Best Director Award in the 2024 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section.
Eephus Carson Lund, 2024, U.S./France, 98m North American Premiere
For his gracefully accomplished debut feature, Carson Lund has fashioned perhaps the most elegiac baseball movie yet, a poignant celebration of a recent American past that already feels as though it has slipped away. Against an autumnal Massachusetts backdrop, sometime in the 1990s, the film lovingly nestles in with a pair of amateur recreation league teams as they play one last game at their beloved Soldiers Field before it’s torn down and paved over for the construction of a middle school. An afternoon of brilliant blue sky quietly fades into October twilight as the players battle and bond, trade barbs and memories, stretching their game out to extra innings, in no hurry to leave this hallowed space. Lund’s tranquil souvenir of a film captures the singular beauty of the sport itself. Recalling the work of Robert Altman and Richard Linklater, but with a touch of Tsai Ming-liang, Eephus (its title referring to a curveball so slow it confuses the batter) is a film about the passage of time—both the hours of the day and one era fading into another. A Music Box Films release.
Grand Tour Miguel Gomes, 2024, Portugal/Italy/France, 128m Portuguese with English subtitles
In this fanciful and high-spirited cinematic expedition, the uncommonly ambitious Portuguese filmmaker Miguel Gomes (Tabu, NYFF50; Arabian Nights, NYFF53) takes a journey across East Asia, skipping through time and countries with delirious abandon to tell the tale of an unsettled couple from colonial England and the world as it both expands and closes in around them. It’s 1918, and Edward (Gonçalo Waddington) has escaped the clutches of beckoning marriage, leaving his bemused fiancée, Molly (Crista Alfaiate), in indefatigable pursuit. Edward gives chase from Mandalay to Bangkok to Shanghai and beyond, while Gomes responds with a splendid and enthralling series of scenes that use a magic form of cinema to situate us in these places both then and now, keeping us at a knowingly exotic traveler’s distance while also immersing us in rhythm, texture, and emotional reality. Whether black-and-white or color, zigzagging or meditative in tone, scripted or captured as documentary, Grand Tour is splendid, moving, and human-scaled. Winner of the Best Director prize at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. A MUBI release.
Happyend Neo Sora, 2024, Japan/U.S., 113m Japanese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Contemporary global anxieties over the gradual slide into governmental totalitarianism find an original and touching outlet in this resonant drama about youth culture in Japan. Neo Sora, making his fiction feature debut following his elegant music tribute Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus (NYFF61), sets his film in a Tokyo high school sometime in the near future. Here, two best friends since childhood, Kou (Yukito Hidaka) and Yuta (Hayato Kurihara), run afoul of their disciplinarian principal (Shiro Sano), who has installed a draconian surveillance system after being the target of an elaborate prank. As the boys try to figure out how to align themselves within the increasingly oppressive education system, larger external forces summon further threats, including constant looming natural disasters. Sora’s absorbing and humane film tackles universal political fears, the tenuous bonds of friendship, and questions of individual will.
Hard Truths Mike Leigh, 2024, U.K./Spain, 97m U.S. Premiere
Mike Leigh returns to a contemporary milieu for the first time since Another Year (NYFF48) for this raw, uncompromising domestic drama that continues the great British filmmaker’s inquiries into the possibility for happiness and the limits of human connection. In a gutsy, excoriating performance, Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Oscar nominee for Leigh’s Secrets & Lies, NYFF34) absorbs herself completely into the role of Pansy, a middle-aged, working-class woman whose emotional and physical health problems have metastasized into a profound and relentless anger that’s become toxic for everyone around her, including her husband, grown son, doctors, and even strangers on the street. Raging against every aspect of her domestic life and fearful of the world beyond, Pansy only finds potential solace in the unwavering love of her sister, Chantelle (a magnificent, gracious Michele Austin). Bringing his customary, thrilling eye for the details of human behavior and the complexities of social interaction, Leigh has created in close collaboration with his extraordinary cast a rigorous and unflinching look at a life in freefall. A Bleecker Street release.
Harvest Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2024, U.K./U.S./Germany/France, 131m English and French with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Greek filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, who deconstructed human behavior within bounded communities in Attenberg and Chevalier, sets her sights on entirely new environs in Harvest, which takes place in a remote village in medieval England. Adapted from the acclaimed novel by British writer Jim Crace, Tsangari’s film stars Caleb Landry Jones as Walter Thirsk, the former childhood friend and manservant of the village’s weak-willed landowner, Master Kent (Harry Melling). Marked by superstition and the scapegoating of outsiders, the town’s denizens fall under new threat after Kent’s iron-fisted city cousin comes into possession of the land, with new plans for agricultural profit. Shot in the sun-dappled Scottish countryside with natural light by cinematographer Sean Price Williams, Tsangari’s most ambitious work to date is both carnal and cerebral, a multifaceted reflection on man’s relationship to the land, rich in atmospherics and thematic resonance.
Misericordia Alain Guiraudie, 2024, France, 104m French with English subtitles
The teasingly entwined ambiguities of love and death continue to fascinate Alain Guiraudie (Stranger by the Lake, NYFF51), who returns with a sharp, sinister, yet slyly funny thriller. Set in an autumnal, woodsy village in his native region of Occitanie, his latest follows the meandering exploits of Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), an out-of-work baker who has drifted back to his hometown after the death of his beloved former boss, a bakery owner. Staying long after the funeral, the seemingly benign Jérémie begins to casually insinuate himself into his mentor’s family, including his kind-hearted widow (Catherine Frot) and venomously angry son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), while making an increasingly surprising—and ultimately beneficial—friendship with an oddly cheerful local priest (Jacques Develay). In Guiraudie’s quietly carnal world, violence and eroticism explode with little anticipation, and criminal behavior can seem like a natural extension of physical desire. The French director is at the top of his game in Misericordia, again upending all genre expectations. A Sideshow/Janus Films release.
My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow Julia Loktev, 2024, U.S., 322m Russian with English subtitles World Premiere
American filmmaker Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet, NYFF49), born in the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow in 2021 to make a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia—just months, as it turned out, before the country’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With her friend Anna Nemzer, a talk show journalist for TV Rain, Russia’s last remaining independent news channel, Loktev ends up immersing herself with a group of young women fighting to ensure the vocalization of dissent and outspoken criticism of the country—even as they are branded by the government as “foreign agents,” their careers and lives increasingly at risk as the country creeps toward war. Structured in five chapters, Loktev’s film, the climactic days of which were filmed in Moscow during the first week of the invasion, when most independent journalists fled the country, is an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety, as well as a vital depiction of the eternal hope that so many in Russia hold for living in a democratic state. Screening in two parts: Chapters 1–3 (198m), Chapters 4–5 (124m).
No Other Land Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, 2024, Palestine/Norway, 95m Arabic, English, and Hebrew with English subtitles
This eye-opening, vérité-style documentary, made by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of four directors over the course of five years, provides a harrowing account of the systematic onslaught of destruction experienced by Masafer Yatta, a group of Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank, at the hands of the Israeli military. Headed by Palestinian activist Basel Adra and Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham (also two of the film’s directors), the collective commits itself to filming and protesting the demolitions of homes and schools and the resulting displacement of their inhabitants, which were carried out to make way for Israeli military training ground. In addition to the indelible footage of destruction and expulsion captured by its undaunted witnesses, No Other Land serves as a moving portrait of friendship between Adra and Abraham, who form a philosophical and political alliance despite the drastic differences in their abilities to exist freely in this world. Winner of multiple awards including the Panorama Audience Award for Best Documentary Film at the 2024 Berlinale.
Oh, Canada Paul Schrader, 2024, Canada, 95m
In an unvarnished, commanding performance, Richard Gere plays Leonard Fife, a celebrated political documentarian who has reached the end of his life. Wracked with cancer, Leonard has agreed to appear in a film by a former protégé (Michael Imperioli) in the hopes of setting the record straight about himself. Cinema becomes a confessional space as Leonard, accompanied by his stalwart wife and former student, Emma (Uma Thurman), excavates his own past, facing down regrets and guilt, and interrogating his own career, personal life, and political courage. Constructed with nonlinear flashbacks featuring Jacob Elordi as a young Leonard, the film passes in and out of different time periods, back to the 1960s, matching the slippery consciousness of its storyteller. Adapted from the book Foregone by Russell Banks, Paul Schrader’s emotionally naked drama feels like a direct address to the viewer, a filmmaker’s reckoning with his formidable status and persona. A Kino Lorber release.
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl Rungano Nyoni, 2024, Zambia/U.K./Ireland, 98m Bemba and English with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
A middle-aged man’s sudden death brings about a reckoning with the past for an extended Zambian family in Rungano Nyoni’s scalding drama. Balancing domestic realism and expressionistic absurdity with precision and constant surprise, Nyoni, in the follow-up to her feature debut, I Am Not a Witch, commandingly delineates the contours of a community caught between tradition and modernity. Nyoni’s film centers on Shula (a furious and touching Susan Chardy), whose stoical response to finding her uncle’s body on the street in the middle of the night hints at the many emotional fissures that will lead to the exposure of difficult truths long repressed. The film’s compositional rigor, inventive sound design, and unexpected narrative turns and digressions confirm Nyoni as a distinctive new voice in international cinema. Winner of the Best Director prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section. An A24 release.
Pepe Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias, Dominican Republic/Namibia/Germany/France, 2024, 123m Afrikaans, German, Spanish, and Mbukushu with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
In 1993, after the death of Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, the wild array of exotic pets he kept in his menagerie were shipped off to zoos and other preserves. His hippopotamuses, however, escaped, fending for themselves, reproducing, and becoming the target of government sterilizers and poachers. Dominican filmmaker Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias (Cocote, New Directors/New Films 2018) takes a fascinating, highly unorthodox approach to this strange but true tale, which is told from the perspective of a sentient hippo, Pepe, at the moment of its death. We hear the animal’s thoughts as they’re spoken aloud by a raspy narrator, as the film skips across time and continents, from Pepe’s home country of Namibia to the Rio Magdalena in Colombia, where Pepe has escaped; shuffles modes of storytelling; and alternates between nonfiction and fantasy. In its sympathetic inquiry and aesthetic muscularity, Pepe poses provocative questions about the ever-shifting ecological stakes of life on earth and the nature of being.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig Mohammad Rasoulof, 2024, Iran/Germany/France, 166m Farsi with English subtitles
A target of Iran’s hardline conservative government for his films’ criticism of the state, director Mohammad Rasoulof fled his home country to avoid an eight-year prison sentence, though he hadn’t finished editing his latest film yet. His searing drama The Seed of the Sacred Fig won a Special Prize from the jury and three other awards on its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film is every bit as urgent and gripping as its real-life backstory would portend: longtime government worker Iman (Missagh Zareh) has just received a major promotion to the role of judge’s investigator, to the hopeful delight of his wife Najmeh (Soheila Golestani); at the same moment, a series of student protests against the government have exploded in the streets, stoking the sympathies of their independent-minded daughters Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki). The growing wedge between progressive children and traditional parents intensifies through a series of unsettling events that put Iman’s future in jeopardy. Both paranoia thriller and domestic drama, The Seed of the Sacred Fig is above all an epic of anti-patriarchal political conviction. A NEON release.
The Shrouds David Cronenberg, 2024, France/Canada, 119m U.S. Premiere
In an eerie, deceptively placid near-future, a techno-entrepreneur named Karsh (Vincent Cassel) has developed a new software that will allow the bereaved to bear witness to the gradual decay of loved ones dead and buried in the earth. While Karsh is still reeling from the loss of his wife (Diane Kruger) from cancer—and falling into a peculiar sexual relationship with his wife’s sister (also Kruger)—a spate of vandalized graves utilizing his “shroud” technology begins to put his enterprise at risk, leading him to uncover a potentially vast conspiracy. Written following the death of the director’s wife, the new film from David Cronenberg is both a profoundly personal reckoning with grief and a descent into noir-tinged dystopia, set in an ominous world of self-driving cars, data theft, and A.I. personal assistants. Offering Cronenberg’s customary balance of malevolence and wit, The Shrouds is a sly and thought-provoking consideration of the corporeal and the digital, the mortal and the infinite.
Stranger Eyes Yeo Siew Hua, 2024, Singapore, 126m Chinese with English subtitles North American Premiere
Young married Singaporean couple Junyang (Chien-Ho Wu) and Peiying (Anicca Panna) must confront the unimaginable when one morning their baby daughter goes missing from the playground. As the police begin their investigation, Junyang and Peiying receive an unsettling package at their doorstep: surreptitious video footage of their daily lives, taken before and after the child’s disappearance. Soon, their voyeur neighbor Wu (Lee Kang-sheng, the Taiwanese star of Tsai Ming-liang’s films, in a delicate, multilayered performance) falls under suspicion, revealing multiple secret inner lives among a group of interconnected characters. From this gripping set-up, writer-director Yeo Siew Hua constructs an unpredictable thriller that is as compelled by the mysteries of the human heart as it is by the ambiguities of living in a constant surveillance culture.
Suburban Fury Robinson Devor, 2024, U.S., 115m World Premiere
On September 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore took a revolver out of her purse and fired two shots at President Gerald Ford on a crowded sidewalk in San Francisco’s Union Square. This failed political assassination was destined to become a strange historical footnote, yet Moore is revealed as an extraordinary subject in this expansive, fascinating new documentary by the protean Robinson Devor (The Woman Chaser, NYFF37). Having served more than 30 years of a life prison sentence, Moore tells her own story, from FBI informant to would-be assassin, all of which Devor dramatizes against the backdrop of the era’s prevalent political unrest and militancy, of Attica, the Black Panthers, the U.S.-backed Chilean coup, and the Symbionese Liberation Army. A pugnacious and unapologetic interview subject, Moore holds the center of a fleet and compelling nonfiction drama with the feel of a 1970s thriller.
Transamazonia Pia Marais, 2024, France/Germany/Switzerland/Taiwan/Brazil, 112m English and Portuguese with English subtitles North American Premiere
In the eerie quiet of the vast, verdant Amazon jungle, a young girl stirs to life. Rescued by a member of the local Indigenous tribe, the child, Rebecca, is the only survivor of a plane crash. Years pass, and Rebecca (Helena Zengel) has become something of a local celebrity after her father (Jeremy Xido), an American missionary, has cast the teenager as a faith healer capable of miracles. Just as Rebecca is beginning to have a will of her own, doubting her father and the role in which she’s been cast, another crisis emerges when illegal loggers encroach on the land, threatening the livelihoods of the local tribe, and forcing emotional, familial, and racial reckonings. South Africa–born director Pia Marais has fashioned a mesmerizing, entrancingly photographed moral tale with no easy answers that is also a singular coming-of-age fable.
A Traveler’s Needs Hong Sangsoo, 2024, South Korea, 90m English, French, and Korean with English subtitles North American Premiere
Isabelle Huppert reunites with Hong Sangsoo for their third delightful outing, this time starring as a nomadic Frenchwoman named Iris who drifts into the lives of a disconnected group of people in a Seoul suburb. In need of money, she has taken up giving French lessons, although she has no teaching experience to speak of. Cutting an ethereal figure in a straw hat, flowered sundress, and green cardigan, Iris puzzles the locals with her unorthodox methods and unyielding love for the Korean rice wine makgeolli. Iris’s effect on those around her is at once familial, romantic, and pedagogical, leading to a succession of gently amusing moments of cultural confusion and curiosity. Hong’s endearing, enigmatic observational comedy is a gentle exploration of human motivation and the surprising connections between people despite—or because of—language barriers. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the 2024 Berlinale. A Cinema Guild release.
Việt and Nam Trương Minh Quý, 2024, Philippines/France/Singapore/Italy/Germany/Vietnam, 129m Vietnamese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Two young men emerge from the stygian darkness of a cave. They are in the bowels of the earth working as coal miners, but Việt and Nam are also lovers, enjoying moments of physical embrace kept secret from the rest of the world, before one of them embarks on a dangerous emigration to Laos. From this personal drama, captured with sensual detail and mesmeric eroticism, Vietnamese filmmaker Trương Minh Quý digs even deeper to excavate the memories and legacies of a nation. Set at the turn of the 21st century, Trương’s film resounds with echoes of the country’s war decades earlier, as Nam’s mother takes them on a pilgrimage to try and discover where his father was killed as a soldier. Shot in a hypnotic style on 16mm film—and banned in its home country—Việt and Nam is a remarkable work of quiet expressivity about two men with unsettled pasts and indeterminate futures. A Strand Releasing release.
Who by Fire Philippe Lesage, 2024, Canada/France, 161m French with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
A getaway at a secluded log cabin in the forest becomes the site of escalating, multigenerational tensions and anxieties in this disquieting, impeccably mounted coming-of-age drama from Quebecois filmmaker Philippe Lesage (Genesis, New Directors/New Films 2019). Ostensibly a merry reunion between well-known film director Blake Cadieux (Arieh Worthalter) and his longtime friend and former collaborator Albert Gary (Paul Ahmarani), the vacation gradually becomes something far more complex and less stable, especially with the combustible admixture of Albert’s teen son’s best friend, Jeff (Noah Parker), and Albert’s self-asserting daughter Aliocha (Aurélia Arandi-Longpré). Long-simmering middle-aged resentments surface, set against the anxieties of the young, all captured sensitively by Lesage, who in recent years has proven unparalleled in evoking the psychological contours of teenagers finding their paths through treacherous emotional landscapes. Featuring thrillingly choreographed dinner sequences of mounting tension, Who by Fire confirms Lesage as a major contemporary filmmaker, with its assured tonal negotiation of the naturalistic and the oneiric, the joyous (especially an epic dance interlude to The B-52s) and the ominous.
Youth (Hard Times) Wang Bing, 2024, France/Luxembourg/Netherlands, 220m Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Continuing the observational nonfiction saga that began with Youth (Spring) (NYFF61), Wang Bing returns to the Chinese district of Zhili, where more than 300,000 migrant workers from rural provinces are employed in clothing workshops. In this enveloping second part of the Youth trilogy, shot between 2015 and 2019, Wang deepens his vérité portrait of a generation struggling to survive on meager wages amidst a nation’s economic expansion, emphasizing the distrustful, increasingly combative relationship between workers and management. Wang’s epic yet compressed documentary is a singular rendering of young people who have become so focused on “making a living” that they have no time for joy or rest. Says one of the film’s many subjects: “You have no rights, so what’s the use of having money?” Despite these grim realities, Wang’s film provides hope in its depiction of workers who may find their collective voice. The final part of the trilogy, Youth (Homecoming), also screens in this year’s NYFF. An Icarus Films release.
Youth (Homecoming) Wang Bing, 2024, France/Luxembourg/Netherlands, 160m Mandarin Chinese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere
Wang Bing concludes his monumental Youth trilogy in expansive fashion, giving ever wider scope to the lives of migrant workers in Zhili’s textile factories, which the filmmaker recorded over the course of five years. Centered around New Year’s break, when the workers are planning to visit their families in remote hometowns to celebrate the festivities, Homecoming functions as a sweeping portrait of contemporary rural China, incorporating images of tightly packed trains and buses climbing treacherous mountainside roads, and joyous interludes, including wedding celebrations for workers Shi Wei and Fang Lingping, into its scenes of factory life. Wang’s cyclical account of young people caught in constant survival mode comes to a poignant close here, giving definitive shape and meaning to his enormous act of observation. The middle part of the trilogy, Youth (Hard Times), also screens in this year’s NYFF. An Icarus Films release.
Secure your seats with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now. Single tickets go on sale September 17 at noon ET.
Film at Lincoln Center announces Luca Guadagnino’s Queer as the Spotlight Gala of the 62nd New York Film Festival, making its U.S. Premiere on October 6. The adaptation of William S. Burroughs’s novel, scripted by Justin Kuritzkes, stars Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Michael Borremans, Andra Ursuta, and David Lowery. NYFF62 single tickets for the general public go on sale September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members.
Written in the early 1950s yet not published until 1985, William S. Burroughs’s Queer has come to be considered a canonical work in the career of the Beat Generation author and a cornerstone of transgressive gay literature. In his wildly ambitious adaptation, Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, NYFF55) expertly evokes the book’s post–World War II time period and cinematically translates Burroughs’s iconoclasm with panache. In a transformative role, Daniel Craig immerses himself into Burroughs’s alter ego William Lee, a habitual heroin user luxuriating in freedom and desiccation among a disconnected group of gay American expatriates in Mexico City in the late 1940s. When enigmatic, preppy ex-military kid Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) catches Lee’s eye, he swoons into a headlong love affair, commencing an odyssey that will take them all the way to the Ecuadorian jungle in pursuit of the ultimate high. Buoyed by go-for-broke performances from Craig and Starkey, and rollicking, unexpected supporting turns from Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman, Queer is a dazzling showcase for many in Guadagnino’s stable of collaborators, including Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, and music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s a film that finds Guadagnino in his most formidable, gutsiest mode yet, a universal love story featuring expressionistic flights of fancy, gratifying moments of psychedelic surrealism, and surprising tenderness.
Queer is a Fremantle film produced by The Apartment, a Fremantle company, and Frenesy film company; produced by Fremantle North America in collaboration with Cinecittà Spa and Frame by Frame.
“I am so privileged and elated to present a movie of mine for the third time at NYFF, Queer in particular,” said Guadagnino. “It is a very personal movie about the inescapable quest for being recognized in the gaze of another through the lens of the great William Burroughs.”
“Luca Guadagnino is one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile filmmakers, and one of its biggest risk-takers,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “Queer is his most fearless, inventive, and surprising film, one that brings its subcultural world to brilliant life and creates the role of a lifetime for a tremendous Daniel Craig.”
Luca Guadagnino was born in Palermo, Italy, on August 10, 1971. He is a director, screenwriter, and producer of several films, including I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, Call Me by Your Name, Suspiria, Bones And All, and Challengers. FLC has celebrated several of the acclaimed director’s films: I Am Love was selected for the 39th New Directors/New Films, and NYFF selections include Call Me by Your Name (NYFF55), which won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Bones and All (NYFF60), winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
NYFF62 is generously supported by Co-Chairs Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Imelda and Peter Sobiloff, and Nanna and Dan Stern; and Vice-Chairs Susannah Gray and John Lyons, and Tara Kelleher and Roy Zuckerberg.
Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival is an annual showcase of the best in world cinema. Since 1963, NYFF has shaped film culture and continues an enduring tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The 62nd edition of the festival takes place September 27–October 14, 2024.
Queer tickets will go on sale to the General Public on Tuesday, September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members prior to this date. Become an FLC Member by August 13 to secure NYFF62 pre-sale access and discounted tickets year-round.
The following is a combination of press releases from Film at Lincoln Center:
Film at Lincoln Center announces RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys as Opening Night of the 62nd New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall on September 27. The adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel stars Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs, and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor. Secure tickets with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now. Single tickets for the general public go on sale September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date.
Rare is the film of a major book that maintains the power and precision of its source material while also generating its own singular aesthetic. Yet RaMell Ross’s extraordinary realization of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2019 novel, about two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow–era Florida, achieves just this. In breakout performances that cut to the bone, Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson play Elwood and Turner, whose close friendship helps sustain their hope even as the horrors mount around them at the Nickel Academy, which becomes a microcosm of American racism in the mid-20th century. Adapted by Joslyn Barnes and Ross, whose unforgettable Oscar-nominated documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (Closing night of New Directors/New Films, 2018) portrayed an Alabama community in moments of revelatory intimacy, has here fashioned a film of equal daring and intensity, buoyed by expressive, shallow-focus cinematography by Jomo Fray (All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt), pinpoint-precise editing by Nicholas Monsour (Nope), and deeply felt supporting performances from Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, and Daveed Diggs. Inspired by actual events, this harrowing tale comes to vivid life via an ingenious visual approach that brilliantly adapts the novel’s exercise in subjectivity. Ross’s Nickel Boys sets the beauty of the natural world against the cruel realities of American racism, and confirms its maker’s status as a visionary cinematic artist.
Nickel Boys is directed by RaMell Ross, with a screenplay by Ross and Joslyn Barnes, based on the book The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. Produced by Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, David Levine, and Barnes. Orion Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios present a Plan B Entertainment / Anonymous Content / Louverture Films production. Orion Pictures/Amazon MGM Studios will release Nickel Boys in theaters on October 25 expanding through the fall.
“What an absolute honor for Nickel Boys to open the 62nd New York Film Festival… a daydream really, for the crew, the cast, and team who’ve committed so wholeheartedly to its vision,” said Ross. “It feels almost full circle, given Hale County This Morning, This Evening’s selection in 2018’s New Directors/New Films program. The New York Film Festival in particular constellates much of what one aspires toward through filmic production. Since just after my undergrad when I was wooed by the still and moving image, it has been an extraordinary compendium for global aesthetics.”
“Nickel Boys signals the emergence of a major filmmaking voice,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “RaMell Ross’s fiction debut, like his previous work in photography and documentary, searches for new ways of seeing and, in so doing, expands the possibilities of visual language. It’s the most audacious American movie I have seen in some time, and we are excited and honored to open the New York Film Festival with it.”
RaMell Ross is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and liberated documentarian. He has been awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Howard Foundation Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship and was a 2022 Solomon Fellow at Harvard University. His feature experimental documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening won a Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and 2020 Peabody Award. It was nominated for an Oscar at the 91st Academy Awards and an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Film. RaMell holds degrees in Sociology and English from Georgetown University and is an associate professor in Brown University’s Visual Art Department. His work is in various public and private collections such as The Museum for Modern Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the High Museum.
Film at Lincoln Center announces Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, as the Centerpiece selection for the 62nd New York Film Festival, making its U.S. premiere at Alice Tully Hall on October 4. Secure your ticket and more with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now. Single tickets go on sale September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date.
Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with whom she has lost touch for a number of years. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, sharing memories, anecdotes, art, movies—yet Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. Pedro Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker, a hushed and humane portrayal of the beauty of life and the inevitability of death, graced with incandescent performances by Moore and Swinton that tap the very essence of being. Adapting Sigrid Nunez’s treasure of a novel, What Are You Going Through, Almodóvar has exquisitely reframed his career-long fascination with the lives of women for an American vernacular, capturing Manhattan and upstate New York with enraptured affection. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
“I am delighted that The Room Next Door will be the Centerpiece of the New York Film Festival,” said director Pedro Almodóvar. “This festival has been my bridge to New York audiences for decades, so it only felt natural that the two protagonists go see a film at the Alice Tully Hall in one of the scenes of the movie. It was very moving for me to shoot in a place that holds so very dear memories to me, and where I hope to keep on treasuring them in a not so distant future.”
“Few filmmakers are as closely associated with the New York Film Festival as Pedro Almodóvar, and it is a true pleasure to present his first English-language feature as this year’s Centerpiece selection,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “The Room Next Door is the work of an artist at the height of his powers: a wise, exquisitely acted, achingly beautiful film that feels perfectly calibrated to this moment.”
The Room Next Door marks NYFF mainstay Pedro Almodóvar’s 15th festival selection, of which a record-setting nine titles have been gala presentations. He made his NYFF debut in 1988 with Women on the Vergeof a Nervous Breakdown (NYFF26) as the Opening Night selection, and also opened NYFF with All About My Mother (NYFF37). Bad Education (NYFF42) and Volver (NYFF44) were selected as Centerpieces, and Live Flesh (NYFF35), Talk to Her (NYFF40), Broken Embraces (NYFF47), and Parallel Mothers (NYFF59) were Closing Night selections. Additional NYFF selections include The Flower of My Secret (NYFF33), The Skin I Live In (NYFF49), Julieta (NYFF54), Pain and Glory (NYFF57), The Human Voice (NYFF58), and Strange Way of Life (NYFF61).
Pedro Almodóvar (b. Calzada de Calatrava, September 25, 1949) left his small town for Madrid as a teenager to realize his dreams of becoming a filmmaker. Arriving with few prospects, he secured “proper” employment at the National Telephone Company of Spain, which allowed him to purchase his first Super 8 camera. For the next 12 years, Almodóvar split his time between this serious day job and crazy nights collaborating with theater groups and punk bands, writing for underground magazines, and making short films with his friends. In 1980, after a year and a half of filming on a shoestring budget, Almodóvar made his feature-length debut with Pepi, Luci, Bom. Since then, he has never stopped writing and directing films, which include the Academy Award winners All About My Mother (1999) and Talk to Her (2002).
Film at Lincoln Center announces Steve McQueen’s Blitz, starring Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan, as the Closing Night selection of the 62nd New York Film Festival, making its North American premiere on October 10 at Alice Tully Hall. Secure tickets with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now. Single tickets for the general public go on sale September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date.
Blitz, an authentic and astonishing recreation of London during its blitzkrieg by the Germans during World War II, pushes the artistry of Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, NYFF51) to ever more impressive levels. Working on a vast scale, McQueen sets things at human eye level, telling his original tale from the parallel perspectives of working-class single mother Rita (Saoirse Ronan) and her 9-year-old son, George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan), as they become separated within the labyrinth of a city under siege. Alternately overwhelming and tender, McQueen’s dazzling film offers a multicultural portrait of 1940s London too infrequently seen on screens. While Ronan and Heffernan emotionally match one another beat for beat, the supporting cast, including Kathy Burke, Benjamin Clémentine, Harris Dickinson, Stephen Graham, Hayley Squires, and Paul Weller, is uniformly superb, fleshing out a film that feels positively Dickensian in its scope and storytelling. An Apple Original Film, Blitz will premiere in theaters on November 1 ahead of its global premiere on Apple TV+ on November 22.
The film stars Academy Award and BAFTA Award nominee Saoirse Ronan and newcomer Elliott Heffernan, with Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clementine, Kathy Burke, Paul Weller, Stephen Graham, Leigh Gill, Mica Ricketts, CJ Beckford, Alex Jennings, Joshua McGuire, Hayley Squires, Erin Kellyman, and Sally Messham. Blitz was directed, produced, and written by Steve McQueen, whose Lammas Park produces alongside Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner of Working Title Films, and Arnon Milchan, Yariv Milchan, and Michael Schaefer for New Regency, with producers Anita Overland and Adam Somner.
“It is with immense pride, gratitude, and fondness that I’m able to return to the New York Film Festival with Blitz,” said McQueen. “I’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed a number of memorable experiences at the festival and with New York audiences, and I’m enormously grateful to have been invited back for Closing Night.”
“Blitz is a vivid and visceral depiction of life during wartime, a meticulous historical account that resonates unmistakably with our current age of endless war,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “We are thrilled to welcome back to the festival Steve McQueen, one of the most daring artists at work today, with one of the greatest achievements of his career.”
The Closing Night selection continues the relationship between McQueen and the New York Film Festival that began in 2008 with the premiere of his debut feature, Hunger (NYFF46). In 2020, three of the five works in his acclaimed Small Axe anthology were featured in NYFF58, with Lovers Rock presented as the Opening Night selection, and Mangrove and Red, White and Blue shown in the Main Slate section. Blitz is McQueen’s eighth film in the festival; additional titles that have been featured are Shame (NYFF49), 12 Years a Slave (NYFF51), and Occupied City (NYFF61).
Academy Award winner and British Film Institute Fellow Steve McQueen is a British artist and filmmaker. His critically acclaimed first feature, Hunger (NYFF46), starring Michael Fassbender as an IRA hunger-striker, won the Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He reteamed with Fassbender for his follow-up feature, Shame (NYFF49), for which Fassbender won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival. McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (NYFF51) dominated the awards season, winning the Academy Award, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and AAFCA Awards for Best Picture while McQueen received DGA, Academy, BAFTA, and Golden Globe directing nods. His fourth feature, Widows (2018), starring Viola Davis, was one of the best reviewed films of the year. In 2020, McQueen’s anthology series Small Axe was awarded Best Picture by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and received 15 BAFTA Television nominations. Three of the five films in the series played at the 58th New York Film Festival, with Lovers Rock opening the fest, and two of the five selected for the 2020 Cannes Film Festival.
McQueen’s last work was the 2023 documentary feature, Occupied City (NYFF61), an excavation of the Nazi occupation of Amsterdam. McQueen also co-directed and produced the BAFTA-winning three-part series Uprising (2021) and served as a co-producer on Three Minutes – A Lengthening (2021), directed and co-written by Bianca Stigter.
The recipient of many accolades for his work as a visual artist, McQueen was awarded with the Turner Prize in 1999, and represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in 2009. He has exhibited and held his artwork in major museums around the world.
The NYFF Main Slate selection committee is chaired by Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director, and includes Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, K. Austin Collins, and Rachel Rosen.
Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival is an annual showcase of the best in world cinema. Since 1963, NYFF has shaped film culture and continues an enduring tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. We’re pleased to announce that the 62nd edition of the festival has been extended by a day, and now takes place September 27–October 14, 2024.
Secure your tickets for Opening Night and more with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now. NYFF62 single tickets will go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, September 17 at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date. Become an FLC Member by August 13 to secure NYFF62 pre-sale access and discounted tickets year-round.
New York Film Festival Opening Night Films
2024 Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross, US) 2023 May December (Todd Haynes, US) 2022 White Noise (Noah Baumbach, US) 2021 The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen, US) 2020 Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen, UK) 2019 The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, US) 2018 The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/US) 2017 Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, US) 2016 13TH (Ava DuVernay, US) 2015 The Walk (Robert Zemeckis, US) 2014 Gone Girl (David Fincher, US) 2013 Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, US) 2012 Life of Pi (Ang Lee, US) 2011 Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland) 2010 The Social Network (David Fincher, US) 2009 Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France) 2008 The Class (Laurent Cantet, France) 2007 The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US) 2006 The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK) 2005 Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, US) 2004 Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui, France) 2003 Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US) 2002 About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US) 2001 Va savoir (Jacques Rivette, France) 2000 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark) 1999 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) 1998 Celebrity (Woody Allen, US) 1997 The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US) 1996 Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK) 1995 Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China) 1994 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US) 1993 Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US) 1992 Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France) 1991 The Double Life of Véronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland/France) 1990 Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, US) 1989 Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier, France) 1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain) 1987 Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union) 1986 Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, US) 1985 Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan) 1984 Country (Richard Pearce, US) 1983 The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US) 1982 Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany) 1981 Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK) 1980 Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US) 1979 Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US) 1978 A Wedding (Robert Altman, US) 1977 One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, France) 1976 Small Change (François Truffaut, France) 1975 Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy) 1974 Don’t Cry with Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France) 1973 Day for Night (François Truffaut, France) 1972 Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France) 1971 The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union) 1970 The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France) 1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US) 1968 Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia) 1967 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria) 1966 Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia) 1965 Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France) 1964 Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, Soviet Union) 1963 The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that celebrates cinema as an essential art form and fosters a vibrant home for film culture to thrive. FLC presents premier film festivals, retrospectives, new releases, and restorations year-round in state-of-the-art theaters at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. FLC offers audiences the opportunity to discover works from established and emerging directors from around the world with a passionate community of film lovers at marquee events including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films.
Founded in 1969, FLC is committed to preserving the excitement of the theatrical experience for all audiences, advancing high-quality film journalism through the publication of Film Comment, cultivating the next generation of film industry professionals through our FLC Academies, and enriching the lives of all who engage with our programs.
Support for the New York Film Festival is generously provided by Official Partner HBO®; Supporting Partner Netflix; Contributing Partners BritBox, Criterion, Bloomberg Philanthropies, MUBI, Dolby, the School of Visual Arts BFA Film, New York Film Academy, and Manhattan Portage; Media Partners Variety, Deadline Hollywood, WABC-TV, The WNET Group, and IMDb. Additional support provided in part by the NYC’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center.For more information, visit filmlinc.organd follow @TheNYFF on X and Instagram.