Review: ‘Apocalypse in the Tropics,’ starring Silas Malafaia Filho, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Jair Bolsonaro

October 17, 2024

by Carla Hay

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in “Apocalypse in the Tropics” (Photo by Francisco Proner)

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” (2024)

Directed by Petra Costa

Portuguese with subtitles

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Apocalypse in the Tropics” features Brazilian people talking about evangelicalism and politics in Brazil in the 21st century.

Culture Clash: Right-wing political leaders have increased their use of evangelical leaders and religious preachings to further their political causes, while left-wing political leaders fight to keep the church and state separate.

Culture Audience: “Apocalypse in the Tropics” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in 21st century Brazilian politics and how these politics are eerily similar to 21st century politics in other countries, such as the United States.

Jair Bolsonaro (seated) in “Apocalypse in the Tropics” (Photo by Francisco Proner)

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” won’t do much to change political opinions that are on the extreme right or extreme left. However, it’s an insightful documentary about how evangelicalism has affected Brazilian politics in the 21st century. “Apocalypse in the Tropics” had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. It then made the rounds at other film festivals in 2024, including the Telluride Film Festival and the New York Film Festival.

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” director Petra Costa, who is the documentary’s narrator, admits up front that she has a very secular point of view in believing in the separation of church and state. However, Costa said that in the course of making the documentary, she did extensive research on the blending of evangelicalism and politics to further understand why numerous Brazilian voters believe that religion should play more (not less) of a role in governmental policies.

Costa was nominated for Best Documentary Feature for directing 2018’s “The Edge of Democracy,” which chronicled the rise and fall of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the impeachment of his successor, President Dilma Rousseff in 2014. “Apocalypse in the Tropics” is a sequel of sorts to “The Edge of Democracy,” because it chronicles the rise of Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician who was elected president of Brazil in 2018. Bolsonaro was then was voted out and replaced by President Lula in 2022.

Brazil has often been compared to the United States in how both countries seem to be on parallel tracks in political history in the 2010s and 2020s. Bolsonaro’s rise in politics used similar tactics used by Donald Trump, whose core base consists of many who live in rural areas and are working-class or poor and those who live in more urban areas who are wealthy. Middle-class people who support Bolsonaro tend to be frustrated by the changes happening in the nation, where immigrants, non-Christians, non-heterosexuals and political liberals are often blamed for any decline.

And just like Trump, Bolsonaro was voted out of office and replaced by a veteran politician whose politics have been liberal, but Bolsonaro and his most ardent supporters have not conceded defeat. Just like in the United States, this political divisiveness has erupted in violence on the nation’s Capitol building. It happened in the U.S. on January 6, 2021. It happened in Brazil on January 8, 2023.

“Apocalypse in the Tropics” features interviews with several politicians and regular Brazilian citizens on both sides of the political spectrum. Pastor Silas Malafaia Filho, a powerful and influential support of Bolsonaro, also gets a lot of screen time. What they all have to say is almost identical to the concerns of people on the opposite sides of the political spectrum in the United States.

Costa’s voiceover narration is measured and calm, but the words in her narration (which she co-wrote with Alessandra Orofino, David Barker, Nels Bangerter and Tina Baz) have an unmistakable tone of sounding an alarm. Unlike a political documentarian such as Michael Moore, Costa does not make herself the star of her documentaries and is only seen on screen intermittently when she is interviewing people. However, her interviews tend to be a bit on the tame side and offer no groundbreaking revelations. The most insightful aspects of Costa’s documentary filmmaking are cinéma vérité, when the camera just shows how people really act and what they say when they let their guards down.

Overall, “Apocalypse in the Tropics” has solid direction and focused editing in chronicle the story presented in the movie. The documentary’s cinematography is above-average. The most impactful footage in “Apocalypse in the Tropics” is shown in the last 20 minutes. It’s a significant reminder that far-way countries that could be considered “foreign” from each other can actually be a lot more alike than many of their citizens would like to admit.

Review: ‘Suburban Fury,’ starring Sara Jane Moore

October 10, 2024

by Carla Hay

Sara Jane Moore in “Suburban Fury” (Photo courtesy of 2R Productions)

“Suburban Fury”

Directed by Robinson Devor

Culture Representation: The documentary film “Suburban Fury” has only one person interviewed: Sara Jane Moore, a deliberately mysterious person who has had many different identities.

Culture Clash: Before spending more than 30 years in prison for trying to shoot U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1975, Moore says she was an informant for the FBI.

Culture Audience: “Suburban Fury” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching “where are they now” documentaries about notorious people who have faded from the public eye.

Sara Jane Moore in “Suburban Fury” (Photo courtesy of 2R Productions)

“Suburban Fury” is a mixed bag of a documentary about Sara Jane Moore, who famously tried to assassinate Gerald Ford in 1975. Moore is the only person interviewed for this retro-inspired movie, which she seems to be using as a way to play mind games. Viewers will hear some interesting stories from her, which might or might not have credibility since there’s no one in the documentary who can verify her elaborate tales of being a FBI informant going undercover as a left-wing radical.

A caption mentions in the beginning of “Suburban Fury” that Moore agreed to be in the documentary by insisting that she would be the only person interviewed for the movie. “Suburban Fury” could have have used more independent research to help verify some of Moore’s unverified claims. However, “Suburban Fury” succeeds at being a “where are they now” curiosity spectacle that re-creates and shows some archival material from Moore’s past. Moore (who was born in 193O) is purposely vague about her personal life but discusses at length her alleged involvement with the FBI as a confidential informant during the 1970s.

Directed by Robinson Devor, “Suburban Fury” had its world premiere at the 2024 New York Film Festival. The movie was filmed in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Moore has been a longtime resident and where she committed her notorious act of trying to kill a U.S. president. On September 22, 1975, she used a .38 caliber gun to fire a single shot at then-U.S. President Ford while she was standing in a crowd across the street from him when he was outside the St. Francis Hotel during a public visit to San Francisco. Moore was quickly arrested. She pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to life in prison but was paroled in 2007.

Moore insisted then, as she does in this documentary, that she is perfectly sane. However, her unfocused ramblings don’t sound completely believable. Moore admits that she has spent much of her life being a pretender: When she was young, she was an aspiring actress. Later, she says she was very skilled at leading a life of many identities at once: She was a suburban housewife who also hung out and partied with people who were members of extreme left-wing factions of the Black Liberation movement.

Many of the interviews of Moore are conducted while she’s in the back seat of a 1970s station wagon parked on a San Francisco hill, while an unidentified man in a suit stands near the car, as if he’s on the lookout for someone, or waiting to see if Moore will try to leave. In the documentary’s end credits, a caption says that “Suburban Fury” was made with the cooperation of the U.S. Secret Service, but there is no further elaboration.

Moore gets very feisty and irritable with Devor, who can be heard but not seen asking her some questions. She yells at him if she doesn’t like the questions. She also gets very uptight and evasive about certain topics. For example, she defiantly says she won’t talk about her current family life because she wants to protect her family’s privacy.

The documentary has no information about what Moore did with her life after she was paroled from prison. The majority of what she talks about in the documentary is what she did in the 1970s, when she was supposedly an undercover informant for the FBI. She contradicts herself by saying she has no regrets about the presidential assassination attempt and but also saying in another interview that the assassination attempt was a mistake. There’s also some not-very-interesting commentary from her about what her life was like in prison.

“Suburban Fury” often uses boxy film aspect ratios of a 1970s-styled home movie, to give the look of a movie that could have been filmed in the era when Super 8 film cameras were consider hi-tech. “Suburban Fury” has the expected archival footage of the assassination attempt. Moore describes what happened immediately after she was apprehended by law enforcement. She says that male police officers began beating her out of anger at her attempted assassination. She says at one point during this assault, her trousers were pulled down, and one of the officers exclaimed in surprise that she was a woman.

The way Moore tells it, in the years before she went to prison, she was recruited by the FBI to infiltrate Black Liberation groups because the word on the street was that these groups would trust her. She says her main FBI contact was someone whom she calls Bertram “Bert” Worthington, which she says is not his real name. She tells elaborate stories about clandestine meetings with Worthington, whom she describes as a Yale University graduate who wore raggedy tweed suits and always treated her like a respectable lady.

These stories are the basis for the documentary’s narration of what Worthington might say about Moore now. “Suburban Fury” director Devor is the voice of Worthington in this narration. In “Suburban Fury,” Moore claims that Worthington knew about her plans to shoot Gerald Ford and advised her to escape with her son in her car and become a fugitive if she succeeded with her plan.

Moore will only discuss her doomed marriages to two of her ex-husbands, including the unnamed doctor whom she was married to when she was arrested for the assassination attempt. She says she was miserable in the marriage because he refused to let her have a job. “Suburban Fury” includes declassified FBI files that show by the time 45-year-old Moore was involved in this assassination attempt, she had already been married and divorced five times.

She also mentions how her previous husband—whom she does not name but she will only describe as someone who worked in the movie industry—wanted her to have an abortion when she had a surprise pregnancy. She refused to terminate the pregnancy. Moore speaks fondly of her son, whom she raised for a period of time with her doctor husband as her son’s stepfather. But the documentary also shows the FBI files that list she gave birth to about four children whom she abandoned. Moore is not fully confronted in the documentary about all the secrets and lies that she seems have accumulated in her life.

Moore will only admit that she came from an affluent background in West Virginia. The documentary has photos of Moore at various stages in her life when she had several surnames, to show without saying that she has long been a chameleon with different identities. Was she a bored housewife who somehow got caught up in espionage and political conspiracies? Or was she a calculating manipulator who knew exactly what she was doing?

“Suburban Fury” goes off on a tangent to discuss the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patricia “Patty” Hearst, who was a 19-year-old student at the Unversity of California at Berkeley at the time of her abduction. Hearst joined her kidnappers in the left-wing Symbionese Liberation Army (which claimed to have an ideology of “rob from the rich to give to the poor”) on a crime spree that included bank robberies. Moore expresses disdain for SLA and Hearst, by saying that Hearst was kind of stupid and that SLA should have kidnapped Hearst’s wealthy father (Randolph Apperson Hearst) instead of going after one of his children.

What does SLA have to do with Moore? SLA was associated with Wilbert “Popeye” Jackson, who was involved with prison reform as a founder of United Prisoner Union while he was incarcerated at San Quentin Prison. Moore says she was one of many lovers that Jackson had at the time, like a harem. According to Moore, Jackson was sympathetic to the SLA but he also wanted to help Patty Hearst because he hoped that Randolph Apperson Hearst would reward Jackson by helping give a good education to Jackson’s son.

Moore also had an indirect connection to the Hearst family because she was a volunteer bookeeper for People in Need, a charity established by the Hearst family in response to SLA’s demands that in order for SLA to free Patty Hearst from SLA’s captivity, the Hearst family needed to do more for low-income people. There are some archival photos of Moore working for People in Need. Moore says she was very good at her People in Need job. However, since “Suburban Fury” viewers are only getting her selective version of events, it’s hard to know how truthful she is in certain parts of her story.

The many twists and detours that Moore takes in her storytelling get a little tiresome to watch when it becomes all too obvious that she wants to portray herself as a folk heroine who led a very unusual life. She portrays herself as a “victim” of “oppressive” government manipulations that involved death threats from government officials, even though she also describes herself in other parts of her stories as an independent woman who broke the law of her own free will. Without anyone else interviewed in the documentary, the narrative of “Suburban Fury” is obviously very one-sided.

Moore describes the day of her assassination attempt as, “I think I was in a fugue. A fugue state is a pattern.” She says she felt it was pre-destined that she would carry out the plan and remembers that there were no unexpected delays or hitches in the plan. “The plan had been written to be successful. I also thought I’d be killed,” she adds.

One of the many examples of Moore’s questionable credibility is that at one point in the interview, she claims she had no intention of killing Ford. In a separate interview, she says that at the time, she believed that political murders (including assassinating a U.S. president) were necessary for radical groups to get attention, and she had no qualms about killing a U.S. president if necessary. At some point during the documentary, viewers will wonder if Moore has told so many lies, she doesn’t know what the truth is anymore.

“Suburban Fury” doesn’t pass judgment on Moore but doesn’t go far enough in questioning her. She seems to get very irritated when she thinks she doesn’t have control of a situation. The main reason to watch this movie is out of curiosity to see what someone who has lived this type of duplicitous life has to say about herself when she’s in her 90s.

Moore seems to have a quick-thinking mind and looks healthier and younger than most people in her age group. One of the most telling things about her is in the documentary’s end credits. Moore, sitting silently in the back seat of a car at night, looks around nervously, as if she’s expecting the car to be ambushed at any moment. It’s a striking image that indicates that even though Moore is no longer incarcerated in prison, she remains a prisoner of her own paranoia.

Review: ‘Anora’ (2024), starring Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Vache Tovmasyan, Yura Borisov, Darya Ekamasova and Aleksey Serebryakov

October 6, 2024

by Carla Hay

Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in “Anora” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“Anora” (2024)

Directed by Sean Baker

Some language in Russian with subtitles

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.

Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison in “Anora” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“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.

Review: ‘Queer’ (2024), starring Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Lesley Manville, Jason Schwartzman, Henrique Zaga and Omar Apollo

October, 5, 2024

by Carla Hay

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in “Queer” (Photo by Yannis Drakoulidis/A24)

“Queer” (2024)

Directed by Luca Guadagnino

Some language in Spanish with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in the early 1950s in Mexico City and in South America, the dramatic film “Queer” (based on William Burroughs’ novel of the same name) features a white and Latin cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: While living in Mexico City, a wealthy, drug-addicted, queer American writer looks for love with a man and goes on a quest to find an elusive psychedelic drug.

Culture Audience: “Queer” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, star Daniel Craig, author William Burroughs and decadent movies told from a queer perspective.

Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey and Lesley Manville in “Queer” (Photo by Yannis Drakoulidis/A24)

Like a lot of movies that portray drug addiction, “Queer” is sometimes unfocused, rambling and incoherent. However, Daniel Craig gives a memorable and uncompromising performance in this experimental drama inspired by Williams Burroughs’ life. “Queer” is not a biopic but a movie based on a semi-autobiographical novel. It’s a portrait of a troubled person who has self-esteem issues and who is struggling to find love and acceptance in a world that is often unwelcome and hostile to people who aren’t cisgender heterosexuals.

Directed by Luca Guadagnino and written by Justin Kuritzkes, “Queer” is adapted from Burroughs’ 1985 novel of the same name. The “Queer” movie is the second film released in 2024 that was directed by Guadagnino and written by Kuritzkes, who previously collaborated on the tennis drama “Challengers,” another sexually charged film with themes of obsession, ambition and transactional relationships. Unlike the sex scenes in “Challengers,” the sex scenes in “Queer” have full-frontal nudity and are much more explicit. “Queer” had its world premiere at the 2024 Venice International Film Festival. It later had its North American premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and its U.S. premiere at the 2024 New York Film Festival.

In “Queer” (which take places over a three-year period in the early 1950s), Craig has the central role as William Lee, which is the alias that Burroughs used briefly and early in his long career as a writer. Burroughs was know as an influential Beat Generation author, whose best-known work is the 1959 novel “Naked Lunch.” Burroughs was born in 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri. He died in 1997, in Lawrence, Kansas. Burroughs was a Harvard University graduate and an heir to the fortune of the Burroughs Corporation, which was founded by his paternal grandfather William Seward Burroughs. This wealth allowed Burroughs the writer to live a lifestyle where he didn’t have to work, and his drug addiction (he was openly addicted to heroin) was well-funded.

The William Lee in the “Queer” movie prefers to be called Lee. He is in his late 40s and is exactly what you think a well-educated, drug-addicted intelluctual writer would be: On the one hand, he has a fierce snobbery toward anyone who can’t discuss literary work that’s up to his standards. On the other hand, he loves getting down and dirty with shady, uneducated people and criminals. He uses his ability to float between high society and the unlawful margins of society as the source of many of his writings.

Lee’s writing is not as much of a priority to him as his main preoccupations: doing drugs and looking for gay sex. Omar Apollo has a small role in the movie as young man whom Lee picks up for a casual sexual tryst in the movie’s first sex scene. Lee has his flings at a motel where the manager is so accustomed to the place being used for gay sexual hookups, he lays out a towel on the bed as soon as guests rent a room.

In real life in the early 1950s, William Burroughs was divorced from his first wife Ilse Klapper and living in Mexico City with writer Joan Vollmer, their son William Burroughs Jr., and Vollmer’s daughter Julia Adams from her ex-husband Paul Adams. (A scene in “Queer” recreates how Vollmer died in real life, but with another character in this movie’s death scene.) In the movie “Queer,” Lee is not married, and he’s not exactly “in the closet.” He’s living the life of an openly gay bachelor in Mexico City, with no family ties at all. In fact, his loneliness and detachment from any family members are the reasons why Lee makes many of the decisions in this story.

Lee hangs out at a gay bar called the Ship Ahoy, where many men from the U.S. Navy are known to frequent. Lee’s bar-hopping pals are mostly other American queer men. His closest friend is Joe Guidry (played by Jason Schwartzman), who loves to gossip about his sex life and other gay/queer men’s sex lives. A running joke with Joe is that the men he often sleeps with end up stealing things from Joe. Another frequent Ship Ahoy customer is Winston Moor (played by Henrique Zaga), who is sometimes Lee’s drinking companion.

One night, Lee is walking down a street and casually observing a group of Mexican men who are involved in rooster fighting. Lee looks up and notices another white American man, who’s in his 20s. The stranger is across from Lee and is also casually walking by this disgusting and inhumane animal cruelty. Lee and this stranger look at each other in the way that people do when you know there’s an instant and unspoken attraction between them.

Lee is surprised to see this stranger again that night at Ship Ahoy. The stranger is at a table by himself. When Lee awkwardly bows and tries to flirt with the younger man, this would-be paramour seems to be a little turned off and doesn’t show any interest. Lee keeps seeing this stranger at various places until they finally have a conversation and get to know each other better.

The stranger’s name is Eugene Allerton (played by Drew Starkey), who used to be in the U.S. Navy but is currently an unemployed student in Mexico City. Lee is unsure of what Eugene’s sexuality is. Eugene hangs out at the Ship Ahoy (a known establishment for gay men), but Eugene is also seen dating a fiery redhead named Joan (played by Ronia Ava), who looks like the type who wouldn’t want Eugene to be dating anyone else.

Lee is a big talker, but he’s surprisingly shy about coming right out and asking Eugene what Eugene’s sexuality is, even though Lee clearly wants to have sex with Eugene. When Fred advises Lee to ask Eugene if Eugene is queer or not, Lee says it’s not a good idea and tells Fred that it would be too forward and impolite to ask Eugene. Meanwhile, Lee and Eugene have the type of flirtation that you just know will lead to something more. Because it’s already revealed in the movie’s trailers, it’s not spoiler information to say (and it should be no surprise) that Lee and Eugene eventually become lovers.

Lee falls in love with Eugene. The problem for Lee is that he isn’t quite sure if Eugene feels the same way about Lee, or if Eugene is just using Lee for a “sugar daddy” situation. Eugene also doesn’t seem to want to commit to declaring if he’s gay, bisexual or neither. When Eugene is around certain people, such as Joan, he gives the appearance that he’s heterosexual. Meanwhile, Lee can eventually no longer hide from Eugene that Lee is seriously addicted to heroin. Lee also abuses other drugs, such as alcohol, cocaine and psychedelics.

“Queer” is told in three chapters and one epilogue. Much of the third chapter is about a trip that Lee and Eugene take to South America to find an elusive psychedelic drug called yage (prounced “yah-way”), also known as the plant that is the basis for ayahuasca, a potent psychedelic. They travel to a remote jungle area, where they meet a grungy psychedelic American expert named Dr. Cotter (played by Lesley Manville, who is almost unrecognizable) and a man she calls her husband named Mr. Cotter (played by Lisandro Alonso). It leads to the most hallucinogenic and visually creative part of the movie.

“Queer” makes some interesting musical choices that are meant to be unconventional but sometimes comes across as pretentious and downright annoying. Oscar-winning music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (who also wrote the musical score for “Challengers”) have composed very modern music for a movie that’s set in the 1950s. For better or worse, “Queer” does the same thing that “Challengers” does: It often plays the score music so loudly in certain scenes, this blaring volume can become an irritating distraction.

The songs on the “Queer” soundtrack consist mostly of songs that were written decades after the 1950s. A few Nirvana hits are prominently featured in the beginning of the movie: first, with Sinéad O’Connor’s cover version of “All Apologies” and later with Nirvana’s original recording of “Come as You Are.” Later in the movie, a few songs from Prince (such as “Musicology”) can be heard when “Queer” ramps up its sexual content.

Purists who think the music of a movie should be realistic for the time period of when the movie takes place will no doubt be put off by these musical choices in “Queer.” Some viewers who aren’t aware of this musical mismatch might feel disoriented when watching “Queer” and might think to themselves when they see clothes and cars from the 1950s but hear music from the 1990s and 21st century : “What decade is this movie supposed to be in anyway?”

At 135 minutes long, “Queer” tends to a little bloated in the story it’s trying to tell. The movie is based on a short story. And it’s easy to see why because there isn’t much of a plot. “Queer” has some “druggie” movie clichés such as “dope sick” scenes, “getting high” scenes, and “desperate to find drugs” scenes. The cinematography is very immersive, while the movie’s visual effects (although often grotesque) are quite unforgettable.

Despite the movie’s flaws, Craig gives a riveting performance throughout “Queer” as the insecure and self-destructive Lee. Starkey is also quite good in the role of the emotionally mysterious Eugene. Manville is a scene stealer and gives one of the most transformative performances of her career. Ultimately, “Queer” is not the type of movie that expects everyone to understand it or like it. It’s a movie that exists on its own terms, in all of its messiness in chronicling a period of time in the life of a privileged but troubled writer.

A24 will release “Queer” in select U.S. cinemas on November 27, 2024.

Review: ‘The Room Next Door’ (2024), starring Julianne Moore, Tilda Swinton, John Turturro and Alessandro Nivola

October 4, 2024

by Carla Hay

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in “The Room Next Door” (Photo courtesy of El Deseo/Sony Pictures Classics)

“The Room Next Door” (2024)

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar

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.

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in “The Room Next Door” (Photo courtesy of El Deseo/Sony Pictures Classics)

“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.

Review: ‘Nickel Boys,’ starring Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Hamish Linklater, Fred Hechinger, Daveed Diggs and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

September 27, 2024

by Carla Hay

Brandon Wilson and Ethan Herisse in “Nickel Boys” (Photo by L. Kasimu Harris/Amazon Content Services)

“Nickel Boys”

Directed by RaMell Ross

Culture Representation: Taking place in Florida and in New York City, from the late 1950s to 2003, the dramatic film “Nickel Boys” (based on the novel “The Nickel Boys”) features a predominantly African American cast of characters (with some white people and a few Latinos) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Two teenage boys become friends while they live at at a reform school and endure an oppressive, abusive and racist environment.

Culture Audience: “Nickel Boys” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of filmmaker RaMell Ross, the book and which the movie is based, and well-acted movies about how people process childhood trauma.

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in “Nickel Boys” (Photo courtesy of Orion Pictures)

Artfully made and absorbing to watch, “Nickel Boys” is a risk-taking drama that makes unorthodox choices about memories and perspectives. Inspired by real events about a reform school that abused teenage boys, this movie also has compelling acting. It’s the type of movie that will test the patience of viewers who might be expecting a more traditional narrative structure. But for open-minded movie fans who appreciate bold, artistic moves in cinema, “Nickel Boys” is like watching an unpredictable formation of a mosaic. “Nickel Boys” had its world premiere at the 2024 Telluride Film Festival and later screened at the 2024 New York Film Festival.

Directed by RaMell Ross (who co-wrote the “Nickel Boys” screenplay with Joslyn Barnes), “Nickel Boys” is adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel “The Nickel Boys.” The book is loosely based on the real-life story of the Florida School for Boys, also known as the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, which was a state-operated reform school in Marianna, Florida, from 1900 to 2011. The school was permanently shut down after numerous lawsuits and a U.S. Department of Justice investigation uncovered decades of torture and other abuse against children who were at the reform school.

“Nickel Boys” (which takes place from the late 1950s to 2003) tells the non-chronological story of Elwood Curtis, whose life changes forever due to an unfortunate series of circumstances. In 1962, Elwood (played by Ethan Herisse) is a bright, empathetic and socially conscious 16-year-old, who will soon turn 17. Elwood’s parents are deceased.

Elwood lives with his widowed grandmother Hattie (played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) in the racially segregated community of Frenchtown, Florida. Hattie (who works as a hotel maid) and Elwood have hope for and enthusiastic interest in the burgeoning U.S. civil rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., even though Hattie and her co-workers have been ordered not to talk about politics when they’re on the job. Elwood excels in academics and has a promising future.

Elwood has a teacher/mentor named Mr. Hill (played by Jimmie Fails), who recommends Elwood for an advanced-placement academy program called the Melvin Griggs Technical School, which has college-level courses but accepts intellectually gifted high school students for enrollment. Mr. Hill is also involved in the civil rights movement. When a student asks Mr. Hill if he’s a Freedom Rider and how he got a scar on his head, Mr. Hill replies: “Nashville. A white man slugged me with a tire iron.”

One day, Elwood accepts a car ride from a man driving an emerald turquoise Impala. Elwood doesn’t know this man, who appears to be friendly and helpful. Elwood isn’t in the car for very long when the car is pulled over by a racist cop, who pulls the driver by the ear and tells him the car has been reported stolen and “only spooks” steal this type of car. Elwood is in the wrong place at the wrong time, so he is arrested and charged with being a theft accomplice.

“Nickel Boys” doesn’t show Elwood’s courtroom proceedings because the movie makes a point that Elwood was going to be found guilty no matter what, in a system that is racially biased and stacked against people who can’t afford good legal representation. Elwood gets sentenced to Nickel Academy, a reform school for boys. It becomes a terrible experience where he is desperate to escape.

On the surface, Nickel Academy tries to give the impression that this institution truly cares about making these boys into better people. When new enrollees first arrive, they are told about the four levels of existence at Nickel Academy, where reaching the highest level will supposedly get an enrollee released from Nickel Academy. The lowest level is being a Grub, which is the level that all new enrollees are automatically assigned. From there, an enrollee can work his way up to being an Explorer, then a Pioneer, and then the highest level: Ace.

But the reality is that Nickel Academy is an institution that regularly abuses boys who are imprisoned there. In addition to getting vicious beatings and whippings, boys are often locked in solitary confinement in unsanitary conditions and sweltering temperatures. It’s also a racially charged environment because the people on the receiving end of this abuse are mostly black, while the people in authority positions are white. The people in power at this school include a sadistic administrator named Spencer (played by Hamish Linklater) and a bullying school employee in his 20s named Harper (played by Fred Hechinger), who is essentially a henchman who eagerly inflicts abuse and punishment.

Elwood starts off as an introverted loner at Nickel Academy. But he strikes up a tentative acquaintance with Jack Turner (played by Brandon Wilson), who likes to be called by his last name and appears to be more street-smart and tougher that Elwood. As the two teens get to know each other better and become close friends, it becomes apparent to both of them that Elwood has more bravery when it comes to fighting against injustice. Elwood is also the one who is more likely to meticulously plan an escape.

Meanwhile, Elwood’s separation from his protective and worried grandmother Hattie takes a toll on her mental health. There’s a heartbreaking scene where she’s alone at her kitchen and begins talking out loud to herself while cutting slices of frosted cake. Ellis-Taylor isn’t a main character in “Nickel Boys,” but her performance has an indelible impact on the emotional core of the movie.

Because the story of “Nickel Boys” is mainly about the friendship between Elwood and Turner, other enrollees at Nickel Academy don’t get much character depth. Two of the teenage side characters who get some screen time are (1) physically large Griff (played by Luke Tennie), a student boxer who is exploited for money by academy officials and (2) Jaime (played by Bryan Gael Guzman), a friendly and somewhat bashful Latino who is often shunned or excluded by other students because he isn’t black or white.

The movie’s scenes with middle-aged Elwood (played by Daveed Diggs) unfold gradually to reveal what he did with his life after he left Nickel Academy. Without giving away too much information, it’s enough to say that he moved to New York City not long after his hellish experience at Nickel Academy and has been living in New York City ever since. In the early 2000s, Elwood’s bad memories about Nickel Academy are triggered when he finds out that Nickel Academy has been in the news for horrific discoveries that were made about the academy.

“Nickel Boys” (which has cinematography by Jomo Fray) often has extreme close-ups of people or objects that could be somewhat jarring to viewers who want to see everything in that scene. But these extreme close-ups force viewers to pay more attention to the dialogue rather than get distracted by what’s in the background. The lighting and hues in the movie range from vibrant when Elwood’s life is bursting with optimism to bleak when Elwood’s life reaches depressing low points.

There’s one particular flashback scene early on in the movie that is example of how these extreme close-ups make the movie look more artistic: In a scene taking place in the late 1950s, when Elwood (played by Ethan Cole Sharp) is about 11 or 12 years old. His grandmother Hattie is ironing something, and as her iron slides back and forth, Elwood can be seen reflected in the iron.

The camera’s point of view often switches back and forth from a first-person angle to an observational angle. When the middle-aged Elwood is on screen, his face isn’t fully shown until much later in the movie. “Nickel Boys” also has interludes of real-world archival footage as context and comparison.

Clips from the 1958 dramatic film “The Defiant Ones” (starring Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis as prison escapees) are shown when Elwood is in a situation where he and someone else are entangled with law enforcement. For example, when Elwood is in the back of a police car with someone, there’s also a similar clip of Poitier and Curtis in the back of a police vehicle. “The Defiant Ones” is an interesting choice because it’s a movie that was controversial in its time because of its observations of race relations and the criminal justice system.

Beyond the unconventional camera angles and somewhat abstract editing, “Nickel Boys” has a very talented principal cast authentically conveying the complex experiences of their characters. Herisse and Wilson are a dynamic duo together and separately in their portrayals of two teens fighting to keep their sanity and dignity when trapped in a cruel institution that wants to do permanent harm to them. Diggs also shines in his role as middle-aged Elwood, who is an example of survivor resilience.

“Nickel Boys” might get some criticism from people who think the world has more than enough movies about racism, child abuse and other struggles experienced by people who are often oppressed and exploited. However, even though “Nickel Boys” is a story that takes place in the past, the movie also serves as a reminder that these injustices are still going on today. And with children in institutions often being the targets of these crimes, “Nickel Boys” is also an urgent wake-up call to hold institutions accountable when they do more harm than good.

Amazon MGM Studios’ Orion Pictures will release “Nickel Boys” in select U.S. cinemas on December 13, 2024.

Review: ‘The Seed of the Sacred Fig,’ starring Misagh Zareh, Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami, Setareh Maleki and Niousha Akhshi

September 23, 2024

by Carla Hay

Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki in “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”

Directed by Mohammad Rasoulof

Persian with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Iran, the dramatic film “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” features an all Middle Eastern cast of characters representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: A newly promoted investigating judge has conflicts over political unrest in Iranian society and dissension in his own household with his wife and two teenage daughters.

Culture Audience: “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof and movies that show how societal changes can affect an individual family.

Misagh Zareh and Soheila Golestani in “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig” is a little long-winded in showing how political unrest can have profound effects on a family. However, this well-acted drama has a very suspenseful last 30 minutes that make it worth the wait. With a total running time of 167 minutes, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” might test the patience of some viewers with some of the movie’s repetitive scenarios. Fortunately, the plot isn’t overstuffed, and there’s a small number of people in the movie’s cast, which gives the movie an intimate urgency that it deserves.

Written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof, “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” had its world premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it won a special jury prize. The movie made the rounds at other film festivals in 2024, including the Telluride Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” takes place in Iran, mostly in the capital city of Tehran. It’s the city where a family of four live during a tumultous time of political unrest in Iran, where activists (many of them young people) protest on the street against government oppressions.

The family of four who are at the center of the story are:

  • Iman (played by Missagh Zareh), the family religious patriarch, who has recently been promoted to being an investigating judge for the Iranian government.
  • Najmeh (played by Soheila Golestani), Iman’s wife, the family matriarch who is very pro-government and in favor of strict traditional values until certain events give her a different perspective.
  • Rezvan (played by Mahsa Rostami), the older daughter of Iman and Najmeh, who’s about 17 or 18 years old.
  • Sana (played by Setareh Maleki), the younger daughter Iman and Najmeh, who’s about 15 or 16 years old.

Rezvan is more outspoken than Sana, who is quieter and more obedient. Iman’s promotion comes with some problems. A colleague named Ghaderi (played by Reza Akhlaghi) tells Iman that Iman’s promotion was somewhat controversial because a colleague wanted his own man to get the job. Iman is also getting pressured to give a death indictment to a political prisoner when Iman hasn’t even looked at this prisoner’s file yet.

As part of Iman’s job, he has been given a service gun, which he tells Najmeh to hide in their home. Around the same time, Rezvan pleads with Najmeh to give a teenage friend named Sadaf (played by Niousha Akhshi) a place to stay for a few nights because Sadaf’s college dorm room isn’t available yet. Rezvan reluctantly agrees.

What happens next is a series of events causing increasing turmoil within this family. The catalyst for the most tension-filled aspects of the story have to do with Iman’s reactions when he finds out that his gun has gone missing. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” has solid acting performances and gripping cinematography that make this movie compelling enough for viewers who want to see how it will end.

Neon will release “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” in select U.S. cinemas on November 27, 2024.

2024 New York Film Festival: Main slate and Spotlight film announced

August 8, 2024

Richard Gere in “Oh, Canada” (Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

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 LegorretaImelda 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.

Secure your seats with Festival Passes, limited quantities on sale now with discounts through August 20. 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 pre-sale access. NYFF62 press and industry accreditation is now open through August 19. 

62nd New York Film Festival Main Slate

Opening Night
Nickel Boys
Dir. RaMell Ross

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

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in “The Room Next Door” (Photo courtesy of El Deseo)

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

Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan in “Blitz” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)

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

Kani Kusruti and Divya Prabha in “All We Imagine as Light” (Photo courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films)

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

Mikey Madison in “Anora” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

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

“April”

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

Alessandro Nivola and Adrien Brody in “The Brutalist” (Photo courtesy of Focus Features)

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

“By the Stream” (Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild)

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

Caught by the Tides (Photo courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films)

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

“Dahomey” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

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

“The Damned” (Photo courtesy of Les Films du Losange)

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

“Eephus”

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

“Grand Tour” (Photo courtesy of MUBI)

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

“Happyend” (Photo courtesy of Magnify)

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

Marianne Jean-Baptiste in “Hard Truths” (Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street)

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

“Harvest” (Photo courtesy of The Match Factory)

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

“Misericordia” (Photo courtesy of Sideshow/Janus Films)

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

“My Undesirable Friends: Part I — The Last Air in Moscow”

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

“No Other Land” (Photo courtesy of Rachel Szor)

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

Richard Gere and Uma Thurman in “Oh, Canada” (Photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

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

“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” (Photo courtesy of A24)

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

“Pepe”

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

(Soheila Golestani, Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki in “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Photo courtesy of Neon)

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

Vincent Cassel in “Shrouds”

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

“Stranger Eyes”

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

“Suburban Fury”

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

“Transamazonia” (Photo courtesy of Cinema Defacto, Gaijin Aldabra Films, Pandora Filmproduktion, Point Productions)

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 in “A Traveler’s Needs” (Photo courtesy of Cinema Guild)

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

“​​Việt and Nam” (Photo courtesy of Strand Releasing)

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

“Who by Fire” (Photo courtesy of Balthazar Lab)

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

“Youth (Hard Times)” (Photo courtesy of Icarus Films)

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

“Youth (Homecoming)” (Photo courtesy of Icarus Films)

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.

Become an FLC Member by August 13 to secure NYFF62 pre-sale access!

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 LoveA Bigger SplashCall Me by Your NameSuspiriaBones 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.  

Explore all announced NYFF62 films. Spotlight, Currents, Revivals, and Talks sections will be announced soon–sign up for NYFF updates for the latest news.

The NYFF Main Slate and Spotlight 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 LegorretaImelda 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.

2024 New York Film Festival: ‘Nickel Boys’ is opening night film, ‘The Room Next Door’ is centerpiece film, ‘Blitz’ is closing night film

August 1, 2024

Saoirse Ronan in “Blitz” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)

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.

Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore in “The Room Next Door” (Photo courtesy of El Deseo/Sony Pictures Classics)

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 Verge of 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).

Elliott Heffernan in “Blitz” (Photo courtesy of Apple TV+)

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 McQueenwhose 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.org and follow @TheNYFF on X and Instagram.

Review: ‘Janet Planet,’ starring Julianne Nicholson, Zoe Ziegler, Elias Koteas, Will Patton and Sophie Okonedo

July 2, 2024

by Carla Hay

Zoe Ziegler and Julianne Nicholson in “Janet Planet” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“Janet Planet”

Directed by Annie Baker

Culture Representation: Taking place in 1991, in western Massachusetts, the dramatic film “Janet Planet” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: An 11-year-old girl and her single mother have various uncomfortable adjustments as the girl learns to be more independent and not as tolerant of the people who come in and out of her mother’s life.

Culture Audience: “Janet Planet” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of star Julianne Nicholson and don’t mind watching a slow-paced but well-acted movie about mother-daughter relationships.

Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler in “Janet Planet” (Photo courtesy of A24)

Thoughtful and with nuanced performances, “Janet Planet” can be recommended to people who don’t mind watching slow-paced “slice of life” movies. This realistic drama shows the gradual shift in a mother-daughter relationship. Usually movies with this sort of topic has a lot of melodrama or plot developments that are often seen in soap operas. “Janet Planet” isn’t that type of movie. Rather, it shows how relationships can change during when life is mundane and uneventful.

“Janet Planet” is the feature-film debut of writer/director Annie Baker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright. The movie had its world premiere at the 2023 Telluride Film Festival and screened at other festivals, including the 2023 New York Film Festival and the 2024 Berlin International Film Festival. “Janet Planet” takes place during the summer of 1991, in rural western Massachusetts.

The movie’s opening scene shows 11-year-old Lacy (played by Zoe Ziegler) calling her single mother on a pay phone while Lacy is at summer camp. Lacy wants to go home and makes an alarming statement when she tells her mother: “I’m going to kill myself if you don’t get me.” By the time that Lucy’s mother Janet (played by Julianne Nicholson) arrives to pick up Lacy, Lacy has changed her mind and wants to stay at the camp.

However, Janet has another reason for Lacy to come home: Janet’s live-in boyfriend Wayne (played by Will Patton), who’s about 15 to 20 years older than Janet, has had a motorcycle accident and is recovering at home. Lacy actually doesn’t need to be at home, but because Janet insists that Lacy come home, it’s an indication that Janet wants Lacy there for emotional support. Lacy’s father is not seen or mentioned in the movie.

Lacy doesn’t want to introduce Janet to the other people at camp, which is the first sign that things are somewhat tense between Lacy and Janet. Lacy tells Janet that she wants to stay at camp. But Janet says, “I already convinced them to give me part of the deposit back.”

Lacy, by her own admission, is an introverted loner who has a hard time making friends with people. She likes to read and draw in her spare time. Lacy also takes piano lessons from a an elderly woman named Davina (played by Mary Shultz), who is kind and patient. Lacy is not rude but she doesn’t have a “cute and cuddly” personality either. “Janet Planet” is about how Lacy stops blindly worshipping her mother and sees Janet for the flawed human being that she is.

Janet is a self-employed licensed acupuncturist who has a home office. The name of her business is Janet Planet. Unlike Lacy, who has a very independent personality, Janet constantly craves approval and companionship. It’s one of the reasons why Janet lets people into her life who might not be good for her. At one point in the movie, Janet makes a comment that she’s not beautiful but she can get people to fall in love with her.

Janet and Lacy have the type of household where when they have meals at the same table as other people, there is little or no conversation. When Janet and Lacy (who often sleep in the same bed together) have any heart-to-heart talks, Janet gets uncomfortable if Lacy says things that Janet doesn’t want to hear. Janet gives the impression that she’d rather not hear about any angst that Lacy might be feeling.

Here’s an example of one of their conversations: Lacy tells Janet, “You know what’s funny? Every moment in my life is hell.” Janet replies, “I don’t like it when you say things like that. You seem pretty happy.” Lacy says, “It’s hell. I don’t think it will last though.” Janet admits, “I’m actually pretty unhappy too.”

“Janet Planet” is divided into three chapters, with each chapter focusing on how a different person enters the lives of Janet and Lacy and how each person’s presence affects Janet and Lacy. The first chapter is about Wayne’s effect on this small family. The second chapter is about Janet reconnecting with a long-lost friend named Regina (played by Sophie Okonedo), an actress in a puppet theater collective that has a hippie lifestyle. The third chapter is about Janet spending time with Avi (played by Elias Koteas), the cult-like leader of the puppet theater collective.

Wayne is sullen and keeps mostly to himself, but he has a nasty temper that affects his relationship with Janet. Wayne also seems to have mental health issues because he is seen wandering around aimlessly on the front lawn at night. Regina is friendly and quirky and doesn’t talk down Lacy. Regina needs a place to stay, so Janet lets Regina temporarily live in the household. Avi, who is Regina’s ex-lover, thinks of himself as an intellectual philosopher, but everything about him seems like he’s a con artist. It isn’t long before Avi makes it known to Janet that he’s interested in getting romantically involved with her.

“Janet Planet” doesn’t always have clear resolutions for the dilemmas and conflicts presented in the story because people tend to drift in and out of Janet’s life without necessarily having closure. Lacy is not shown bonding with anyone her age except for a day when Wayne’s daughter Sequoia (played by Edie Moon Kearns) spends time with Wayne, Janet and Lacy at a shopping mall. Wayne has a visitation rights arrangement with Sequoia’s mother, who is briefly heard but not seen in the movie when Sequoia leaves for this visit and her mother says some words of greeting in a friendly tone. Lacy and Sequoia get along with each other almost immediately and have some fun inventing their own language.

After this get-together, Lacy asks Wayne why Sequoia doesn’t live part-time with him. Wayne refuses to answer the question and gets upset, which obviously means that it’s a sore subject for him. Very little is mentioned about Wayne’s family history except that Wayne has grandchildren and he has a 20-year-old son named Eric, who “lives in California and Iraq,” according to Wayne. Wayne’s grandchildren and Eric are not seen in the movie. It can be presumed by Wayne’s statement that Eric is in the military and is stationed in Iraq.

One of the best things about “Janet Planet” is the talented performance by Ziegler, who makes her feature-film debut in “Janet Planet.” This movie is named after Janet, but it’s through Lacy’s perspective that the story has its heart and soul. Ziegler’s performance is very natural and never once looks like she’s trying too hard to be a good actress. “Janet Planet” doesn’t have any grand, sweeping statements about life but it does offer some pointed observations about the time in everyone’s life when a child begins to see parenthood in less idealistic ways.

A24 released “Janet Planet” in select U.S. cinemas on June 21, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on June 28, 2024.

Copyright 2017-2024 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX