NEW YORK (AP) – This year’s New York Film Festival will take place largely in practice and screening, organizers announced Thursday, while revealing a poster with new films through Chloe Zhao, Steve McQueen and Azazel Jacobs.
The main fall film festivals, competing for the possibility of offering the most productive films of the season, have worked this year in concert to recover what can from a more limited diversity of films and drastic relief in the number of participants. Many films chosen through Film at Lincoln Center, which hosts the New York Film Festival, will also be held at the Venice and Toronto Festivals.
“The disorientation and uncertainty of this complicated year has brought us back to basics,” Dennis Lim, the festival’s programming director, said in a statement. “Simply put, the main list is our collective response to a central question: what movies do we care about right now?”
As previously announced, the 58th New York Film Festival will begin with McQueen’s “Lovers Rock”; “Nomadland” through Chloe Zhao is the centerpiece; and “French Exit” through Azazel Jacobs, with Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges. Two other McQueen films – “Mangrove” and “Red, White and Blue” – will be screened at the festival, all of their upcoming television anthology “Small Axe” for the BBC and Amazon in the West Indies in London.
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Venice and Toronto have already announced their lists, which are also largely absent from the kind of feverishly expected premieres that regularly accompany festivals. Last year, Martin Scorsese’s “Irishman” made its opening night debut at the New York Film Festival. This year, with a dubious and delayed Oscar season, so far Netflix has moved far away from fall festivals.
Toronto Film Festival takes a step back with red carpets and virtual screenings
But many will be eager to see NYFF’s selections. They include: “City Council” through Frederick Wiseman; “Swimming until the sea turns blue” through Jia Zhangke; “Blue” through Christian Petzold; “The Woman Who Ran” through Hong Sangsoo and “Time” through Garrett Bradley, winner of the award at Sundance in January.
The 58th New York Film Festival will be held a week earlier, from September 17 to October 17. 11. This is the first overseen by director Eugene Hernandez and Lim’s new NYFF control team, following the departure of Kent Jones.