62nd New York Film Festival Main Slate Includes Cannes Winner ‘Anora,’ plus ‘Hard Truths,’ ‘The Brutalist’ and More

Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) has announced the 32 films that will comprise the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival (NYFF), taking place September 27–October 14 at Lincoln Center.

This year’s Main Slate features films from 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.

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.

“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.”

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.

Looking at the Venice lineup and recent announcements from Toronto, a handful of films are mysteriously absent, including Pablo Larraín’s Maria, starring Angelina Jolie as legendary opera singer Maria Callas, and Luca Guadagnino’s Queer, starring Daniel Craig and based on the seminal William S. Burroughs novel. Both films are also curiously still without U.S, distribution a mere weeks before their premieres.

The NYFF Main Slate selection committee is chaired by Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director, and includes Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, K. Austin Collins, and Rachel Rosen.

NYFF62 is generously supported by Co-Chairs Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Imelda and Peter Sobiloff, and Nanna and Dan Stern; and Vice-Chairs Susannah Gray and John Lyons, and Tara Kelleher and Roy Zuckerberg.

NYFF and its four partner venues across the city include Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) (Brooklyn), The Bronx Museum (Bronx), and the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens).

Festival Passes are available in limited quantities 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.

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