Main slate of the 57th New York Film Festival (NYFF) announced

Film at Lincoln Center has announced the lineup of the 29 films that will make up the main slate of the 57th New York Film Festival, including the US premieres of Atlantics, Bacurau and Wasp Network.

The lineup joins the previous announcements of Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman as the festival opener, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story as the centerpiece and Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn as the closing night film.

NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said, “Cinema is the domain of freedom, and it’s an ongoing struggle to maintain that freedom. It’s getting harder and harder for anyone to make films of real ambition anywhere in this world. Each and every movie in this lineup, big or small, whether it’s made in Italy or Senegal or New York City, is the result of artists behind the camera fighting on multiple fronts to realize a vision and create something new in the world. That includes masters like Martin Scorsese and Pedro Almodóvar and younger filmmakers coming to the festival for the first time like Mati Diop and Angela Schanelec.”

This year’s Main Slate showcases films from 17 different countries, including new titles from celebrated auteurs, extraordinary work from directors making their NYFF debuts, and captivating features that earned acclaim at international festivals. Nine films in the festival were honored at Cannes, including Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or–winner Parasite; Grand Prix–winner Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story, directed by Mati Diop, an alum of annual FLC series Art of the Real and winner of the 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist award; Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, NYFF’s Film Comment Presents selection and winner of both the Queer Palm and the Best Screenplay prize; Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, awarded Best Actor for Antonio Banderas; Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles’ Jury Prize–winner Bacurau; Young Ahmed, which brought home the Best Director prize for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; and three Un Certain Regard winners, including Oliver Laxe’s Jury Prize–winner Fire Will Come, Albert Serra’s Special Jury Prize–winner Liberté, and Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole, which collected the Best Director prize. Top prize winners from the Berlinale will also appear in the Main Slate: Nadav Lapid’s Golden Bear–winner Synonyms and Angela Schanelec’s I Was at Home, But…, which won the Silver Bear for Best Director. Olivier Assayas makes his 10th appearance at the festival with Wasp Network, while other returning filmmakers include Arnaud Desplechin, Kelly Reichardt, Corneliu Porumboiu, Bertrand Bonello, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Marco Bellocchio, Pedro Costa, and Agnès Varda, whose final film Varda by Agnès will screen posthumously. Making their New York Film Festival debuts are New Directors/New Films alum Pietro Marcello, Lou Ye, and Federico Veiroj, whose work has also screened in FLC’s Neighboring Scenes series, and additional filmmakers new to the festival include Diao Yinan, Koji Fukada, and Justine Triet, an alum of FLC’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. 

This year’s New York Film Festival poster is designed by Main Slate director Pedro Almodóvar, whose film Pain and Glory marks his 11th NYFF appearance. Speaking about his inspiration for the design, Almodóvar said, “For the basis of this year’s New York Film Festival poster, I used a photo of a still life that I exhibited at the Marlborough Gallery. The masses of color on which the text is printed are reminiscent of an animated sequence that appears in my latest film, Pain and Glory, though for this version I have chosen less bright colors, using muted shades of red, blue, green, and mauve. These colors correspond to the palette in which I seem to move lately.”

The 57th New York Film Festival runs September 27-October 13.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes Dennis Lim, FLC Director of Programming, and Florence Almozini, FLC Associate Director of Programming.

The 57th New York Film Festival Main Slate

Opening Night
The Irishman (World Premiere)
Dir. Martin Scorsese 

Centerpiece
Marriage Story
Dir. Noah Baumbach

Closing Night
Motherless Brooklyn
Dir. Edward Norton

Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story (US Premiere)
Dir. Mati Diop

Bacurau (US Premiere)
Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles

Beanpole
Dir. Kantemir Balagov

Fire Will Come (US Premiere)
Dir. Oliver Laxe

First Cow
Dir. Kelly Reichardt

A Girl Missing (US Premiere)
Dir. Koji Fukada

I Was at Home, But… (US Premiere)
Dir. Angela Schanelec

Liberté (US Premiere)
Dir. Albert Serra

Martin Eden (US Premiere)
Dir. Pietro Marcello

The Moneychanger (US Premiere)
Dir. Federico Veiroj

Oh Mercy! (North American Premiere)
Dir. Arnaud Desplechin

Pain and Glory
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar

Parasite
Dir. Bong Joon-ho

Film Comment Presents
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Dir. Céline Sciamma

Saturday Fiction (US Premiere)
Dir. Lou Ye

Sibyl (US Premiere)
Dir. Justine Triet

Synonyms (US Premiere)
Dir. Nadav Lapid

To the Ends of the Earth (US Premiere)
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

The Traitor (US Premiere)
Dir. Marco Bellocchio

Varda by Agnès
Dir. Agnès Varda

Vitalina Varela (US Premiere)
Dir. Pedro Costa

Wasp Network (US Premiere)
Dir. Olivier Assayas

The Whistlers
Dir. Corneliu Porumboiu

The Wild Goose Lake (US Premiere)
Dir. Diao Yinan

Young Ahmed (North American Premiere)
Dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Zombi Child (US Premiere)
Dir. Bertrand Bonello

NYFF Special Events, Spotlight on Documentary, Convergence, Shorts, Retrospective, Revivals, and Projections sections, as well as filmmaker conversations and panels, will be announced in the coming weeks.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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