Tribeca Film Festival: Tickets now available for 4 screenings at Beacon Theatre – ‘Love, Gilda’ ‘Scarface’ Schindler’s List’ ‘Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1’

In Love, Gilda, director Lisa D’Apolito uses rare personal recordings and journal entries to tell Radner’s story in her own words. Along the way, friends and admirers, including Amy Poehler, Cecily Strong, Lorne Michaels, and a host of others, offer their most cherished memories of this brilliant trailblazer.

SCREENING TIMES

WED 4/18 7:00 PM Beacon ADD BUY NOW
THU 4/19 9:30 PM Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-5 ADD REDEEM
TUE 4/24 4:00 PM Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-11 ADD REDEEM
THU 4/26 9:45 PM Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-11 ADD REDEEM

Brian De Palma filtered Howard Hawks’s 1932 classic Scarface through The Godfather’s somber consideration for the humanizing motives of corrupt men. It went on to receive three Golden Globe nominations and has become one of the most referenced films in pop culture. Al Pacino delivers his riskiest performance in a career-defining role, garnering a cult following for the film. Revisit the gangland masterpiece thirty-five years later, a rich, harrowing, eminently quotable ride to excess and self-destruction that laid the groundwork for the myriad of anti-hero stories to come.

SCREENING TIMES

THU 4/19 7:00 PM Beacon ADD BUY NOW

Steven Spielberg’s 1993 epic masterpiece Schindler’s List remains one of contemporary cinema’s most challenging and sensitive portraits on the human toll of the Holocaust. Anchored by stunning performances from Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley, the film received acclaim and went on to win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, with an additional five nominations. Twenty-five years later, Schindler’s List continues to be widely considered to be one of the most important films of all time.

SCREENING TIMES

THU 4/26 6:30 PM Beacon ADD BUY NOW

Through interviews with Michael Jordan, Spike Lee, and more, this vibrant documentary tells the origin story of the Air Jordan, and the impact it had on sports, hip-hop, and the birth of sneaker culture.

SCREENING TIMES

FRI 4/27 8:00 PM Beacon ADD BUY NOW
SAT 4/28 7:00 PM Cinépolis Chelsea 9 ADD REDEEM
SUN 4/29 9:30 PM Regal Cinemas Battery Park 11-5 ADD REDEEM

Review: ‘VIRGINIA MINNESOTA’ is a quirky and heartfelt road movie.

 Daniel Stine’s feature film debut, Virginia Minnesota, received its world premiere on March 2nd at the Cinequest Film Festival and stars a primarily female cast led by Aurora Perrineau and Rachel Hendrix.

Two young women, torn apart by a childhood tragedy, unexpectedly reunite and embark on an illuminating 24-hour journey, where they unlock memories of long forgotten innocence and what it means to truly believe.

This unexpected indie takes your heart by surprise within minutes. It’s part folklore, part road movie, and all charm. When four girls are called together to hear the reading of the will of their former headmistress, sparks fly and memories burn with truth and misunderstanding. I was not expecting this story to turn into a road movie at all, although with a character that is a suitcase with a personality (you’ll just have to watch to understand what I mean) I guess I should have predicted it in hindsight. While a small piece of the plot does revolve around a fiancé, the dialogue definitely passes The Bechdel Test with flying colors. Aurora Perrineau and Rachel Hendrix have a chemistry that is fun and comfortable.They challenge one another at every turn making Virginia Minnesota just as delightful as it is insightful. Guilt, repressed feelings and some seriously quirky encounters create a truly lovely and endlessly engrossing film.

VIRGINIA MINNESOTA – Trailer from Daniel Stine on Vimeo.

Virginia Minnesota premiered at the 2018 Cinequest Film Festival on March 2nd at 9:30 PM.

Virginia Minnesota was recently awarded the Global Grand Jury award for Best Hollywood Film at the Hollywood Film Festival (HFF), with Aurora Perrineau and Rachel Hendrix receiving special mention as Exceptional Emerging Artists. The film is produced by Rushaway Pictures, with cinematography by Pedro Ciampolini and a score by Gary Dworetsky.

Review: ‘Keep The Change’ is a laugh out loud funny and charming as hell.

Set in New York, the story centers on the struggles of David as he comes to terms with his own high-functioning autism, when he unexpectedly falls for a quirky and outgoing woman whose lust for life both irks and fascinates him. Keep the Change is based on an award-winning short film developed by Rachel Israel and Brandon Polansky that was inspired by Polansky’s experiences at Adaptations, a community for adults on the autism spectrum.

Keep The Change premiered last year at The Tribeca Film Festival to rave reviews and won awards for best U.S. narrative feature and best new narrative director along with a special mention for the Nora Ephron Prize.

This film is a sidesplitting winner. Outside of the documentary genre, we’re not often let into the world of adults on the autism spectrum. Keep The Change follows the beginnings of a relationship between two very different individuals who are ultimately seeking to be accepted and cherished for who they are. The issues of self-love, sexuality, class, are addressed in endearing and tongue-in-cheek ways. Newcomers and leads Brandon Polansky and Samantha Elisofon have an insane chemistry. The two appear to be polar opposites making their banter all the more entertaining. Any time you pit a glum and cynical individual against an outgoing and seemingly innocent one, interesting things are bound to happen. The dialogue is biting, witty, and oftentimes offensive, keeping the viewer on their toes and thoroughly amused. Writer/director Rachel Israel has given us a true gem. This unique romcom will undoubtedly charm the pants off of you and teach you some much-needed tolerance.

Kino Lorber will open the film in New York on March 16th at the Quad Cinema, in Los Angeles on April 20th at Laemmle Town Center and Laemmle Royal Theatre followed by a national rollout.

Keep The Change stars newcomers Brandon Polansky and Samantha Elisofon. Written and directed by Rachel Israelthe film also stars veteran actress Jessica Walter (“Arrested Development”), Tibor Feldman and non-professional actors with Autism, Nicky Gottlieb and Will Deaver. 

Review: ‘PERMISSION’ allows an audience to ask ‘what if?’ for themselves.

***Official Selection of the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival***

Anna (Rebecca Hall) and Will (Dan Stevens), were each other’s first every-things: first kiss, first love, first and only relationship. Now, 10 years in, at Anna’s 30th birthday party, as Will is about to propose, the couple’s best friend makes a drunken toast, suggesting that they should sleep around before their inevitable marriage. The joke lands like a lead balloon, but the thought lingers until Anna proposes that they try opening their relationship – as a sexual experiment. Together, they venture out of the purely monogamous boundaries of their relationship and, along the way, evolve.

Permission is one of the most honest portrayals of how awkward true intimacy is. When you are so comfortable with someone to the point of predictability, does that have the potential to become a death sentence for a relationship? Life’s ‘what ifs” are some of the most tempting ideas a person can entertain. The chemistry between the entire cast is palpable. You will find yourself falling in love with Hall and Stevens and definitely crushing on Arnaud, Gershon, Craig, Spector, and Sudeikis. This true ensemble of actors along with writer/director Brian Crano has given us a gift. What may appear on the surface as small moments in the script are incredibly impactful due to some really brilliant acting and writing. Permission has an authenticity that sneaks up on you. It’s those moments that define the story and make it so relatable. The music is perfectly paired with each scene, almost becoming its own fly on the wall secondary cast member. Overall, the film is a refreshing look at adult relationships and how to find horny contacts. It’s fun and engrossing and different. It dares to challenge the typical rom-com genre and that’s why you should seek it out.

Permission is in theaters today! Check out the trailer below.

Starring Rebecca Hall (Christine, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women), Dan Stevens (Beauty and the Beast, Downton Abbey)Gina Gershon (Empire), Francois Arnaud (Midnight Texas), David Joseph Craig (The Gift), Morgan Spector (Chuck, Boardwalk Empire), and Jason Sudeikis

Written and Directed By Brian Crano (A Bag of Hammers, Dog Food)

Produced by Rebecca Hall, Margot Hand, Girl Tharan, Joshua Thurston

Tribeca Film Fest: ‘Love, Gilda’ to open at Beacon Theatre April 18th

An intimate portrait honoring comedy legend Gilda Radner in her own words with readings from her personal diaries and candid interviews with Chevy Chase, Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Cecily Strong and others…

The Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, will open its 17th edition with the world premiere of LOVE, GILDA on Wednesday, April 18, 2018. CNN Films presents the feature length documentary – produced by 3 Faces Films in association with Motto Pictures – which opens a window into the world of celebrated Emmy® and Grammy® award-winning comedian Gilda Radner who became a cultural icon the moment audiences first laughed with her on Saturday Night Live’s debut episode. A trailblazer for female comedians, her impact on the entertainment industry has endured almost four decades. The film will premiere opening night of the Tribeca Film Festival at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, the city she called home when she catapulted to fame. Tickets for Opening Night go on sale on March 20 atwww.tribecafilm.com/festival. The 2018 Tribeca Film Festival runs April 18-29.

LOVE, GILDA is directed and produced by Lisa D’Apolito with the support of the Gilda Radner estate. The film is a true autobiography of a pioneering woman, told in her own words and in her own voice. It weaves together audiotapes, rare home movies, diary entries, and interviews with her friends and those inspired by her including: Bill Hader, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Cecily Strong; SNL original cast members Chevy Chase, Laraine Newman, and Paul Shaffer; as well as Lorne Michaels (SNL creator and producer), Alan Zweibel (SNL writer), Stephen Schwartz (Broadway composer); Andrew Alexander (CEO of Second City), and long-time friend and actor Martin Short.

Gilda Radner captivated millions of television viewers as an original cast member of Saturday Night Live from 1975-1980. The popularity of her now classic comedic characters Roseanne Roseannadanna, Emily Litella, and Lisa Loopner fueled the young talent to meteoric fame in television, movies, and on Broadway. After finding happiness in love with Gene Wilder she received the cruelest joke of all, cancer. Her fight against the disease served as an inspiration to people impacted by the illness to stay positive and to keep laughing no matter what challenges life brings you.

“As a Festival that has always supported women’s voices and is largely run by women we are incredibly proud to celebrate the inimitable voice of Gilda during the opening night of our Festival,” said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Founder and CEO of the Tribeca Film Festival. “Gilda Radner was a powerful comedic force of nature who opened doors and thrilled audiences while becoming one of the most prolific comedians of a generation. Her cutting edge humor was only second to her dedicated leadership in cancer care with her eponymous Gilda’s Club.”

“LOVE, GILDA is the right film at the right time and the perfect way to open our Festival,” said Paula Weinstein, EVP of Tribeca Enterprises. “Gilda is a woman for the ages, an extraordinary talent in film, television, and theater who overcame her personal struggles to make us laugh, to make us cry. She understood the healing power of laughter not simply for her audience but in her own life as she struggled with cancer and lead the way for all of us to make the world a better place.”

First time feature filmmaker Lisa D’Apolito commented, “I fell in love with Gilda Radner while doing pro bono work at Gilda’s Club, the cancer support organization Gene Wilder founded in honor of Gilda, in Greenwich Village where I grew up. This started my journey to discover who Gilda was as a person and as a performer. Gilda inspired me and many other women with her remarkable spirit and unique talent that changed the world of comedy. I’m grateful and honored to share the extraordinary legacy of Gilda Radner at the Tribeca Film Festival.”

LOVE, GILDA brings audiences into the honest and whimsical world of a beloved performer, whose greatest role was sharing her story. The film is produced by Bronwyn Berry, Meryl Goldsmith, and James Tumminia, with Julie Goldman, Christopher Clements, Carolyn Hepburn (Motto Pictures), Alan and Robin Zweibel, Amy Entelis and Courtney Sexton (CNN Films) serving as executive producers.

Submarine is handling sales for the film.

The 2018 Tribeca Film Festival will announce its feature film slate on March 7.

Hashtag: #Tribeca2018
Twitter: @Tribeca
Instagram: @tribeca
Facebook: facebook.com/Tribeca
Snapchat: TribecaFilmFest

 

Netflix News: What do Jack Black, Kathy Bates & Barack Obama have in common?

They are all starring in originals releasing today on Netflix! Happy Friday!

  • My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman: Barack Obama
  • The Polka King
  • Disjointed: Part 2
  • Stand Up Comedy Special – Tom Segura: Disgraceful
  • Somebody Feed Phil: Season 1


My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman: Barack Obama

“David Letterman, the longest-serving host in U.S. late night television – the original host of Late Night (NBC) and The Late Show (CBS) – is returning to television for a new series for Netflix.

The yet-to-be-named, six-episode series has Letterman combining two interests for which he is renowned: in-depth conversations with extraordinary people, and in-the-field segments expressing his curiosity and humor. In each hour-long episode, Letterman will conduct a long-form conversation with a singular guest – and will also explore topics on his own, away from the studio. The series is set to premiere in 2018.”

www.netflix.com/letterman


The Polka King

“Local Pennsylvania polka legend Jan Lewan develops a plan to get rich that shocks his fans and lands him in jail.

This exuberant tragicomedy recounts the remarkable but true story of the rise and fall of Polish émigré Jan Lewan (Jack Black), from striving tchotchke shop owner in the ’70s to the undisputed “King of Pennsylvania Polka” in the early ’90s. Lewan pursued the American Dream by any means necessary, fleecing investors and bribing officials to build a personal musical empire in what became the world’s only known Polka Ponzi scheme. Swept up by Lewan’s charismatic charm are his devoted wife, Marla (Jenny Slate), and his neurotic sidekick, Mickey (Jason Schwartzman).

Polka King stars Jack Black, Jason Schwartzman, Jenny Slate, Jacki Weaver and J.B. Smoove. Directed by Maya Forbes and written by Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky. Produced by Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Stuart Cornfeld, Monica Levinson, Priyanka Mattoo, David Permut & Shivani Rawat.”

2017 Sundance Film Festival Official Selection


Disjointed: Part 2

From Emmy winning creators Chuck Lorre and David Javerbaum, Disjointed is a modern twist on the American Dream, a story of the highs, the lows, and half-baked drama of a family-run marijuana dispensary, which sells products similar to that delta 8 flower from CBD Hemp Direct.

The irreverent workplace comedy stars Academy Award winner Kathy Bates as Ruth, a lifelong advocate for legalization whose dreams are finally realized when she becomes the owner of a well-known cannabis dispensary that provides advice in regards of CBD oil dosage in LA. Cannabis popularity keeps growing everyday as this is an alternative medicine for many which has no secondary effects on our bodies. The  Synchronicity Hemp Oil is available now in Dabbers Club Botanicals.

It’s an all-natural, cold-pressed extract derived from industrial hemp plants with no THC or other cannabinoids found within it so you can feel confident about the purity of products like the Fresh Bros THCO products! Ruth’s cannabis cohorts include three budtenders, her twenty-something son and deeply troubled security guard. In Part 2 of the series, Ruth and her squad are back in business (after being shut down by the DEA) and are celebrating this next chapter in their lives as they navigate through new milestones and misadventures at Ruth’s Alternative Caring. Disjointed also stars Chris Redd, Nicole Sullivan, Tone Bell, Betsy Sodaro, Elizabeth Alderfer, Dougie Baldwin, Elizabeth Ho and Aaron Moten.

netflix.com/disjointed

https://youtu.be/ly019ZF0lsk


Stand Up Comedy Special

Tom Segura: Disgraceful

Comic Tom Segura takes no prisoners in his return with his second Netflix Original Stand-up comedy special, “Tom Segura: Disgraceful.” Filmed in front of a packed audience at the Paramount Theatre in Denver, Segura unapologetically calls it like he sees it as he reflects on the meaning of life, the different ways that fast food chains shame you, and why having a baby is the most selfish thing you can do.


Somebody Feed Phil: Season 1

The new original documentary series from the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, Phil Rosenthal, takes viewers on a goodwill eating tour of the world (Tel Aviv, Lisbon, Saigon, Mexico City, New Orleans and Bangkok.) Along for the ride are Phil’s friends, family and his trademark sense of humor.

Review: ‘Penalty’

Penalty

Release Date: September 23, 2016

Guest review from Reel Reviews Over Brews

Aldo Iuliano’s award winning drama Penalty has been making waves in the film world, as this wonderful film has received nearly thirty awards and has been selected for five Academy qualifying Film Festivals. Penalty shares the story of a group of guys playing football in the middle of nowhere. There is a much more than a simple victory at stake.

Penalty is one of three short movies we’ve recently watched that are up for Oscar nominations. It’s no surprise why they are all up for nominations either. Penalty starts off a little tough to follow with a bunch of guys playing soccer, but something seems to be a little different… and that is the only reason why we rated it a little lower than the other two shorts. About halfway through is when it all begins to make sense. It’s amazing that in just 15 minutes you can feel like a movie is so complete. There are movies that are two to three hours long that don’t do that. What is even more amazing is none of the actors in this movie were profession actors… they were just guys that the director got to know by living alongside of them. Makes it even more amazing that it turned out so well. We don’t want to give away too much from any of these movies so our reviews will be a little shorter than normal, but if you have 15 minutes to spare, you should absolutely see Penalty.

Reel ROB Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Post Credits Scene: No

We want to thank our friends at Reel News Daily for allowing us to do this guest review!

DOC NYC review: ‘Abacus: Small Enough To Jail’ will cause you to rage against the machine.

ABACUS: SMALL ENOUGH TO JAIL

 Abacus Federal Savings Bank is a modest institution of New York’s Chinatown that came under harsh prosecution in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. While other banks were considered ‘too big to fail,’ Abacus was ‘small enough to jail.’ Filmmaker Steve James (Hoop Dreams) follows the bank’s founder Thomas Sung and his family as they fight back in court against Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance, Jr. in an effort to redeem their name and to dispel biases against Chinatown. Courtesy of PBS Distribution
Wall Street got a free pass, once again. But someone had to be made an example of. Most of us probably didn’t now that one bank was taken to court, but it’s no one you’ve ever heard of outside of Chinatown in Manhattan. In Abacus: Small Enough To Jail, the saying, “No good deed goes unpunished,” could not be truer. You will be witness to one family’s battle as they are thrown under the bus to save face.The film is filled with strong daughters who go to bat for their father, family honor, their employees, and community. It will floor you as you watch the bogus claims and prejudice that occurs because it seemed to be easier than taking on the Wall Street household names. Abacus: Small Enough To Jail will expose lies we’ve been fed for years. Get ready to rage.

Showtimes:

Wed Nov 15, 2017, 11:45 AM Cinepolis Chelsea
Official Site: https://www.abacusmovie.com
On Twitter: AbacusMovie
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abacusmovie
Director: Steve James
Producer: Mark Mitten, Julie Goldman
Cinematographer: Tom Bergmann
Editor: John Farbrother, David E. Simpson
Music: Joshua Abrams
Running Time: 88
Language: English, Mandarin & Cantonese with English subtitles
Country: USA
Year: 2016

DOCNYC review: ‘What Haunts Us’ is unfortunately a timely film.

Why are the men of Charleston, South Carolina’s Porter Gaud School killing themselves? Alarmed by the latest in a long-running series of suicides from her high school in 1979, filmmaker Paige Goldberg Tolmach returns to her hometown for answers. Stonewalled by administrators, she mines her own memories, and those of her former classmates, to uncover long-held secrets, revealing a disturbing cover-up centered around a popular teacher and sports coach.

With years of sexual assault/abuse allegations surrounding the current political administration and entertainment industry, let us not forget that this problem is pervasive anywhere and everywhere. The coverups go deep and pride and reputation often cause the guilty to go free. Shame is a killer of dreams and, as we see in What Haunts Us, it is also a killer of people. Unravelling the mystery that surrounds not even a well-kept secret in this particular story will anger and shock you. Along with intimate sit-down interviews with our subjects, both innocent and guilty, memories are illustrated in beautifully vibrant colors. What Haunts Us is a stunning film that will hopefully open eyes to the ongoing abuse so many face on a daily basis. We have to change our rhetoric and realize the consequences of staying silent.

WHAT HAUNTS US
at DOC NYC Film Festival
Monday
 Nov 13, 2017
7:30 PM with Q/A following with
Paige Goldberg Tolmach, Matt Tolmach and
Special Guests from the Film

IFC CENTER
323 6th Ave. New York, New York 10014

Review: ‘MAYHEM’ is contagious fun.

Have you ever dreamed of punching Karen from Human Resources in her stupid face? Sure you have, who hasn’t?! In a new unapologetically violent and incredibly awesome film, you can live vicariously through others in kicking Karen’s ass.

MAYHEM stars Steven Yeun (“The Walking Dead,” Okja), Samara Weaving (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Showtime’s “SMILF”), and Steven Brand (“Teen Wolf,” “Secrets and Lies”) is directed by Joe Lynch (Everly, Knights of Badassdom) and marks the feature film debut from writer Matias Caruso.

SYNOPSIS:  Derek Cho (Steven Yeun) is having a really bad day. After being unjustly fired from his job, he discovers that the law firm’s building is under quarantine for a mysterious and dangerous virus. Chaos erupts throughout the office as the victims of the disease begin acting out their wildest impulses. Joining forces with a former client (Samara Weaving) who has a grudge of her own, Derek savagely fights tooth and nail to get to the executives on the top floor and settle the score once and for all.

We all know Steven Yeun as our beloved (may he rest in peace) Glen, but in Mayhem, he does such a fantastic job that you completely forget about his Walking Dead persona. Mayhem is literally laugh out loud funny all while having some of the coolest fight choreography and blood gushing effects. Screenwriter Matias Caruso might have hit the jackpot with the plotline because this is the most imaginative way to utilize “The F-word” in a script possible. I would go back and watch to count the number of times it’s used and not a single time is it superfluous, it’s genius. Yeun’s training with zombies made him the perfect pick for this role. He is the embodiment of everyone who has ever felt oppressed by the BS hierarchy of corporate. Samara Weaving gives a borderline Harley Quinn inspired performance as a woman who was wronged by Yeun’s character. Her effortless delivery and comic timing, down to specific idiosyncracies she displays are spot on brilliant. In reality, this is an ensemble piece of pitch-perfect character work. You cannot help but get revved up watching Mayhem. It has to be one of my favorites of 2017. You can catch MAYHEM in theaters and available On Demand / Digital HD November 10, 2017(PS- that’s today.)

RLJE Films will release the upcoming horror, action film MAYHEM in theaters and available On Demand / Digital HD November 10, 2017.

 **World Premiere – SXSW Film Festival 2017**

**International Premiere – Fantasia Film Festival 2017**

**West Coast Premiere – Beyond Fest 2017**

TITLE:  MAYHEM
IN THEATERS AND AVAILABLE ON VOD AND DIGITAL HD:  November 10, 2017
CAST:  Steven Yeun, Samara Weaving, Steven Brand
DIRECTOR:  Joe Lynch
WRITER: Matias Caruso
GENRE:  Horror/Action
DISTRIBUTOR:  RLJE Films

NYFF review: ‘The Meyerowitz Stories (New & Selected)’ – on Netflix 10/13

You may remember that this was one of two films that Netflix screened at the Cannes Film Festival and it caused quite a controversy.

Meyerowitz Stories is one of the two films in the competition — the other being Bong Joon-ho’s Okja— that Netflix has brought to Cannes, stirring up controversy, with the fest promising not to screen any films next year that aren’t guaranteed a theatrical release. – via Hollywood Reporter

I’ve enjoyed many of Noah Bambach’s work and The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is no exception. It’s got an extra layer of New York-ness throughout that gives it a special punch.

From writer/director Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) is the emotional, and comic intergenerational tale of adult siblings (Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Elizabeth Marvel) contending with the long shadow their strong-willed father (Dustin Hoffman) has cast over their lives. With an original screenplay by Baumbach, the film also stars Emma Thompson, Grace Van Patten, Adam Driver, Candice Bergen, Judd Hirsch, and Rebecca Miller. The film was produced by Scott Rudin, Baumbach, Lila Yacoub, and Eli Bush.

Although it is told through a limited worldview, you’ll likely identify with some aspect of any of the characters, especially if you have siblings. The film pulls no punches and will make you laugh more than you even realize. The editing is purposeful, so don’t think something is cutting off. That just adds to the abruptness and comedy. At the risk of sounding awful, it’s so New York.

I’ve been slightly annoyed with Ben Stiller in the past few Baumbach movies (Greenberg and While We’re Young) but this character is not nearly as negative or needy. It’s quite possibly my favorite Ben Stiller role to date.

So what is the “New and Selected” all about? Well, it really seems to just let you know that this is a collection of stories of the Meyerowitz family and you couldn’t possibly show everything, so these stories are New and Selected.

Quite possibly his most accessible film to date, it definitely raises the bar of Originals on Netflix. Streaming now! (Oh, and so is Okja, which is AWESOME.

New York Film Festival 55 Review: ‘The Rape of Recy Taylor’ persists.

Sometimes a documentary teaches you more than you ever expected. Sometimes a doc is so relevant to the present it’s shocking. Nancy Burski’s, THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR, caught me by surprise from the very beginning. I learned not much has really changed in the past 80 years when it comes to everything I hold dear with respect to racism and sexism.

1944 brought forth a horrific event perpetrated by 6 white boys on one black woman. A married mother, minding her own business, was forced into a car at gunpoint, driven into the woods and raped. She was not believed, she was threatened, she was silenced. Nevertheless, she persisted. The film utilizes “race films” (something I had never heard of prior) and intimate sit-down interviews with Recy’s siblings. Both are extremely effective in illustrating her journey for justice. With the help of Rosa Parks, yes THE Rosa Parks, Recy Taylor did not shut up. She did what so many women still don’t for fear of retribution. Nevertheless, she persisted. The Rape of Recy Taylor is powerful in its narrative and triumphant in its storytelling. In a world that tries its hardest to keep women down, particularly women of color, we should revere someone like Recy Taylor and commit to educating the masses because Recy Taylor persists.


The film had its World Premiere at Venice (only American Documentary in its category) and will make its North American premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 1st.

The numbers of women raped in Jim Crow South were staggering. In danger of their lives, they did not report the crimes and their stories went hidden. Not Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old mother who was gang raped by 6 white boys in 1944 Alabama. Unbroken, she spoke up, and with the help of Rosa Parks and legions of women spreading the word, they worked to get Recy Taylor justice.

Nancy Burski is the director of THE LOVING STORY and BY SIDNEY LUMET.

16 New York Film Festival movies coming to theaters soon

The Florida Project
Description: A six-year-old girl (the remarkable Brooklynn Prince) and her two best friends run wild on the grounds of a week-by-week motel complex on the edge of Orlando’s Disney World. Meanwhile, her mother (talented novice Bria Vinaite) desperately tries to cajole the motel manager (an ever-surprising Willem Dafoe) to turn a blind eye to the way she pays the rent. A film about but not for kids, Baker’s depiction of childhood on the margins has fierce energy, tenderness, and great beauty. After the ingenuity of his iPhone-shot 2015 breakout Tangerine, Baker reasserts his commitment to 35mm film with sun-blasted images that evoke a young girl’s vision of adventure and endurance beyond heartbreak. An A24 release.

Liz loved it! 

The genuine chemistry between Willem Dafoe and rambunctious newcomer Brooklyn Prince is what makes The Florida Project so perfect.

Directed By: Sean Baker
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 10/6/2017
Buy NYFF Tickets

AMC LOEWS LINCOLN SQUARE 13
1998 Broadway, New York, NY 10023

ANGELIKA FILM CENTER
18 W Houston St, New York, NY 10012


Jane
Description: In 1960, Dr. Louis Leakey arranged for a young English woman with a deep love of animals to go to Gombe Stream National Park near Lake Tangyanika. The Dutch photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick was sent to document Jane Goodall’s first establishment of contact with the chimpanzee population, resulting in the enormously popular Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, the second film ever produced by National Geographic. One hundred hours of Lawick’s original footage was rediscovered in 2014. From that material, Brett Morgen (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck) has created a vibrant film experience, giving new life to the experiences of this remarkable woman and the wild in which she found a home. A National Geographic Documentary Films release.
Directed By: Brett Morgen
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Spotlight on Documentary
Theater Date: 10/9/17
Buy NYFF Tickets

Find a screening here


The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
Description: Noah Baumbach revisits the terrain of family vanities and warring attachments that he began exploring with The Squid and the Whale in this intricately plotted story of three middle-aged siblings (Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Elizabeth Marvel) coping with their strong-willed father (Dustin Hoffman) and the flightiness of his wife (Emma Thompson). Baumbach’s film never stops deftly changing gears, from surges of pathos to painful comedy and back again. Needless to say, this lyrical quicksilver comedy is very much a New York experience. A Netflix release.
Directed By: Noah Baumbach
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 10/13/17
Netflix Streaming Date: 10/13/17
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Los Angeles – The Landmark, Laemmle Noho
New York City – Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, IFC Center
Atlanta – Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema
Boston – Landmark’s Kendall Square Cinemas
Chicago – Landmark’s Century Centre
Dallas – Landmark’s Magnolia Theatre
Miami – Landmark at Merrick Park
Philadelphia – Landmark’s Ritz Bourse
San Francisco – Landmark’s Embarcadero Center Cinema
Washington D.C.- Landmark’s Bethesda


Wonderstruck
Description: In 1977, following the death of his single mother, Ben (Oakes Fegley) loses his hearing in a freak accident and makes his way from Minnesota to New York, hoping to learn about the father he has never met. A half-century earlier, another deaf 12-year-old, Rose (Millicent Simmonds), flees her restrictive Hoboken home, captivated by the bustle and romance of the nearby big city. Each of these parallel adventures, unfolding largely without dialogue, is an exuberant love letter to a different bygone era of New York. The mystery of how they ultimately converge, which involves Julianne Moore in a lovely dual role, provides the film’s emotional core. Adapted from a young-adult novel by Hugo author Brian Selznick, Wonderstruck is an all-ages enchantment, entirely true to director Todd Haynes’s sensibility: an intelligent, deeply personal, and lovingly intricate tribute to the power of obsession. An Amazon Studios release.
Directed By: Todd Haynes
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Centerpiece
Theater Date: 10/20/2017
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BPM (Beats Per Minute)
Description: In the early 1990s, ACT UP—in France, as in the U.S.—was on the front lines of AIDS activism. Its members, mostly gay, HIV-positive men, stormed drug company and government offices in “Silence=Death” T-shirts, facing down complacent suits with the urgency of their struggle for life. Robin Campillo (Eastern Boys) depicts their comradeship and tenacity in waking up the world to the disease that was killing them and movingly dramatizes the persistence of passionate love affairs even in dire circumstances. All the actors, many of them unknown, are splendid in this film, which not only celebrates the courage of ACT UP but also tacitly provides a model of resistance to the forces of destruction running rampant today. A release of The Orchard.
Directed By: Robin Campillo
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 10/27/2017
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https://youtu.be/FduQRG2JRtU


Félicité
Description: The new film from Alain Gomis, a French director of Guinea-Bissauan and Senegalese descent, is largely set in the roughest areas of the rough city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here, a woman named Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu) scrapes together a living as a singer in a makeshift bar (her accompanists are played by members of the Kasai Allstars band). When her son is seriously injured in an accident, she goes in search of money for his medical care and embarks on a double journey: through the punishing outer world of the city and the inner world of the soul. Félicité is tough, tender, lyrical, mysterious, funny, and terrifying, both responsive to the moment and fixed on its heroine’s spiritual progress. A Strand Releasing release.
Directed By: Alain Gomis
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Berlin Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 10/27/2017
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The Square
Description: A precisely observed, thoroughly modern comedy of manners, Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or–winner revolves around Christian (Claes Bang), a well-heeled contemporary art curator at a Stockholm museum. While preparing his new exhibit—a four-by-four-meter zone designated as a “sanctuary of trust and caring”—Christian falls prey to a pickpocketing scam, which triggers an overzealous response and then a crisis of conscience. Featuring several instant-classic scenes and a vivid supporting cast (Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West, and noted motion-capture actor Terry Notary), The Square is the most ambitious film yet by one of contemporary cinema’s most incisive social satirists, the rare movie to have as many laughs as ideas. A Magnolia Pictures release.
Directed By: Ruben Östlund
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Cannes Film Festival (2017), Toronto Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 10/27/2017
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https://youtu.be/zKDPrpJEGBY


Author Joan Didion at home in Hollywood.

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold
Description: Griffin Dunne’s years-in-the-making documentary portrait of his aunt Joan Didion moves with the spirit of her uncannily lucid writing: the film simultaneously expands and zeroes in, covering a vast stretch of turbulent cultural history with elegance and candor, and grounded in the illuminating presence and words of Didion herself. This is most certainly a film about loss—the loss of a solid American center, the personal losses of a husband and a child—but Didion describes everything she sees and experiences so attentively, so fully, and so bravely that she transforms the very worst of life into occasions for understanding. A Netflix release.
Directed By: Griffin Dunne
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Spotlight on Documentary
Theater Date: 10/27/2017
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Last Flag Flying
Description: In Richard Linklater’s lyrical road movie, as funny as it is heartbreaking, three aging Vietnam-era Navy vets—soft-spoken Doc (Steve Carell), unhinged and unfiltered Sal (Bryan Cranston), and quietly measured Mueller (Laurence Fishburne)—reunite to perform a sacred task: the proper burial of Doc’s only child, who has been killed in the early days of the Iraq invasion. As this trio of old friends makes its way up the Eastern seaboard, Linklater gives us a rich rendering of friendship, a grand mosaic of common life in the USA during the Bush era, and a striking meditation on the passage of time and the nature of truth. To put it simply, Last Flag Flying is a great movie from one of America’s finest filmmakers. An Amazon Studios release.
Directed By: Richard Linklater
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Opening Night
Theater Date: 11/3/2017
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Mudbound
Description: Writer-director Dee Rees’s historical epic, based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, details the daily hardships and vicissitudes of farm life in Mississippi during the post–World War II era. Two families, one white (the landlords) and one black (the sharecroppers), work the same miserable piece of farmland. Out of need and empathy, the mothers of the two families bond as their younger male relatives go off to war and learn that there is a world beyond racial hatred and fear. The flawless ensemble cast includes Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell, Jason Clarke, Rob Morgan, and Jonathan Banks. A Netflix release.
Directed By: Dee Rees
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Sundance Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 11/7/2017
Streaming Date: 11/7/2017
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Lady Bird
Description: Greta Gerwig’s directorial debut is a portrait of an artistically inclined young woman (Saoirse Ronan) trying to define herself in the shadow of her mother (Laurie Metcalf) and searching for an escape route from her hometown of Sacramento. Moods are layered upon moods at the furious pace of late adolescence in this lovely and loving film, which shifts deftly from one emotional and comic register to the next. Lady Bird is rich in invention and incident, and it is powered by Ronan, one of the finest actors in movies. With Lucas Hedges and Timothée Chalamet as the men in Lady Bird’s life, Beanie Feldstein as her best friend, and Tracy Letts as her dad. An A24 release.
Directed By: Greta Gerwig
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Telluride Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 11/10/2017
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Thelma
Description: In the new film from Joachim Trier (Reprise), an adolescent country girl (Eili Harboe) has just moved to the city to begin her university studies, with the internalized religious severity of her quietly domineering mother and father (Ellen Dorrit Petersen and Henrik Rafaelsen) always in mind. When she realizes that she is developing an attraction to her new friend Anja (Okay Kaya), she begins to manifest a terrifying and uncontrollable power that her parents have long feared. To reveal more would be a crime; let’s just say that this fluid, sharply observant, and continually surprising film begins in the key of horror and ends somewhere completely different. A release of The Orchard.
Directed By: Joachim Trier
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Toronto Film Festival (2017), Fantastic Fest (2017), Toronto Film Festival (2010)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 11/10/2017
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On the Beach at Night Alone
Description: Hong Sang-soo’s movies have always invited autobiographical readings, and his 19th feature is perhaps his most achingly personal film yet, a steel-nerved, clear-eyed response to the tabloid frenzy that erupted in South Korea over his relationship with actress Kim Min-hee. The film begins in Hamburg, where actress Young-hee (played by Kim herself, who won the Best Actress prize at Berlin for this role) is hiding out after the revelation of her affair with a married filmmaker. Back in Korea, a series of encounters shed light on Young-hee’s volatile state, as she slips in and out of melancholic reflection and dreams. Centered on Kim’s astonishingly layered performance, On the Beach at Night Alone is the work of a master mining new emotional depths. A Cinema Guild release.
Directed By: Hong Sang-soo
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Berlin Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 11/17/2017
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Call Me by Your Name
Description: A story of summer love unlike any other, the sensual new film from the director of I Am Love, set in 1983, charts the slowly ripening romance between Elio (Timothée Chalamet), an American teen on the verge of discovering himself, and Oliver (Armie Hammer), the handsome older grad student whom his professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg) has invited to their vacation home in Northern Italy. Adapted from the wistful novel by André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name is Guadagnino’s most exquisitely rendered, visually restrained film, capturing with eloquence the confusion and longing of youth, anchored by a remarkable, star-making performance by Chalamet, always a nervy bundle of swagger and insecurity, contrasting with Hammer’s stoicism. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Directed By: Luca Guadagnino
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Sundance Film Festival (2017), Toronto Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 11/24/2017
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Wonder Wheel
Description: In a career spanning 50 years and almost as many features, Woody Allen has periodically refined, reinvented, and redefined the terms of his art, and that’s exactly what he does with his daring new film. We’re in Coney Island in the 1950s. A lifeguard (Justin Timberlake) tells us a story that just might be filtered through his vivid imagination: a middle-aged carousel operator (Jim Belushi) and his beleaguered wife (Kate Winslet), who eke out a living on the boardwalk, are visited by his estranged daughter (Juno Temple)—a situation from which layer upon layer of all-too-human complications develop. Allen and his cinematographer, the great Vittorio Storaro, working with a remarkable cast led by Winslet in a startlingly brave, powerhouse performance, have created a bracing and truly surprising movie experience. An Amazon Studios release.
Directed By: Woody Allen
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Closing Night
Theater Date: 12/1/2017
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https://youtu.be/L7pw_1Jogd4


Lover for a Day
Description: Lover for a Day is an exquisite meditation on love and fidelity that recalls Garrel’s previous NYFF selections Jealousy (NYFF 2013) and In the Shadow of Women (NYFF 2015). After a painful breakup, heartbroken Jeanne (Esther Garrel) moves back in with her university professor father, Gilles (Eric Caravaca), to discover that he is living with optimistic, life-loving student Ariane (newcomer Louise Chevillotte), who is the same age as Jeanne. An unusual triangular relationship emerges as both girls seek the favor of Gilles, as daughter or lover, while developing their own friendship, finding common ground despite their differences. Gorgeously shot in grainy black and white by Renato Berta (Au revoir les enfants), Lover for a Day perfectly illustrates Garrel’s poetic exploration of relationships and desire. A MUBI release.
Directed By: Philippe Garrel
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
Theater Date: 1/12/2018
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New York Film Festival 55 Review: ‘The Other Side of Hope’ is subtle, quirky & timely

Finland’s master of deadpan comedy, Aki Kaurismäki (‘Lights in the Dusk’, ‘Le Havre’), returns with the story of an unlikely friendship between a Syrian asylum seeker and a middle-aged Finnish restaurant owner. Winner of the Berlin Silver Bear for Best Director, it’s a beautiful, timely film from one of the world’s leading auteurs. Khaled (Sherwan Haji) arrives at the port of Helsinki concealed in a coal container, fleeing war-torn Syria to seek asylum in Finland. Dazed and frustrated by the monolithic administration he encounters at the detention centre, he makes a break for it and heads out onto the streets. There he meets Wikström (Sakari Kuosmanen), a former shirt salesman who has recently left his alcoholic wife for a new life as a bachelor restaurateur. Together, they help each other to navigate the adversities they face in these unfamiliar and often baffling new worlds. Stream The Other Side of Hope on Volta now: https://goo.gl/6CrV4v

Sometimes with so much in the news about refugees and asylum seekers, it becomes hard to put a face to the issue. Director Aki Kaurismäki brings the issue humanity and humor in The Other Side of Hope.  This truly deadpan comedy focuses on Khaled, who fled Syria because of the war and is now desperate to find his sister. Add to that Wikström, a man who just left his alcoholic wife and bought a restaurant, with no experience. Wikström does not set out to help Khaled, it sort of just happens.

Aside from the story, the film is beautifully shot, and although set in our time, has the look of a 70s film. Many shots are zoomed out to show all the action and the absurd movements of the characters. It’s a delight to just visually follow what’s happening.

I also enjoyed the soundtrack immensely. The song from the trailer (at 0:37) is so fantastic and you’ll find yourself wanted to listen to it again.

To be totally honest, it doesn’t move very fast, but this is one of those films that you can turn on at any point, watch a scene and be totally satisfied. If you’ll watch a home, it’ll likely be a little rough to watch all at once, but really worth seeing.

How to watch: check out their website http://www.theothersideofhope.com/

OFFICIAL SELECTION:
Berlin International Film Festival 2017 – Winner: Best Director
Telluride Film Festival 2017
Toronto International Film Festival 2017
New York Film Festival 2017

Below are some clips for you to enjoy.

 

New York Film Festival 55 Review: ‘The Florida Project’ shines.

Set over one summer, the film follows precocious 6-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her ragtag playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadows of Disney World.

Sean Baker‘s The Florida Project is easily in my top 5 films at this year’s NYFF. The entire film is so organic with an almost documentary-style feel. The story revolves around an often overlooked segment of the country; one that we tend to dismiss as low-class. The viewing experience is akin to being a fly on the wall during events we cannot unsee. Completely irreverent and oozing with charm, it’s also a film about children but not for children. Lazy summer days and trying to entertain themselves, more alone than in the presence of proper adult supervision, the children explore and wreak havoc on tourists and locals alike. The genuine chemistry between Willem Dafoe and rambunctious newcomer Brooklyn Prince is what makes The Florida Project so perfect. Dafoe becomes a universal father figure and will no doubt remind you what a chameleon he truly is onscreen. Bria Vinaite (Also a complete unknown until now) as Halley is frighteningly all too familiar, and I do mean that as a compliment. Her relationship with Moonee is as awkwardly earnest as it is heartbreaking. Our spitfire, six-year-old Prince steals every scene with her natural curiously and sass. She will not be contained. Sean Baker‘s use of real-life vibrantly colored backdrops screams for attention against the energy pouring from the entire cast of misbehaving children. You will be laughing out loud from the very first scene and find yourself completely engrossed in the lives of these characters. I will be putting forth a mighty effort come awards season on behalf of The Florida Project, as it deserves the widest audience possible.

 

Opens in New York and Los Angeles on October 6, 2017

(followed by nationwide expansion)

Directed By: Sean Baker
Written By: Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch
Produced By: Sean Baker, Chris Bergoch, Kevin Chinoy, Andrew Duncan, Alex
Starring: Saks, Francesca Silvestri, Shih-Ching Tsou
Willem Dafoe, Brooklynn Prince, Valeria Cotto and Bria Vinaite
Release Date: October 6, 2017 (NY & LA); Expansion to follow
Running Time: 115mins
Rating: R
Website: http://floridaproject.movie/

 

New York Film Festival 55 Review: ‘Hall of Mirrors’ exposes investigative journalism at it’s finest

I’m not quite sure which is more interesting: the life of Edward Jay Epstein or the stories he investigates. Add to that an original documentary style and Hall of Mirrors turns into an accessible, artistic, and entertaining documentary. First-time filmmaker sisters, Ena Talakic and Ines Talakic spent four years writing, directing and editing after a chance meeting with Epstein at a party.

Rather than the boring chronological story style, the directors move back and forth between the life of Epstein his investigations. At first, it’s almost confusing, then as you’re watching you start to realize what an amazing life he’s lead and what a huge contribution he’s made to journalism. It’s quite inspiring.

If you’re in the Washington D.C. area, the film has just been announced at the Double Exposure Investigative Film Festival.

HALL OF MIRRORS
Washington, DC Premiere
Directors Ena Talakic and Ines Talakic
Italy / United States

Saturday, October 21, 2017 – 2:30 PM
Naval Heritage Center
http://doubleexposurefestival.com/films/hall-of-mirrors/

Edward Jay Epstein has built a career on taking a deeper look at hidden trends and unquestioned scripts that enter mainstream thinking. In Hall of Mirrors, he delves into Edward Snowden’s historic leak of data on U.S. government surveillance, delighting in the absurdities he discovers.

Filmmakers in attendance.

Books of Edward Jay Epstein:

  • Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth (1966)
  • Counterplot (1968)
  • News from Nowhere. Television and the News (1973)
  • Between Fact and Fiction: The Problem of Journalism (1975)
  • Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America (1977)
  • Cartel (1978)
  • Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald (1978)
  • The Rise and Fall of Diamonds: The Shattering of a Brilliant Illusion (1982)
  • Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB & the CIA (1989)
  • The Assassination Chronicles: Inquest, Counterplot, and Legend (1992)
  • Dossier: The Secret Life of Armand Hammer (1996)
  • The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood (2000)
  • The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies (2010)
  • The Annals of Unsolved Crime (2013)
  • The JFK Assassination Diary: My Search for Answers to the Mystery of the Century (2013)
  • How America Lost Its Secrets: Snowden, the Man and the Theft (2017)

TRT: 87 min
Country: USA
Language: English
Directors: Ena Talakic, Ines Talakic
Producers: Ena Talakic, Ines Talakic
Editors: Ena Talakic, Ines Talakic
Directors of Photography: Ena Talakic, Ines Talakic

15 U.S. Premieres of the New York Film Festival

A Skin So Soft
Description: Studiously observing the world of male bodybuilding, Denis Côté’s A Skin So Soft (Ta peau si lisse) crafts a multifaceted portrait of six latter-day Adonises through the lens of their everyday lives: extreme diets, training regimens, family relationships, and friendships within the community. Capturing the physical brawn and emotional complexity of its subjects with wit and tenderness, this companion piece to Cote’s singular animal study Bestiaire (2012) is a self-reflexive rumination on the long tradition of filming the human body that also advances a fascinating perspective on contemporary masculinity.
Directed By: Denis Côté
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Locarno International Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Spotlight on Documentary
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BOOM FOR REAL The Late Teenage Years of Jean-Michel Basquiat
Description: Sara Driver’s documentary is both a celebration of and elegy for the downtown New York art/music/film/performance world of the late 1970s and early ’80s, through which Jean-Michel Basquiat shot like a rocket. Weaving Basquiat’s life and artistic progress in and out of her rich, living tapestry of this endlessly cross-fertilizing scene, Driver has created an urgent recollection of freedom and the aesthetic of poverty. Graffiti meets gestural painting, hip hop infects rock and roll and visa versa, heroin comes and never quite goes, night swallows day, and everybody looms as large as they feel like looming on the crumbling streets of the Lower East Side.
Directed By: Sara Driver
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Spotlight on Documentary
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BPM (Beats Per Minute)
Description: In the early 1990s, ACT UP—in France, as in the U.S.—was on the front lines of AIDS activism. Its members, mostly gay, HIV-positive men, stormed drug company and government offices in “Silence=Death” T-shirts, facing down complacent suits with the urgency of their struggle for life. Robin Campillo (Eastern Boys) depicts their comradeship and tenacity in waking up the world to the disease that was killing them and movingly dramatizes the persistence of passionate love affairs even in dire circumstances. All the actors, many of them unknown, are splendid in this film, which not only celebrates the courage of ACT UP but also tacitly provides a model of resistance to the forces of destruction running rampant today. A release of The Orchard.
Directed By: Robin Campillo
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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https://youtu.be/FduQRG2JRtU


Caniba
Description: The latest by the makers of Leviathan (NYFF50) is a harrowing engagement with the sheer presence of a man who did the unthinkable: Issei Sagawa, who became a tabloid magnet after killing and cannibalizing a woman in Paris in 1981. Caniba moves past sensationalism to immerse viewers in an unnervingly intimate encounter with Sagawa, who has since lived off his notoriety (as a sexploitation star and manga author), and his brother and primary caretaker. The filmmakers use this modern-day instance of cannibalism, long a subject of anthropological study, to raise questions about repulsion, desire, madness, and more. Audacious and unflinching, Caniba compels us to reckon with the most extreme limits of human behavior.
Directed By: Véréna Paravel,Lucien Castaing-Taylor
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017), Venice Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Projections
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Dragonfly Eyes
Description: Chinese visual artist Xu Bing’s ambitious debut feature follows an ill-fated romance through a frightening and faceless urban environment, using only closed-circuit surveillance footage. Constructing a fictitious narrative from real-world encounters and frequently spectacular images, Xu turns the story of a young man attempting to relocate his object of desire into a cogent analysis of postmodern identity and digitally mediated communication.
Directed By: Xu Bing
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Locarno International Film Festival (2017),Toronto Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Projections
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Félicité
Description: The new film from Alain Gomis, a French director of Guinea-Bissauan and Senegalese descent, is largely set in the roughest areas of the rough city of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Here, a woman named Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu) scrapes together a living as a singer in a makeshift bar (her accompanists are played by members of the Kasai Allstars band). When her son is seriously injured in an accident, she goes in search of money for his medical care and embarks on a double journey: through the punishing outer world of the city and the inner world of the soul. Félicité is tough, tender, lyrical, mysterious, funny, and terrifying, both responsive to the moment and fixed on its heroine’s spiritual progress. A Strand Releasing release.
Directed By: Alain Gomis
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Berlin Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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Good Luck
Description: In his first solo feature in eight years, Ben Russell takes us deep into the unforgiving copper mines of Serbia. When we emerge, we’re thousands of miles away, amongst an illegal band of gold miners in the Suriname jungle. The physical demands of labor, as well as the transformative power of music, connect these communities, each equally fortified by the realities of capital and a spirit of masculine camaraderie.
Directed By: Ben Russell
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Locarno International Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Projections
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Jane
Description: In 1960, Dr. Louis Leakey arranged for a young English woman with a deep love of animals to go to Gombe Stream National Park near Lake Tangyanika. The Dutch photographer and filmmaker Hugo van Lawick was sent to document Jane Goodall’s first establishment of contact with the chimpanzee population, resulting in the enormously popular Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, the second film ever produced by National Geographic. One hundred hours of Lawick’s original footage was rediscovered in 2014. From that material, Brett Morgen (Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck) has created a vibrant film experience, giving new life to the experiences of this remarkable woman and the wild in which she found a home. A National Geographic Documentary Films release.
Directed By: Brett Morgen
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Spotlight on Documentary
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Occidental
Description: In a boho Parisian hotel, two sexually and politically ambiguous Italians romp through a succession of blatantly artificial, anachronistically decorated set pieces, stoking the prejudices of staff members and fellow guests. Outside, riots rage and protesters march, threatening to spill into the increasingly feverish atmosphere gathering indoors. French-Algerian artist Neïl Beloufa’s second feature—reminiscent of films by Bertrand Bonello and the stage-derived works of Alain Resnais—confirms the arrival of a uniquely provocative, socially attuned filmmaker.
Directed By: Neïl Beloufa
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Projections
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https://youtu.be/JPkDpozVdnA


Sea Sorrow
Description: Vanessa Redgrave’s debut as a documentary filmmaker is a plea for a compassionate western response to the refugee crisis and a condemnation of the vitriolic inhumanity of current right wing and conservative politicians. Redgrave juxtaposes our horrifying present of inadequate refugee quotas and humanitarian disasters (like last year’s clearing of the Calais migrant camp) with the refugee crises of WWII and its aftermath, recalled with archival footage, contemporary news reports and personal testimony—including an interview with the eloquent Labor politician Lord Dubs, who was one of the children rescued by the Kindertransport. Sea Sorrow reaches further back in time to Shakespeare, not only for its title but also to further remind us that we are once more repeating the history that we have yet to learn.
Directed By: Vanessa Redgrave
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Spotlight on Documentary
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Spoor
Description: Janina Duszejko (Agnieszka Mandat) is a vigorous former engineer, part-time teacher, and animal activist, living in a near wilderness on the Polish-Czech border, where hunting is the favored year-round sport of the corrupt men who rule the region. When a series of hunters die mysteriously, Janina wonders if the animals are taking revenge, which doesn’t stop the police from coming after her. A brilliant, passionate director, Agnieszka Holland—who like Janina comes from a generation that learned to fight authoritarianism by any means necessary—forges a sprawling, wildly beautiful, emotionally enveloping film that earns its vision of utopia. It’s at once a phantasmagorical murder mystery, a tender, late-blooming love story, and a resistance and rescue thriller.
Directed By: Agnieszka Holland,Kasia Adamik
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Berlin Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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The Day After
Description: Hong continues in the openly emotional register of his On the Beach at Night Alone, also showing in this year’s Main Slate. Shot in moody black and white, The Day After opens with book publisher Bongwan (Kwon Hae-hyo) fending off his wife’s heated accusations of infidelity. At the office, it’s the first day for his new assistant, Areum (Kim Min-hee), whose predecessor was Bongwan’s lover. Mistaken identity, repetition compulsion, and déjà vu figure into the narrative as the film entangles its characters across multiple timelines through an intricate geometry of desire, suspicion, and betrayal. The end result is one of Hong’s most plaintive and philosophical works.
Directed By: Hong Sang-soo
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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https://youtu.be/FObtBK0CB9I


The Florida Project
Description: A six-year-old girl (the remarkable Brooklynn Prince) and her two best friends run wild on the grounds of a week-by-week motel complex on the edge of Orlando’s Disney World. Meanwhile, her mother (talented novice Bria Vinaite) desperately tries to cajole the motel manager (an ever-surprising Willem Dafoe) to turn a blind eye to the way she pays the rent. A film about but not for kids, Baker’s depiction of childhood on the margins has fierce energy, tenderness, and great beauty. After the ingenuity of his iPhone-shot 2015 breakout Tangerine, Baker reasserts his commitment to 35mm film with sun-blasted images that evoke a young girl’s vision of adventure and endurance beyond heartbreak. An A24 release.
Directed By: Sean Baker
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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Western
Description: As its title suggests, German director Valeska Grisebach’s first feature in a decade is a supremely intelligent genre update that recognizes the Western as a template on which to draw out eternal human conflicts. In remote rural Bulgaria, a group of German workers are building a water facility. Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann), the reserved newbie in this all-male company, immediately draws the ire of the boorish team leader, not least for his willingness to mingle with the wary locals. Cast with utterly convincing nonprofessional actors, Western is a gripping culture-clash drama, attuned both to old codes of masculinity and new forms of colonialism. A Cinema Guild release.
Directed By: Valeska Grisebach
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017),Cannes Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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Zama
Description: The great Lucrecia Martel ventures into the realm of historical fiction and makes the genre entirely her own in this adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 classic of Argentinean literature. In the late 18th century, in a far-flung corner of what seems to be Paraguay, the title character, an officer of the Spanish crown (Daniel Giménez Cacho) born in the Americas, waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. Martel renders Zama’s world—his daily regimen of small humiliations and petty politicking—as both absurd and mysterious, and as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia, subject to a creeping disorientation. Precise yet dreamlike, and thick with atmosphere, Zama is a singular and intoxicating experience, a welcome return from one of contemporary cinema’s truly brilliant minds.
Directed By: Lucrecia Martel
Festivals: New York Film Festival (2017)
Section of NYFF: Main Slate
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Review: ‘Indivisible’ takes the family bond to the extreme.

INDIVISIBLE
(Indivisibili)In a complex and incredibly nuanced new film, sisters must decide if physical and emotional separation is what they need to survive. Indivisible is a story of exploitation and personal desire.
Daisy and Viola are conjoined twin sisters living in the suburbs of Naples. They are blessed with beautiful voices and, thanks to their performances at local weddings, communions, and baptisms, have become the breadwinners for their entire family. Kept isolated from the world by their exploitative father, their lives are turned upside down when one of them falls in love for the first time… and they discover that it is possible for them to be separated.
Angela and Marianna Fontana play conjoined twins Dasy and Viola. Sought after for their singing talents and local idolatry, everyone wants a piece of them. Born into a selfish family living off the girls’ fame, they are forced to perform, threatened by guilt and permeating greed. While one sister yearns to be surgically divided, the other feels devastated by the idea. In bold performances from these real-life twins, we are rooting for their ultimate happiness. Despite being attached at the hip, each young woman gives a brilliant performance. Full of dreams and determination, these ladies own the screen is presence and ability. Battling religious fanaticism and the seduction of escapism, our leading ladies ooze with charisma. Indivisible takes a heartfelt and intimate approach to dismiss the sideshow mentality. Every theme in this script is some sort of double entendre. With beautiful cinematography on top of a clever and unexpected script, Indivisible is one of a kind.
The film is currently playing in New York City and opens theatrically in Los Angeles today. A national rollout will follow.

100 mins | Italy | in Italian with English subtitles | 2016

Written and Directed by Edoardo De Angelis
**NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE – TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2016**
**WORLD PREMIERE – 73RD VENICE INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL**

**OPENING NIGHT – OPEN ROADS**

NYFF Live – FREE Talks at the New York Film Festival

NYFF55 talks also include On Cinema: Richard Linklater and Directors Dialogues with Lucrecia Martel, Agnès Varda & JR, Hong Sang-soo, and Philippe Garrel

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announces the lineup for the sixth edition of free talk series NYFF Live during the 55th New York Film Festival (September 28 – October 15). HBO® is the presenting sponsor of NYFF Live, which features actors, directors, writers, critics, and other industry insiders participating in daily evening discussions from September 29 – October 13 in the Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

NYFF55 Directors Dialogues, for which HBO® is also the presenting sponsor, include conversations with Main Slate filmmakers Lucrecia Martel, Agnès Varda & JR, Hong Sang-soo, and Philippe Garrel. This year’s On Cinema features Opening Night filmmaker Richard Linklater (Last Flag Flying) in an in-depth discussion with NYFF Director Kent Jones about films that have influenced and inspired him, illustrated with film clips.

NYFF Live features panels on The SquareThe Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)The Florida Project, and other films from NYFF55, as well as discussions with festival talent including Vanessa Redgrave, Luca Guadagnino, and Claire Denis. For updates and additional details about panelists and moderators, visit filmlinc.org. NYFF Live is organized by FSLC Deputy Director Eugene Hernandez and Brian Brooks, FSLC’s Manager of Talks and Artist Programs.

Free tickets to both NYFF Live and Directors Dialogues events will be distributed at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center box office (144 West 65th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam) on a first-come, first-served basis starting one hour prior to the talks. Limit one ticket per person, subject to availability. For those unable to attend, video from these events will be available online at filmlinc.org.

The 18-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, FSLC Director of Programming; Florence Almozini, FSLC Associate Director of Programming; and Amy Taubin, contributing editor for Film Comment and Artforum.

Friday, September 29
7:00PM     Ruben Östlund, The Square
8:00PM     VR and the Future of Virtual Production by Lucasfilm

Saturday, September 30
6:00PM     On Cinema: Richard Linklater
7:00PM     Gamescape: The Revenge of Full Motion Video
8:00PM     IndieWire Screen Talk LIVE podcast with Eric Kohn & Anne Thompson

Sunday, October 1
3:00PM      HBO Directors Dialogues: Lucretia Martel
7:00PM     Film Comment: The Cinema of Experience
8:00PM     Serge Bozon & Isabelle Huppert, Mrs. Hyde

Monday, October 2
6:00PM     HBO Directors Dialogues: Agnès Varda & JR
7:00PM     Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
8:00PM     NYFF Shorts Filmmakers

Tuesday, October 3
7:00PM     Making The Florida Project: Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch

Wednesday, October 4
7:00PM     Making Call Me by Your Name: Luca Guadagnino, Armie Hammer, and Michael Stuhlbarg

Thursday, October 5
7:00PM     Spotlight on Documentary Filmmakers

Friday, October 6
7:00PM     Documenting Creativity: Griffin Dunne, Rebecca Miller, Susan Lacy, Josh Koury & Myles Kane

Saturday, October 7
7:00PM     Film Comment: Filmmakers Chat

Sunday, October 8
7:00PM     Vanessa Redgrave, Sea Sorrow

Monday, October 9
7:00PM     Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
8:00PM     HBO Directors Dialogues: Hong Sang-soo

Tuesday, October 10
7:00PM     Field of Vision Presents
8:00PM     HBO Directors Dialogues: Philippe Garrel

Wednesday, October 11
7:00PM     Keeping Cultural Borders Open: Laurie Anderson and special guests

Thursday, October 12
7:00PM     Real Characters: Writing Biopics and Origin Stories

Friday, October 13
7:00PM     Film Comment: Festival Wrap
8:00PM     Access New Audiences: Wonderstruck & The Blind Boys of Alabama


Friday, September 29
7:00pm
Ruben Östlund, The Square
Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund’s The Square won the coveted Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. The satirical drama, starring Claes Bang and Elisabeth Moss, follows a well-heeled contemporary art curator at a Stockholm museum who falls prey to a pickpocketing scam, triggering an overzealous response and then a crisis of conscience. Östlund, whose features also include Play and Force Majeure, will talk about writing and directing The Square, which plays at this year’s NYFF.

8:00pm
VR and the Future of Virtual Production by Lucasfilm
Demo and Talk with Rachel Rose, Jose Perez, and Nick Rasmussen
From the depths of earth’s oceans to galaxies far, far away, VR allows us to be anyone, go anywhere, and see anything. Lucasfilm and its visual effects division, Industrial Light & Magic, have harnessed the power of this medium to create a new Virtual Production toolset, allowing filmmakers to build and scout a virtual set, manipulate props, puppeteer characters and vehicles, even compose shots to create virtual storyboards. It’s a game-changing application that is easy to learn, allowing storytellers to focus on the elements that blend together to form great stories. The creators of the toolset will participate in a conversation about the development of the platform and its potential to impact the filmmaking process, followed on Saturday by a public demonstration that will allow audiences to experience the system first hand.

Saturday, September 30
6:00pm
On Cinema: Richard Linklater
In this annual special event, NYFF Director Kent Jones sits down with world-renowned filmmakers for an in-depth talk about films that have influenced and inspired them, illustrated with film clips. This year, Jones will talk with Richard Linklater, whose intensely emotional comic drama Last Flag Flying is this year’s opening night selection, and whose many superb films (SlackerDazed and ConfusedWaking Life, and Boyhood, to name just a few) have been genuine gifts to modern American cinema.

7:00pm
Gamescape: The Revenge of Full Motion Video
It’s 1983. You find yourself in an arcade in the ’burbs. Among the future classics—Galaga, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong—you find something different: Sega’s Astron Belt or Cinematronics’ Dragon’s Lair, games that eschewed pixelated sprites for video and vivid animation. Full Motion Video games were movies you could play—to a point: the technical execution left something to be desired. Games were unreliable, systems crashed, and FMV all but disappeared. But FMV is making a comeback as creators breathe new life into this 35-year-old form. The 2017 edition of Gamescape celebrates some of the best new FMV work and looks back on titles both famous and infamous from the golden age of the arcade. GameScape is co-curated by Clara Fernandez-Vara, of the NYU Game Center.

8:00pm
IndieWire Screen Talk LIVE podcast with Eric Kohn & Anne Thompson
Take a seat to watch IndieWire’s Chief Film Critic Eric Kohn and Editor at Large Anne Thompson engage in film debate and banter as they record the next episode of their popular podcast, Screen Talk. Kohn and Thompson will give their takes on the first weekend of the New York Film Festival, and talk about how awards season is shaping up.

Sunday, October 1
3:00pm
HBO Directors Dialogues: Lucrecia Martel
A singular artist working in cinema today, Argentinean director Lucrecia Martel makes films that are unlike any others. This year, Zama, showcased in the Main Slate, marks Martel’s fourth feature and fourth New York Film Festival appearance, following La Cienaga (2001), The Holy Girl (2004), and The Headless Woman (2009). Join Martel for a discussion of her films and her remarkable latest, an adaptation of a classic Argentinean novel, set in the late 18th century.

7:00pm
Film Comment: The Cinema of Experience
At this year’s NYFF, filmmakers are rising to the challenge of representing race and immigration at a pivotal time in our nation’s history. Our guests will discuss how cinematic technique is used to reflect such experiences and what is different about the latest generation of storytelling. Moderated by Film Comment Editor-in-Chief Nicolas Rapold, and featuring critic Teo Bugbee, writer-programmer Ashley Clark, and writer-filmmaker Farihah Zaman.

8:00pm
Serge Bozon & Isabelle Huppert, Mrs. Hyde
Academy Award nominee Isabelle Huppert headlines Serge Bozon’s eccentric comedic thriller loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Huppert plays a timid physics professor at a suburban high school constantly mocked by colleagues and students. During a stormy night, she is struck by lightning, and wakes up as the newly powerful Madame Hyde. Meet Huppert as she talks about transforming into this character, and her career in movies and television; and Bozon, who will share his experiences making the movie.

Monday, October 2
6:00pm
HBO Directors Dialogues: Agnès Varda & JR
At age 89, legendary French filmmaker Agnès Varda has collaborated with 34-year-old visual artist JR on a remarkable new film, titled Faces Places. In it, the two of them journey from one rural French village to another, meeting people, taking their photographs, and printing large-scale versions of them, placed grandly within the environments. The two artist friends will discuss their unique project and the wise and wonderful film that came out of it.

7:00pm
Noah Baumbach, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)
No stranger to the New York Film Festival, Noah Baumbach has presented The Squid and the Whale (2005), Margot at the Wedding (2007), and Frances Ha (2012) here. Baumbach returns this year with the comedic drama The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), starring Dustin Hoffman, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, and Emma Thompson. The film harkens back to the themes of family vanities and warring attachments he has explored in previous movies. Baumbach will talk about writing the film, and working with a cast that includes screen legend Hoffman.

8:00pm
NYFF Shorts Filmmakers
For the past three years, the New York Film Festival has celebrated short form filmmakers living and working in the city. Meet the directors with films in the festival’s “New York Stories” program: Jason Giampietro (Unpresidented), Adinah Dancyger (Cheer Up Baby), Ashley Connor and Joe Stankus (The Layover), Kevin Wilson, Jr. (My Nephew Emmett), John Wilson (The Road to Magnasanti) and Pacho Velez & Yoni Brook (Mr. Yellow Sweatshirt).

Tuesday, October 3
7:00pm
Making The Florida Project: Sean Baker & Chris Bergoch
Sean Baker (writer-director-producer-editor) and Chris Bergoch (writer-producer) collaborated on The Florida Project, which is having its U.S. premiere at the New York Film Festival. In this discussion, they’ll delve into the particulars of how The Florida Project was conceived and executed through its various stages in development. Set over one summer, the film follows precocious six-year-old Moonee as she courts mischief and adventure with her ragtag playmates and bonds with her rebellious but caring mother, all while living in the shadow of nearby Disney World.

Wednesday, October 4
7:00pm
Making Call Me by Your Name: Luca Guadagnino, Armie Hammer, and Michael Stuhlbarg
Luca Guadagnino’s film has already caused a sensation at the Sundance, Berlin, and Toronto film festivals. Based on the book by André Aciman and from a screenplay by James Ivory, Call Me by Your Name centers on the son of an American professor who falls for the graduate student who comes to study and live with his family in their northern Italian home during the summer. Join Guadagnino and actors Armie Hammer and Michael Stuhlbarg as they talk about what is sure to be one of the most debated films of the fall.

Thursday, October 5
7:00pm
Spotlight on Documentary Filmmakers
The amount of nonfiction films has skyrocketed since the turn of the century. Festivals around the world have celebrated the form, while critics and filmgoers have increasingly included docs on their roster of films to see. The group of filmmakers showing at this year’s NYFF—including Alison McAlpine (Cielo), Nancy Buirski (The Rape of Recy Taylor), Ena and Ines Talakic (Hall of Mirrors), among others—represent a cross-section of some of the most compelling documentarians working today.

Friday, October 6
7:00pm
Documenting Creativity: Griffin Dunne, Rebecca Miller, Susan Lacy, Josh Koury & Myles Kane
Many documentaries showing at this year’s NYFF focus on the lives and work of major writers and artists. At this talk, the directors behind four of these films will speak about their processes in representing creative people onscreen: Griffin Dunne, on creating a portrait of his aunt in Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold; Rebecca Miller, on the long road to constructing a documentary on her father in Arthur Miller: Writer; Susan Lacy, who traces the private, public, and artistic development of one of cinema’s true giants in Spielberg; and Josh Koury & Myles Kane on Voyeur, which closely followed Gay Talese as he worked on his controversial book The Voyeur’s Motel.

Saturday, October 7
7:00pm
Film Comment: Filmmakers Chat
For the second year, Film Comment gives you the rare chance to see some of today’s most important filmmakers in dialogue with each other. A selection of NYFF directors past and present will talk together about their influences and inspirations in a discussion moderated by the magazine’s editor-in-chief Nicolas Rapold, with filmmakers Claire Denis (Let the Sun Shine In) and Joachim Trier (Thelma).

Sunday, October 8
7:00pm
Vanessa Redgrave, Sea Sorrow
Her career as an actor has spanned six decades, but Academy Award winner Vanessa Redgrave has now become a documentary director with Sea Sorrow, a timely examination of the world’s urgent migrant crisis. Redgrave will be joined by producer Carlo Gabriel Nero to discuss what moved her to take on the project and how she set out to accomplish her filmmaking goals.

Monday, October 9
7:00pm
Greta Gerwig, Lady Bird
Greta Gerwig is a familiar presence at the New York Film Festival, seen in films such as Frances Ha (2012), Eden(2014), and 20th Century Women (2016). Gerwig has returned to the festival this year as a filmmaker, presenting her directorial debut, Lady Bird, starring Saoirse Ronan as an artistically inclined young woman trying to define herself in the shadow of her mother (Laurie Metcalf) and searching for an escape route from her hometown of Sacramento. Join Gerwig as she talks about segueing to behind the camera and telling a story that comes from a very personal place.

8:00pm
HBO Directors Dialogues: Hong Sang-soo
Beyond prolific, South Korean director Hong Sang-soo has presented new films in NYFF’s Main Slate for five years in a row. And this year, he has two new movies: The Day After, a black-and-white tale of mistaken identity, déja vu, and adultery; and On the Beach at Night Alone, an achingly personal response to public scandals surrounding his romantic life, starring Kim Min-hee (The Handmaiden). Hong will be on-hand to discuss these intimate, dialogue-driven, comic-tinged dramas.

Tuesday, October 10
7:00pm
Field of Vision Presents
Since its launch in 2013, Field of Vision has been a trailblazer in producing and championing short-form documentaries about developing and ongoing stories from around the world. This evening will spotlight three current films, featuring clips and discussions with their filmmakers. These include Marshall Curry’s A Night at the Garden, about a chilling rally held in New York nearly 80 years ago and which has resonance today; Josh Begley’s Best of Luck with the Wall, which gives perhaps the first true look at the consequences of Trump’s proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico; and a sneak from Farihah Zaman and Jeff Reichert’s latest project, American Carnage, about the films and politics of Breitbart News chief and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon.

8:00pm
HBO Directors Dialogues: Philippe Garrel
French master Philippe Garrel represents a strain of modernist cinema that stretches from the post–New Wave era to today, as evidenced by three of his films showing during NYFF this year. We’re pleased to present his newest film, the penetrating meditation on relationships and fidelity Lover for a Day, showing in the Main Slate, as well as restorations of his La Révélateur, made while the events of May ’68 were unfolding, and his devastatingly personal 1979 film L’Enfant secret. And we’re thrilled to have Garrel at this rare public appearance.

Wednesday, October 11
7:00pm
Keeping Cultural Borders Open: Laurie Anderson and special guests
This year at the New York Film Festival, hundreds of artists and activists will band together to launch The Federation. Formed by Laurie Anderson, Laura Michalchyshyn, and Tanya Selvaratnam in response to the increased xenophobia and closing of physical borders, The Federation is a coalition of individuals and organizations committed to keeping cultural borders open and recognizing how essential artistic experiences are to fostering compassion, critical thinking, and joy. Join Anderson, Selvaratnam, Sara Driver, Barbet Schroeder, and other special guests for a discussion about the aims of the initiative and the role artists play in combatting cultural barriers. Presented with The Federation

Thursday, October 12
7:00pm
Real Characters: Writing Biopics and Origin Stories
One of the deepest connections we can have to a movie is through fully conceptualized, credible characters. Without them, even the most engrossing plot may not resonate. The Writers Guild of America, East brings together the creators behind some unforgettable recent movie characters to tell us how they made them intriguing and believable. Presented with WGA East

Friday, October 13
7:00pm
Film Comment: Festival Wrap
In what is becoming an annual tradition, Film Comment contributing critics and editors gather for the festival’s last weekend and talk about the films they’ve seen, discussing—or arguing about—the selections in the lineup, from Main Slate and beyond.

8:00pm
Access New Audiences: Wonderstruck & The Blind Boys of Alabama
Join Michele Spitz (Woman of Her Word) and Jo-Ann Dean (SIGNmation) for a discussion on how filmmakers and distributors can increase audience outreach and box-office by incorporating accessible language components for both Deaf and Blind communities. Participating are Deaf actors Lauren Ridloff, Anthony Natale, and John McGinty, featured in NYFF Centerpiece Wonderstruck; Leslie McCleave, producer-director of How Sweet the Sound: The Blind Boys of Alabama; and award-winning audio producer, director, and engineer Cliff Hahn. The panelists will provide insight on budgeting, grant opportunities, and how American Sign Language (ASL), Audio Description (AD) and Open/Closed Captioning (OC/CC) are inclusive assets. ASL Interpretation Provided. Presented with NYWIFT

Review: Amy Ryan gives a moving performance in ‘Abundant Acreage Available’ winner of Best Screenplay at the Tribeca Film Festival

From writer/director Angus MacLachlan and Executive Producer Martin Scorsese, ABUNDANT ACREAGE AVAILABLE tells the story of a family in flux. Still reeling over the recent death of their father, brother and sister Jesse & Tracy (Terry Kinney & Amy Ryan) are attempting to settle into their new lives in his absence. Their quiet and simple existence is unexpectedly disrupted by the sudden arrival of three mysterious brothers, camping on their land and possessing a surprising connection to their family farm. The two sets of siblings are set on a direct collision course that will change all of their lives, for better or for worse. Tackling complicated issues of family legacies, and anchored by an amazing set of performances, the film is a brilliant showcase for all involved.

 

In Theaters September 29, 2017 at Cinema Village in New York
on demand October 6, 2017

Written & Directed by: 
Angus MacLachlan (Academy Award-nominated film Junebug)

Executive Produced by:
Martin Scorsese

Starring: 
Amy Ryan (Academy Award nominee for Gone Baby Gone, Birdman)
Terry Kinney (“Billions,” “Oz”) 
Steve Coulter (The Wizard of Lies, “House of Cards”)
Francis Guinan (Hannibal, Constantine)
Max Gail (42, “Barney Miller”)

Told almost entirely outdoors in the cold winter, Abundant Acreage Available, is a slice-of-life tale that surprises and moves you. Amy Ryan’s heartfelt performance reveals a woman who is struggling to come to terms with the loss of her father as three brothers show up to reclaim their father’s land.

I especially enjoyed the dynamic between the two sets of siblings. Tracy and her brother, Jesse, both took care of their father until his recent passing. When three brothers show up, their own complicated history interferes but also strengthens their bond.

Secrets, illness, despair, loneliness, all of it pulls you into thinking how you would handle the same situation. You never know what’s around the next corner, but leaning on your sibling is not to be taken for granted.