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Sep 25, 2024 By Kaveh Jalinous

Some track the passing of time by the changing of seasons, by the turning of the Gregorian calendar, or even by the annual surge of Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” in early November. For many New Yorker cinephiles, though, time is refracted through the always-reliable, autumnal return of Film at Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival (September 27-October 14). Now in its 62nd edition, the city’s largest film festival once again transforms Lincoln Center into a film-lovers utopia—hosting hotly-anticipated premieres, celebrity appearances, deep-cut restorations, and much more throughout its two-week exhibition.

The New York Film Festival has always been reliable for its simplicity. It boasts excellent curation, a large but manageable lineup, and easily accessible venues that are mostly near one another. Even so, this year’s edition is sure to feel different than last year’s, since that took place during both the WGA’s and SAG’s historic strikes for better working conditions. While the SAG strike didn’t end until November 2023, WGA’s strike reached an agreement during last year’s festival, allowing some writers to book last-minute flights and attend their films’ screenings/Q&A-sessions. This year, both actors and writers will be in attendance—restoring an alternate sense of glamor and grandeur to the festival.

Despite the different energy that may be present during this year’s edition, one thing has surely remained constant: the festival’s excellent lineup. In what has been a difficult year so far for both film and film festivals—both the Sundance and Cannes lineups proved to be underwhelming—NYFF’s lineup shows a lot of promise. As such, it was hard limiting our list to just 10 films. But, we managed to get the job done. Here are the films you won’t want to miss at this year’s New York Film Festival, as selected by one of UTR’s film critics, Kaveh Jalinous.

1. The Brutalist (Main Slate)

Who: Brady Corbet, director of 2018’s underrated Vox Lux, Academy Award-winning actor Adrien Brody, Academy Award-nominated actress Felicity Jones.

What: “An accomplished Hungarian Jewish architect and World War II survivor (Adrien Brody) reconstructs his life in the U.S. and enters the orbit of an obscenely wealthy captain of industry (Guy Pearce) in Brady Corbet’s richly detailed, brilliantly acted recreation of postwar America.”

Why: Even before it premiered to smash acclaim at this year’s Venice Film Festival, we were already excited to see Corbet’s follow-up to a film as daring, harrowing, and unforgettable as Vox Lux. And sure, it helps that the film will be projected in either 35mm or 70mm for all of its festival screenings—an uncommon feature at both NYFF and most other film festivals.

2. Happyend (Main Slate)

Who: Neo Sora, the son of the late musician Ryuichi Sakamoto.

What: “Contemporary global anxieties over the gradual sliding into governmental totalitarianism find an original and touching outlet in this resonant drama set sometime in the near future in a Tokyo high school, where best friends Kou (Yukito Hidaka) and Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) run afoul of their disciplinarian principal (Shiro Sano), who has installed a draconian surveillance system.”

Why: For those who saw Sora’s Ryuichi Sakamoto: Opus—a quasi-concert film, quasi-documentary honoring his late father—at last year’s festival or in theaters earlier this year, the plot of Happyend might seem a little shocking or unexpected. But, the precision with which Sora captured his father’s piano performance suggests he already has a keen sense of camerawork and blocking, and we can’t wait to see how he applies his directorial talents to narrative filmmaking.

3. Việt and Nam (Main Slate)

Who: Director Truong Minh Quy, unknown actors Phąm Thanh Hài and Đào Duy Bào Đįnh.

What: “Two young coal miners enjoy secret moments of physical embrace before one of them embarks on a dangerous emigration to Laos. From this personal drama, Vietnamese filmmaker Trương Minh Quý digs deeper to excavate the memories and legacies of a nation.”

Why: Amidst a disappointing Cannes lineup earlier this year, Truong Minh Quy’s film seemed like a standout—both for its intriguing plot synopsis and its divisive reaction amongst critics. NYFF, like any film festival, is one of discovery—and a tender tale between two coal miners in a slowly unwinding narrative to reveal larger truths about a nation’s culture and history as a whole has the potential to be a large discovery. Plus, the film being shot on 16mm (an aesthetic sure to match the film’s reported quiet, meditative quality) is yet another bonus.

4. Universal Language (Currents)

Who: Matthew Rankin, whose feature-length debut, The Twentieth Century, played major fall festivals in 2019.

What: “With deadpan, absurdist charm, Manitoban filmmaker Matthew Rankin, inspired by humanistic Iranian films of the 1970s, triangulates a group of interconnected storylines set in a wintry, bleakly beautiful Winnipeg with surreal, Tati-esque humor.”

Why: We love a synopsis that gives practically nothing away about a film—highlighting the importance of seeing the movie to unlock its narrative and thematic underpinnings—and NYFF’s description of Universal Language does just that. Even so, the working parts—1970s Iranian films, Tati-esque humor and even the Winnipeg setting (when’s the last time you’ve seen a film set in Manitoba’s largest city?) have all captured our attention. We hope the film is as good as its Cannes reviews suggest.

5. Hard Truths (Main Slate)

Who: Veteran British filmmaker Mike Leigh; Secrets & Lies collaborator Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

What: “Mike Leigh returns to a contemporary milieu for the first time since Another Year for this raw, uncompromising domestic drama starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste (Oscar nominee for Leigh’s Secrets & Lies) in a gutsy, excoriating performance as a middle-aged, working-class woman whose emotional and physical health problems have metastasized into a profound and relentless anger.”

Why: The plot synopsis doesn’t give much away about Leigh’s latest film—even if what we do know so far seems aligned with the broader themes and motifs across the director’s filmography. Regardless, the fact that he’s working with excellent actress Jean-Baptiste again after collaborating in Secrets & Lies (which won the Palme d’Or in 1996) is enough to secure our interest.

6. The Room Next Door (Centerpiece Film, Main Slate)

Who: Acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almódovar, the always-incredible actresses Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.

What: “Ingrid (Julianne Moore), a best-selling writer, rekindles her relationship with her friend Martha (Tilda Swinton), a war journalist with whom she has lost touch for a number of years. Almodóvar’s finely sculpted drama, his first English-language feature, is the unmistakable work of a master filmmaker.”

Why: The reactions to Almodóvar’s first English-language feature film have been… mixed (the film received a notable 17-minute standing ovation at Venice, followed by largely average/decent reviews from critics). But, the fact that the film went on to take home Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion, has all but restored our interest. Plus, we’re excited to see how excellent performers Moore and Swinton lead what is sure to be an unforgettable film.

7. Stranger Eyes (Main Slate)

Who: Actor Lee Kang-sheng, a frequent collaborator of excellent Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang.

What: “A young married couple’s baby daughter goes missing and suspicion falls on their voyeur neighbor (Lee Kang-sheng, the star of Tsai Ming-liang’s films) in Singaporean writer-director Yeo Siew Hua’s riveting and unsettling thriller about contemporary surveillance culture and the mysteries of the human heart.”

Why: They say ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ which is sound advice. But, if we’re being completely honest, NYFF’s thumbnail image for Stranger Eyes—depicting a man staring at over 100 tiny scenes, each capturing a different angle of a house—is so interest-piquing, we couldn’t not put this on our list. The intense synopsis, which seems to present a timely commentary on surveillance and neighborly distrust through the conventions of a thriller film, only makes us more excited to see Yeo Siew Hua’s newest.

8. The Sealed Soil (Revivals)

Who: Unknown and underrepresented Iranian director Marva Nabili.

What: “The earliest surviving Iranian film directed by a woman, Marva Nabili’s astonishing debut is a deftly observant and sensually attuned work that conjures the everyday plight of the female subject under the stifling patriarchy of village life in southwestern Iran.”

Why: NYFF’s Revivals section is perhaps the festival’s most consistent sub-section, usually highlighting excellent restored films that have been lost to history for one reason or another. This year’s slate is no exception, but it’s Nabili’s film that has caught our interest most. Iranian cinema is a treasure trove that is slowly being unpacked in New York cinemas—evidenced by MoMA’s excellent Iranian cinema series last year or the recent re-release of Bahram Bayzaie’s The Stranger and the Fog—and we’re excited to see Nabili’s creative vision and perspective on the big screen.

9. Direct Action (Currents)

Who: Experimental filmmaker Ben Russell in collaboration with film installation and performance artist Guillaume Cailleau.

What: “This detailed portrait of the intricate processes of a political eco-activist group in France, a collaboration between American experimental filmmaker Ben Russell and French artist Guillaume Cailleau, is a work of striking, meaningful duration that shows the stakes, pitfalls, and reverberations of taking a militant stance against the injustices of our times.”

Why: It wouldn’t be a film festival if we weren’t eagerly anticipating a three-and-a-half-hour documentary, and Direct Action, whose runtime seems to be essential to provide a portrait of its subject and contextualize them within broader society, definitely has our interest. Plus, the film took home the Best Film Award in the Encounters section at this year’s Berlinale, providing yet another reason to catch this sprawling documentary.

10. Apocalypse in the Tropics (Spotlight)

Who: Brazilian filmmaker Petra Costa, whose 2019 film The Edge of Democracy nabbed a Best Documentary nomination at the 2020 Oscars.

What: “In this gripping and urgent follow-up to her Oscar-nominated The Edge of Democracy, Petra Costa dramatizes the chilling rise of the far right in Brazil. Apocalypse in the Tropics focuses on how the evangelical movement paved the way for the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and poses the threat of a national theocracy.”

Why: We greatly admired The Edge of Democracy, and in that documentary, Costa demonstrated a sharp, natural sense of how to report and analyze topics that were difficult to unpack. Given the five-year gap between that film and Apocalypse in the Tropics, we can’t wait to see how Costa has evolved as a documentarian and how her nonfiction storytelling approach has changed, and in some ways, perhaps stayed the same.