New York Film Festival Essentials

New York Film Festival Essentials

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New York Film Festival Essentials
  • Confidence

    Directed by István Szabó • Drama • 1980 • Hungary • Hungarian with English subtitles
    Starring Peter Andorai, Ildiko Bansagi

    István Szabó's "Confidence" was nominated for an Academy Award and won Berlinale's Silver Bear for Best Director in 1980. Set in World War II-era Hungary, it follows two un...

  • Dawson City: Frozen Time

    Directed by Bill Morrison • Documentary • 2017 • US • English
    Featuring Michael Gates, Kathy Jones-Gates

    Part fever dream, part historical record, this is the bizarre true story of some 533 silent film reels, buried for almost 50 years in a sub-arctic swimming pool, deep in the Yukon permafrost....

  • Diamantino

    Directed by Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt • Comedy • 2019 • Portugal, France, Brazil • Portuguese with English subtitles
    Starring Carloto Cotta, Anabela Moreira, Margarida Moreira

    Winner of the Critics' Week Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival, "Diamantino" follows a soccer hunk as he goe...

  • Duet for Cannibals

    Directed by Susan Sontag • Arthouse • 1969 • Sweden • Swedish with English subtitles
    Starring Adriana Asti, Gosta Ekman, Lars Ekborg

    Essayist, novelist, critic, and all-around intellectual dynamo Susan Sontag made her directorial debut with this definition-defying, dryly funny psychological seri...

  • Faust

    Directed by F.W. Murnau • Silent • 1926 • Germany • German with English intertitles
    Starring Gosta Ekman, Emil Jannings, Camilla Horn

    Mobilizing full studio resources, F.W. Murnau orchestrated a colossal adaptation of Goethe's “Faust” that ranks among the greatest achievements of German silent c...

  • Filmworker

    Directed by Tony Zierra • Documentary • 2018 • US • English
    Featuring Leon Vitali, Ryan O'Neal, Stellan Skarsgard

    Leon Vitali was a British television actor when Stanley Kubrick picked him for a role in "Barry Lyndon". That first encounter with the auteur proved decisive—he swiftly resolved to ...

  • Fire at Sea

    Directed by Gianfranco Rosi • Documentary • 2016 • Italy • Italian with English subtitles
    Featuring Samuele Pucillo, Mattias Cucina, Pietro Bartolo

    An Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary Feature and winner of the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, "Fire at Sea" takes pla...

  • France

    Directed by Bruno Dumont • Comedy • 2021 • France, Germany, Italy, Belgium • French with English subtitles
    Starring Léa Seydoux, Blanche Gardin, Benjamin Biolay

    Léa Seydoux brilliantly holds the center of Bruno Dumont’s Cannes Palme d'Or nominated film, which starts out as a satire of contempora...

  • Goodbye, Dragon Inn

    Directed by Tsai Ming-liang • Arthouse • 2017 • Taiwan • Mandarin with English subtitles
    Starring Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shiang-chyi, Mitamura Kiyonobu

    In Tsai Ming-liang’s minimalist film, the Fu-Ho Grand, a movie palace in Taipei, is closing its doors. Its valedictory screening: King Hu’s 1967 w...

  • Hermia & Helena

    Directed by Matías Piñeiro • Arthouse • 2017 • US, Argentina • English, Spanish with English subtitles
    Starring Agustina Muñoz, Mati Diop, Duston Guy Defa

    A young Argentine theater director travels to New York for a residency to work on a new Spanish translation of "A Midsummer Night’s Dream", b...

  • Kippur

    Directed by Amos Gitai • Drama • 2000 • Israel, France • Hebrew w/ English subtitles
    Starring Juliano Mer, Uri Ran Klauzner, Tomer Ruso

    An Official Selection at the Cannes, New York, and Toronto Film Festivals, Amos Gitai's "Kippur" is a gut-wrenching journey through beautiful landscapes ravaged...

  • L'Age D'or

    Directed by Luis Buñuel • Arthouse • 1930 • France • French with English subtitles
    Starring Gaston Modot, Lya Lys, Max Ernst

    The surrealist masterpiece “L'Age D'or” showcases the incomparably obsessive cinematic imagination of Luis Buñuel at its beginning and the celebrated surrealism of Salvado...

  • Le Gai Savoir

    Directed by Jean-Luc Godard • Arthouse • 1969 • France • French with English subtitles
    Starring Juliet Berto, Jean-Pierre Leaud, Jean-Luc Godard

    In this classic film from Jean-Luc Godard, two militants have a discourse on language while alone in an abandoned television studio. Referring to spoke...

  • Martin Eden

    Directed by Pietro Marcello • Arthouse • 2020 • Italy • Italian with English subtitles
    Starring Luca Marinelli, Jessica Cressy, Denise Sardisco

    Winner of the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival and adapted from the 1909 novel by Jack London, "Martin Eden" follows a dashing young proleta...

  • Mephisto

    Directed by István Szabó • Drama • 1981 • Hungary • German, Hungarian with English subtitles
    Starring Klaus Maria Brandauer, Ildiko Bansagi, Krystyna Janda

    Winner of Best Foreign Language Film at the 1982 Academy Awards and nominated for a Palme d'Or at Cannes, István Szabó's "Mephisto" follows ...

  • Native Son

    Directed by Pierre Chenal • Drama • 1951 • Argentina • English
    Starring Richard Wright, Jean Wallace, Gloria Madison

    A new restoration of the 1951 film version of Richard Wright's novel, "Native Son" exposes the injustices of urban African-American life through the eyes of Bigger Thomas, played ...

  • Neptune Frost

    Directed by Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman • Sci-Fi • 2021 • US, Rwanda • English, Kinyarwanda with English subtitles
    Starring Cheryl Isheja, Elvis Ngabo, Diogene Ntarindwa

    In an otherworldly e-waste dump camp, an anti-colonialist hacking collective attempts a takeover of the authoritarian regime...

  • Nostalghia

    Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • Arthouse • 1983 • Italy, Russia • Italian, Russian with English subtitles
    Starring Oleg Yankovskiy, Erland Josephson, Domiziana Giordano

    In Andrei Tarkovsky’s first film made outside of the USSR, a Russian intellectual conducting research in Italy becomes overwhelm...

  • Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today

    Directed by Stuart Schulberg • Documentary • 1948 • US • English, German with English subtitles
    Featuring Liev Schreiber

    One of the greatest courtroom dramas in history, “Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today” shows how international prosecutors built their case against top Nazi war criminals using...

  • Oliver Sacks: His Own Life

    Directed by Ric Burns • Documentary • 2020 • US • English
    Featuring Oliver Sacks, Temple Grandin, Atul Gawande

    A month after receiving a fatal diagnosis, esteemed neurologist Oliver Sacks sat down for a series of interviews in his apartment in New York City. For eighty hours, surrounded by famil...

  • Privilege

    Directed by Yvonne Rainer • Arthouse • 1990 • US • English
    Featuring Daniel Martin Berkey, Blaire Baron, Gabrielle Made

    One of Yvonne Rainer’s most narratively complex films shifts from a documentary about women going through the process of menopause to a deadpan and delightfully anarchic autobi...

  • Red Psalm

    Directed by Miklós Jancsó • Drama • 1972 • Hungary • Hungarian with English subtitles
    Starring József Madaras, Tibor Orbán, Jácint Juhász

    Winner of the best director prize at Cannes in 1972 and widely considered to be the greatest Hungarian film of the 70s, Miklós Jancsó's masterpiece set on th...

  • Rude Boy

    Directed by Jack Hazan, David Mingay • Drama • 1980 • UK • English
    Starring Ray Gange, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones

    Set against a background of riots, anti-racist demos, and police hostility, this unforgettable film portraits the UK at a moment when subcultural shock troops met those of a rising rig...

  • Slam

    Directed by Marc Levin • Drama • 1988 • US • English
    Starring Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn, Bonz Malone

    Winner of a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance and a Caméra d'Or for Best First Feature at Cannes, "Slam" stars Saul Williams as a young Black performance poet who is imprisoned for a petty marijuana c...