The 61st New York Film Festival will feature 32 films in its Main Slate, with the chosen slate of films representing 18 countries. The lineup includes Cannes winners Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone Interest, Fallen Leaves, About Dry Grasses, and Perfect Days.
The 2023 festival runs September 29th through October 15th.
“The unsettled state of the industry is an unavoidable talking point these days, but my hope is that our festival, as it has done through its 61-year history, will serve as a reminder that the art of cinema is in robust health,” stated Dennis Lim, Artistic Director of the New York Film Festival. “The filmmakers in this year’s Main Slate are grappling with eternal questions—about how movies relate to the world, about what it means to make art from life, about the most interesting ways to approach the contemporary moment and the historical past—and the answers they have proposed are thrilling in their variety, ingenuity, and urgency. We can’t wait for our audience, so vital to the festival experience, to discover these 32 new films.”
The 61st New York Film Festival will open with Todd Haynes’ May December. Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla is the centerpiece film, and Michael Mann’s Ferrari will close out the festival. The 2023 festival marks Michael Mann’s NYFF Main Slate debut. Additional Main Slate newcomers include Jonathan Glazer, Andrew Haigh, Raven Jackson (an NYFF57 FLC Artists Academy alum), Rodrigo Moreno, Paul B. Preciado, Wang Bing, and Zhang Lu.
Screenings will take place in the five New York City boroughs. Locations include Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) (Brooklyn), the Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx), Maysles Documentary Center in Harlem (Manhattan), and the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens).
61st New York Film Festival Main Slate
Opening Night – May December
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, a married couple buckles under the pressure when an actress arrives to do research for a film about their past.
Centerpiece – Priscilla
When teenage Priscilla Beaulieu meets Elvis Presley at a party, the man who is already a meteoric rock-and-roll superstar becomes someone entirely unexpected in private moments: a thrilling crush, an ally in loneliness, a gentle best friend. Through Priscilla’s eyes, Sofia Coppola tells the unseen side of a great American myth in Elvis and Priscilla’s long courtship and turbulent marriage, from a German army base to his dream-world estate at Graceland, in this deeply felt and ravishingly detailed portrait of love, fantasy, and fame.
Closing Night – Ferrari
It’s the summer of 1957. Ex-racecar driver, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. All the dramatic forces of his life – as volatile as the red race cars he builds – are in collision. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for one son and the acknowledgement of another.
The passionate instigator of men inspires his Spring Team of drivers, some like surrogate sons. He blunts a hostile press with strafing wit and boldly strategizes to roll the dice on one race – 1,000 miles across Italy, the infamous Mille Miglia. As the red cars slam through towns and mountain passes towards unpredictable outcomes, the future of these vivid characters’ lives are being written.
About Dry Grasses
Dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Dir. Raven Jackson
All of Us Strangers
Dir. Andrew Haigh
Anatomy of a Fall
Dir. Justine Triet
The Beast
Dir. Bertrand Bonello
La Chimera
Dir. Alice Rohrwacher
Close Your Eyes
Dir. Víctor Erice
The Delinquents
Dir. Rodrigo Moreno
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Dir. Radu Jude
Eureka
Dir. Lisandro Alonso
Evil Does Not Exist
Dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
Fallen Leaves
Dir. Aki Kaurismäki
Green Border
Dir. Agnieszka Holland
Here
Dir. Bas Devos
In Our Day
Dir. Hong Sangsoo
In Water
Dir. Hong Sangsoo
Janet Planet
Dir. Annie Baker
Kidnapped
Dir. Marco Bellocchio
Last Summer
Dir. Catherine Breillat
Music
Dir. Angela Schanelec
Orlando, My Political Biography
Dir. Paul B. Preciado
Perfect Days
Dir. Wim Wenders
Pictures of Ghosts
Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho
Poor Things
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
La Práctica
Dir. Martín Rejtman
The Settlers
Dir. Felipe Gálvez
The Shadowless Tower
Dir. Zhang Lu
Youth (Spring)
Dir. Wang Bing
The Zone of Interest
Dir. Jonathan Glazer
