Wild Grass, Broken Embraces bookend auteur-rich New York Film Festival

Announcing the entire slate of 29 films from 17 countries set to play from September 25–October 11, festival organisers said Lee Daniels’ early awards contender and Sundance grand jury prize and audience award winner Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire will serve as the centerpiece screening.

The main programme will play in the renovated Alice Tully Hall and there are Walter Reade Theater screenings of two Masterworks series from China and India as well as new work from Lars von Trier, Michael Haneke, Todd Solondz, Caterine Breillat and Clare Denis.

Fresh from Cannes earlier this summer are Von Trier’s notorious horror film Antichrist, Haneke’s Palme d’Or winning World War One fable The White Ribbon, Marco Bellocchio’s historical drama Vincere, and South Korean Bong Joon-ho’s much fancied thriller Mother.

Audiences will also get the chance to see Catherine Breillat’s fantasy Bluebeard, Todd Solondz’s Happiness companion piece Life During Wartime, and Clare Denis’ White Material, among others.

Among the first-time filmmakers are Maren Ade with the relationship tale Everyone Else, Samuel Maoz with the wartime drama Lebanon, Joao Pedro Rodrigues’ profile of a drag performer in To Die Like A Man, and Sabu’s Japanese manga-flavoured tale of political awakening Kanikosen. 

The roster includes the Masterworks series Re-Inventing China: A New Cinema For A New Society 1949-1966, and A Heart As Big As The World: The Films Of Guru Dutt. This year’s Spotlight Retrospective will be a restored hi-def 70th Anniversary presentation of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard Of Oz.

Hailing a “diverse, fresh and compelling” line-up, programme director of the Film Society Of Lincoln Center and chairman of the selection committee Richard Pena said the slate included “several exciting new voices… who we believe will become major new filmmakers that deserve world attention.”