The main slate for the New York Film Festival has been announced. The selection for the 51st edition of the festival comprises 35 features, including a strong showing of British talent.
The UK productions playing at the festival - which runs from September 27 to October 13 - are Richard Curtis comedy About Time, Steve Coogan's latest outing in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and Roger Michel's romcom Le Week-End. On the dramatic front, Ralph Fiennes brings his film about Charles Dickens' secret lover - The Invisible Woman.
Other films screening, include Cannes Palme d'Or winner Blue Is The Warmest Colour, directed Abdellatif Kechiche, its Grand Prix winner Inside Llewelyn Davis, helmed by the Coen Brothers and Jia Zhangke's A Touch Of Sin, which won the festival's award for best screenplay.
Other notable directors include Alexander Payne, who brings Nebraska, Catherine Breillat, with her latest Abuse is Weakness and Sebastián Lelio’s Gloria, which saw his star Pauline Garcia win the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for Best Actress.
NYFF’s Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair, Kent Jones said, “Cinema is a vast terrain with a complex ecology, encompassing a mindbending array of species and habitats – there are multiple approaches to the question ‘What is a movie,’ from the industrial to the hand-made, from the carefully written to the poetically assembled. I love the level of diversity in the main slate selections, which includes documentaries, biographies, comedies, adventures, epics, chamber pieces, elegies, explorations and affirmations. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.”
Rose Kuo, the Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, said, “The Film Society's commitment to presenting the significant films of the year each fall at the New York Film Festival continues with our latest edition. This year we welcome a record number of over a dozen returning veterans along with a number of new voices. It has been an interesting year for cinema with spirited discussions already underway about some of the films in our curated main slate selections. I'm sure that New York audiences will be excited, maybe sometimes even provoked, but hopefully also inspired by this year's new work.”
As has previously been announced, the festival will open with Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips, have The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty as its centre piece gala and close with Spike Jonze's Her.
Additional gala and special events, documentary sections, spotlights on emerging filmmakers, and panels will be announced in the comning weeks as well as NYFF’s Views From the Avant-Garde and Convergence programs.
Read our coverage of previous New York Film Festival's here. More reviews from this year coming soon.
