The Close-up

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Céline Sciamma to discuss Petite Maman, a selection in the Main Slate section of this year’s festival. Following such singular inquiries into gender as Tomboy, Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Céline Sciamma proves again that she’s among the most accomplished and unpredictable of all contemporary French filmmakers with the gentle yet richly emotional time-bender Petite Maman. Following the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother’s childhood home to begin the difficult process of sorting and removing its cherished objects. While exploring the nearby woods, Nelly encounters a neighbor her own age, with whom she finds she has a remarkable amount in common. Sciamma’s scrupulously constructed jewel uses the most delicate of touches to palpate profound ideas about grief, memory, and the past. Learn

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Pedro Almodóvar and cast members Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit to discuss Parallel Mothers, the Closing Night selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. In this muted contemporary melodrama, two women, a generation apart, find themselves inextricably linked by their brief time together in a maternity ward. The circumstances that brought them to the Madrid hospital are quite different—one accidental, the other traumatic—and a secret, hiding the truth of the bond that connects these two, is a powerful story that tackles a deep trauma in Spanish history. Penélope Cruz’s Janis is a uniquely complex, flawed, but ultimately alluring lead character, who finds herself in a morally and emotionally treacherous situation. She’s viewed in contrast with Ana, radiantly portrayed by newcomer Milena Smit, a discovery who brings a palpable innocence, pain, and longing to this interwoven portrait of women and motherhood.

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim sits down with director Apichatpong Weerasethakul and actress Tilda Swinton to discuss Memoria, a selection in the Main Slate section of this year’s festival.  Collective and personal ghosts hover over every frame of Memoria, somehow the grandest yet most becalmed of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s works. Inspired by the Thai director’s own memories and those of people he encountered while traveling across Colombia, the film follows Jessica (a wholly immersed Tilda Swinton), an expat botanist visiting her hospitalized sister in Bogotá; while there, she becomes ever more disturbed by an abyssal sound that haunts her sleepless nights and bleary-eyed days, compelling her to seek help in identifying its origins. Thus begins a personal journey that’s also historical excavation, in a film of profound serenity that, like Jessica’s sound, lodges itself in the viewer’s brain as it traverses city and country, climaxing in an extraordi

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez sits down with director Mike Mills and actors Joaquin Phoenix and Molly Webster to discuss C’mon C’mon, a selection in the Spotlight section of this year’s festival.  After gracing audiences with Beginners and 20th Century Women (NYFF54), writer-director Mike Mills returns with another warm, insightful, and gratifyingly askew portrait of American family life. A soulful Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny, a kindhearted radio journalist deep into a project in which he interviews children across the U.S. about our world’s uncertain future. His sister, Viv (a marvelously intuitive Gaby Hoffmann), asks him to watch her 9-year-old son, Jesse (Woody Norman, in one of the most affecting breakout child performances in years), while she tends to the child’s father, who’s suffering from mental health issues. After agreeing, Johnny finds himself connecting with his nephew in ways he hadn’t expected, ultimately taking Jesse with him on a journey fr

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim chats with filmmaker Gaspar Noé about his new film Vortex, a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival.  Finding new depths of tenderness without forgoing the uncompromising fatalism that defines his work, Noé’s latest film guides us through a handful of dark days in the lives of an elderly couple in Paris: a retired psychiatrist (Françoise Lebrun) and a writer (Dario Argento) working on a book about the intersection of cinema and dreams. Explore what's playing at NYFF59 and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff.

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez speaks with director Rebecca Hall and cast members Tessa Thompson, Ruth Negga, and André Holland about Passing, a Main Slate selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. A cornerstone work of Harlem Renaissance literature, Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel Passing is adapted to the screen with exquisite craft and skill by writer-director Rebecca Hall, who envelops the viewer in a bygone period that remains tragically present. The film’s extraordinary anchors are Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, meticulous as middle-class Irene and Clare, reacquainted childhood friends whose lives have taken divergent paths. Clare has decided to “pass” as white to maintain her social standing, even hiding her identity from her racist white husband, John (Alexander Skarsgård); Irene, on the other hand, is married to a prominent Black doctor, Brian (André Holland), who is initially horrified at Clare’s choices. As the film progresses, and resentments and lat

Welcome to the Film at Lincoln Center podcast! On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 edition, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez has a conversation with the team behind The French Dispatch: director Wes Anderson, producer Jeremy Dawson, and cast members Adrien Brody, Bill Murray, Steve Park, and Jason Schwartzman Zooming in from Spain, and cast members Anjelica Fellini, Lois Smith, Bob Balaban, Léa Seydoux, and Jeffrey Wright joining in person from New York. The French Dispatch is a selection in the Spotlight section of this year’s festival. Wes Anderson’s unmistakable cinematic style proves delightfully suited to periodical format in this missive from the eponymous expatriate journal. Brought to press by a corps of idiosyncratic correspondents, the issue includes reports on a criminal artist and his prison guard muse, student revolutionaries, and a memorable dinner with a police commissioner and his personal chef. As brimming with finely tuned texture as a juicy issue of a certain New York–based magazine to w

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez speaks with director Todd Haynes about The Velvet Underground, a Main Slate selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. The Velvet Underground opens in our theaters on Wednesday, October 13th. Tickets are now on sale. Given the ingeniously imagined musical worlds of Velvet Goldmine and I’m Not There, it should come as no surprise that Todd Haynes’s documentary about the seminal band The Velvet Underground mirrors its members’ experimentation and formal innovation. Combining contemporary interviews and archival documentation with newscasts, advertisements, and a trove of avant-garde film from the era, Haynes constructs a vibrant cinematic collage that is as much about New York of the ’60s and ’70s as it is about the rise and fall of the group that has been called as influential as the Beatles. Filmed with the cooperation of surviving band members, this multifaceted portrait folds in an array of participants in the creative scen

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim speaks with director Jane Campion, cast members Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and cinematographer Ari Wegner about The Power of the Dog, the Main Slate Centerpiece selection of the 59th New York Film Festival. With The Power of the Dog, her first film in nearly twelve years, Jane Campion reaffirms her status as one of the world’s greatest—and most gratifyingly eccentric—filmmakers. A mesmerizing, psychologically rich variation on the American western, it tells the story a melancholy young widow (played by Kirsten Dunst) who marries a rancher in 1920s Montana, where she and her young son are tormented by her new husband’s sullen and bullying brother (played by Benedict Cumberbatch). To learn more and get tickets for this year's NYFF, taking place through October 10 indoors and outdoors throughout NYC, visit filmlinc.org/nyff

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by The Lost Daughter writer & director Maggie Gyllenhaal and cast members Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Ed Harris, Paul Mescal, Peter Sarsgaard, and Dagmara Dominczyk to discuss their Spotlight selection of this year’s festival. The NYFF59 screenings of The Lost Daughter are presented by Citi. Based on the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante, Gyllenhaal's screen adaptation stars Olivia Colman as Leda, a divorced professor on a solitary summer vacation who becomes intrigued and then oddly involved in the lives of another family she meets there. Our wide-ranging discussion covers everything from hometown filmmaker Gyllenhaal's initial fascination with Ferrante's four Neapolitan Novels to how she eventually assembled her incredible cast. Also discussed are Johnson's breaking down the unique motivations of her character, Nina, as the story progresses, and how Mescal prepared for his role, his very first i

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez is joined by director Julia Ducournau and lead actors Vincent Lindon and Agathe Rousselle to discuss Titane, a Main Slate selection at NYFF59. Titane plays at the 59th New York Film Festival Wednesday, September 29 at 3:45pm. Standby only tickets may be available. The winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or, Titane is a thrillingly confident vision from Julia Ducournau that deposits the viewer directly into its director’s headspace. Moving with the logic of a dream—and often the force of a nightmare—the film begins as a kind of horror movie, with a series of shocking events perpetrated by Alexia (Agathe Rouselle, in a dynamic and daring breakthrough), a dancer with a titanium plate in her skull following a childhood car accident. However, once Alexia goes into hiding from the police, and is taken in by a grief-stricken firefighter (Vincent Lindon), Ducournau reveals her deployment of genre tropes to be a

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, we’re joined by the creative team behind Mississippi Masala, a Revivals selection in this year’s New York Film Festival. In this talk sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, writer Jhumpa Lahiri speaks with director Mira Nair, lead actress Sarita Choudhury, and Director of Photography Ed Lachman about this seminal screen romance of the 1990s. In Mississippi Masala, Sarita Choudhury plays Mina, a Ugandan Indian from Kampala whose family leaves Uganda after the implementation of Idi Amin’s policy of forcefully expelling all Asians from the country. They wind up in Greenwood, Mississippi, living with relatives and trying to reconcile the trauma of their involuntary exile with assimilating to American culture. Some 17 years pass before Mina falls for a self-employed carpet cleaner, Demetrius (played by Denzel Washington), and their romance puts them in conflict with the local Black and Indian-American communities—not to mention Mina’s family. At once a powerful parab

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by Bergman Island director Mia Hansen-Løve and two of her lead actors, Vicky Krieps and Anders Danielson Lie, to discuss their Main Slate selection of this year’s festival. Bergman Island opens at Film at Lincoln Center on October 15th. A masterful blend of the personal and the meta-cinematic, Mia Hansen-Løve’s meditation on the reconciliation of love and the creative process is also delightful cinephile catnip. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth star as Chris and Tony, married filmmakers who venture to the remote Swedish island of Fårö—where director Ingmar Bergman lived and made many of his masterpieces—as a writing retreat for their new projects. Both inspired and troubled by the isolation and history of the place, Chris gets lost in the lives of her new fictional creations (realized on screen by Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie) while also reckoning with the lines between reality and fantasy. A tribute to a f

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by Joachim Trier, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Renate Reinsve. Trier's latest film, The Worst Person in the World, is a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival. As proven in such exacting stories of lives on the edge as Reprise and Oslo, August 31, Norwegian director Joachim Trier is singularly adept at giving an invigorating modern twist to classically constructed character portraits. Trier catapults the viewer into the world of his most spellbinding protagonist yet: Julie, played by Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve, who’s the magnetic center of nearly every scene. After dropping out of pre-med, Julie must find new professional and romantic avenues as she navigates her twenties, juggling emotionally heavy relationships with two very different men (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie and engaging newcomer Herbert Nordrum). Fluidly told in 12 discrete chapters, Trier’s film elegantly depicts the precar

On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by Paul Verhoeven, whose latest film, Benedetta, is a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival and will be opening at the Film at Lincoln Center on December 3rd. Based on true events, Benedetta unearths the story of Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century nun in Tuscany who believed she saw visions of Christ and engaged in a sexual relationship with a fellow sister at her abbey. Because this is a film by genre auteur par excellence Paul Verhoeven (whose movies include Robocop, Basic Instinct, and NYFF54 selection Elle), the result is anything but a reverent treatment of an odd footnote in Catholic European history. Forgoing the hallmarks of prestige cinema, this delirious, erotic, and violent melodrama is told with a boundless spirit for scandal, and unabashedly courts blasphemy as it unfolds its tale of religious hypocrisy. Wildly entertaining, and featuring standout performances from Virginie Efira as the titl

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special preview in anticipation of the 59th New York Film Festival, taking place September 24 – October 10, 2021. An annual bellwether of the state of cinema that has shaped film culture since 1963, the festival continues a long-standing tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. Join NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim, and the programmers of NYFF59 as they discuss their top picks from this year’s festival. Explore the full lineup, see the festival schedule, and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff. This talk was first available to FLC members, who play such a vital role in all we do. If you're interested in supporting FLC by becoming a member and exploring member benefits, visit filmlinc.org/members for more information.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we're featuring a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with Andreas Fontana on his feature debut, Azor. Swiss director Andreas Fontana brings an astonishingly assured eye to this gripping debut feature set in the cloistered world of high finance in Argentina in the 1970s. With a finely tuned sense of impassive anxiety, Fabrizio Rongione plays a banker who has traveled from Geneva to Buenos Aires with his wife to disentangle the complicated threads left behind by a colleague who has mysteriously disappeared. Once there, he finds himself descending ever deeper into a sinister inner circle, connecting the country’s upper classes to the military junta’s ongoing “Dirty War.” Azor is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/azor.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with Jessica Beshir on her hypnotic documentary feature, Faya Dayi. In Faya Dayi, Beshir returns to her hometown of Harar and explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents in the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant). Faya Dayi is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. Faya Dayi is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/faya.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A on Liesl Tommy’s Respect with screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson, moderated by Emil Wilbekin, former editor of Vibe, Essence and founder of Native Son, a platform created to inspire and empower Black Gay Men. Following the rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom, Respect is the remarkable true story of the music icon’s journey to find her voice, starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Mary J Blige, and more. This talk was first available to FLC patrons and members, who play such a vital role in all we do. If you're interested in supporting FLC by becoming a member and exploring member benefits, visit filmlinc.org/members for more information. Respect is now playing in theaters.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a conversation from the 58th New York Film Festival with filmmakers Matías Piñeiro and Nicolás Pereda. In Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Nicolás Pereda’s Fauna, one never knows where performance ends and life begins. The two films meditate in poignant ways on storytelling as both an artistic and an everyday act: Isabella continues Piñeiro’s wryly quotidian takes on Shakespearean dramas, while Fauna unearths the violence haunting a Mexican village beneath a veneer of fabrications and arch comedy. In a sprawling conversation moderated by NYFF program advisor Gina Telaroli, the two filmmakers chatted about their shared affinities, inimitable idiosyncrasies, and respective approaches to collaboration, color, structure, and more. Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella opens in our theaters on August 27. For showtimes and tickets visit filmlinc.org/isabella.