Film at Lincoln Center announces Talks for the 63rd New York Film Festival. Newly expanded to include ticketed events at the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center and Alice Tully Hall, as well as free talks in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Amphitheater, the NYFF63 Talks program complements the film selection with a robust lineup of lively and in-depth conversations among NYFF artists and special guests. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center in partnership with Rolex, NYFF63 takes place September 26 through October 13 at Lincoln Center and in venues across the city.
The career-spanning Deep Focus Talks include a conversation between Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi, who returns to the New York Film Festival in person for the first time in 25 years with “It Was Just an Accident,” and Martin Scorsese; a talk between Claire Denis, director of Main Slate selection “The Fence,” and Barry Jenkins, director of “Moonlight” (NYFF54) and “If Beale Street Could Talk” (NYFF56); and Kamal Aljafari, director of NYFF63 selection “With Hasan in Gaza.”
The fifth edition of the Amos Vogel Lecture will be delivered by visionary Argentine auteur Lucrecia Martel, whose latest film and first documentary feature, “Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks),” screens in the Main Slate.
Crosscuts conversations focus on unique and revelatory pairings of filmmakers and artists across NYFF sections, genres, and styles. This year’s lineup pairs Ethan Hawke, star of Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon,” and Willem Dafoe, star of Kent Jones’s “Late Fame,” in a Talk sponsored by The Hollywood Reporter; “Sentimental Value” director Joachim Trier and “Jay Kelly” director Noah Baumbach, in a Talk sponsored by Deadline; “Dry Leaf” director Alexandre Koberidze and “Rose of Nevada” director Mark Jenkin; and “Sirât” director Oliver Laxe and “Mare’s Nest” director Ben Rivers.
Two special NYFF Roundtables include On Mr. Scorsese, with Rebecca Miller, director of the NYFF63 selection “Mr. Scorsese,” Ari Aster, and other special guests discussing the career of the legendary filmmaker, presented in partnership with Rolex; and Black World-Making, with NYFF63 Main Slate selection “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” director Kahlil Joseph, film and theater artist Kaneza Schaal, and more special guests.
Film Comment, FLC’s award-winning publication, will lead two panel conversations recorded live for the Film Comment Podcast: Stealing Time, with Kent Jones (“Late Fame“), Kelly Reichardt (“The Mastermind“), and Lucio Castro (“Drunken Noodles“); and the annual Festival Report, a spirited critics’ roundtable on the highs and lows of the NYFF63 slate. FC also presents an unmissable event, Tik-Talk with Radu Jude and Andrei Rus, with director Jude (Main Slate selection “Kontinental ’25” and Currents selection “Dracula“) and scholar Rus virtually joining the audience in the Francesca Beale Theater to present “Little Poems in Prose,” a specially curated compilation of Romanian TikTok videos, followed by a discussion on the cinematic and cultural dimensions of the popular, bite-size form.
NYFF Trivia Night, with special guest Cinephile: A Card Game, returns for its fourth year at the Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, featuring multiple trivia rounds including NYFF history and beyond, with chances to win tickets to sold-out NYFF63 screenings and more prizes.
NYFF will also host IndieWire Presents: Screen Talk Live with Editor-at-Large Anne Thompson and Deputy Film Editor Ryan Lattanzio for a special live edition of the independent news site’s weekly podcast.
Talks are organized by Devika Girish and Madeline Whittle, in collaboration with Dennis Lim.
Tickets for paid Talks are on sale now at filmlinc.org. Tickets for all free Talks and events will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis beginning one hour prior to each event at the box office. Tickets are limited to one per person, subject to availability. For those unable to attend, select recordings from these events will be available online on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast and Film at Lincoln Center’s YouTube channel at a later date.
NYFF63 is generously supported by Festival Co-Chairs Susan and John Hess, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Imelda and Peter Sobiloff, and Nanna and Dan Stern; Vice Chairs Susannah Gray and John Lyons, and Tara Kelleher and Roy Zuckerberg; and Supporters Great Hill, Hillary Koota Krevlin and Glenn Krevlin, Ronnie Planalp, Ari Rifkin, and Mary Solomon / GS Gives.
NYFF63 films are screened in theaters at Lincoln Center and at four venues across the city: Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), AMC Bay Plaza Cinema (Bronx), BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) (Brooklyn), and the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens).
The New York Film Festival is an annual celebration of the most significant films from around the world. Since its inception in 1963, NYFF has played a pivotal role in shaping film culture, presenting a curated selection of bold and remarkable works by acclaimed directors alongside emerging talents.
NYFF63 TALKS
Talks take place at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (144 W 65th Street),
David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center (1887 Broadway),
or Alice Tully Hall (1941 Broadway at W 65th Street)
The 2025 Amos Vogel Lecture: Lucrecia Martel
2021 marked the birth centenary of Amos Vogel, the pioneering film programmer, author, and co-founder of the New York Film Festival. To celebrate this occasion and honor Vogel’s path-blazing legacy, NYFF inaugurated the Amos Vogel Lecture, to be delivered annually by an artist or thinker who embodies the subversive spirit of Vogel’s cinephilia and brings it into conversation with the present and future of cinema.
For the fifth edition of the Amos Vogel Lecture, NYFF is proud to welcome visionary auteur Lucrecia Martel, whose latest feature and first work of documentary filmmaking, “Nuestra Tierra (Landmarks),” screens in the NYFF63 Main Slate. Martel has long been known for her stylistically subversive and politically incisive work, which often turns its gaze onto the lasting legacies of colonialism in Argentina. With “Nuestra Tierra,” Martel returns to the subject with an unflinching nonfiction lens, tracing the circumstances—going back centuries—that culminated in the 2009 murder of Indigenous activist Javier Chocobar by Argentine police and landowners and the protracted legal process that ensued. The film, and Martel’s career at large, exemplify par excellence the radical vocation that Vogel attributed to the cinematic arts.
Tuesday, October 7 at 6:00pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
DEEP FOCUS
In-depth dialogues with festival filmmakers and their creative collaborators
Jafar Panahi, in conversation with Martin Scorsese
The revered Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s first film since his 2022 imprisonment is a return to his fictional roots—and a continuation of his ceaseless grappling with state repression. Winner of the 2025 Palme d’Or at Cannes, “It Was Just An Accident” is a riveting and dark thriller that draws from Panahi’s own experience being imprisoned and persecuted for his fearless cinema, following a group of characters who confront difficult questions of moral choice, culpability, and vengeance when they encounter a man they believe is the intelligence officer who tortured them in prison. NYFF is honored to welcome Panahi back in person for the first time since the 2000 festival premiere of The Circle for a conversation with none other than Martin Scorsese.
Friday, October 3 at 1:30pm – Alice Tully Hall
Claire Denis, in conversation with Barry Jenkins
Legendary auteur Claire Denis returns to the New York Film Festival this year with a feature that is as slippery, sensuous, and acridly political as her best work. Adapted from an English-language translation of Bernard-Marie Koltès’s play Black Battles with Dogs, “The Fence” stars Denis regular Isaach de Bankolé as a man demanding the body of his brother, who died in a work accident on a construction site in West Africa, resulting in a precariously civil confrontation with the development’s foreman (Matt Dillon) that threatens to erupt into something darker. NYFF is proud to welcome Denis for a conversation about her iconoclastic, boundary-pushing career, her approach to adapting a work from stage to screen, and her new film’s unflinching indictment of Europe’s colonial past and present, moderated by filmmaker Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight,” NYFF54; “If Beale Street Could Talk,” NYFF56), who served as an executive producer for “The Fence.“
Sunday, October 5 at 4:00pm – David Rubenstein Atrium
Kamal Aljafari
Palestinian filmmaker Kamal Aljafari has accumulated a remarkable body of work across the last two decades, employing thrilling experiments in moving image, sound, and archival material toward achieving what he describes as “the camera of the dispossessed.” His latest feature, NYFF63 official selection “With Hasan in Gaza,” uses MiniDV footage that Aljafari shot in the Palestinian city in 2001, while on a quest to find a man he had met briefly while imprisoned by Israeli forces as a teenager. The film’s haunting, elegiac quality comes not only from its poetic editing and sound design, but also from our awareness that all that we see on screen—already battered and destroyed by constant gunfire and bombing—is now long gone, and the circumstances in Gaza are even worse today. An in-depth conversation with Aljafari will cover his career, his influences and inspirations, and the making of his new film.
Wednesday, October 8 at 6:30pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
CROSSCUTS
Conversations between filmmakers across festival sections, genres, and styles
Ethan Hawke & Willem Dafoe
Two films in this year’s NYFF lineup center on artists confronting the passage of time: Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” stars Ethan Hawke as the legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart, fretful and embittered at the prospect of his one-time creative partner scaling the heights of musical-theater celebrity; Kent Jones’s “Late Fame” adapts Arthur Schnitzler’s novella about a once-upon-a-time New York poet, played by Willem Dafoe, who is intoxicated by the sudden attentions of a coterie of twentysomething would-be literati. Each film taps into extraordinary reserves of wit and melancholy via the contributions of their lead actors, titans of contemporary American cinema and exemplary interpreters of the cultural forces that have defined their respective generations. NYFF is thrilled to bring together Hawke and Dafoe for an in-depth discussion of their craft, their creative philosophies, and their portrayals of aging artists on the brink of an uncertain future.
Sunday, September 28 at 3:00pm – David Rubenstein Atrium
Mark Jenkin & Alexandre Koberidze
Ghosts, folk tales, and beautiful but ephemeral visions of place run through the work of two of the most inventive filmmakers working today: Cornish director Mark Jenkin, whose film “Rose of Nevada” screens in the NYFF63 Main Slate; and Georgian auteur Alexandre Koberidze, whose third feature “Dry Leaf’ is featured in the Currents section. In the former film, shot on sparkling 16mm in a small, fading port town in Cornwall, two young men go on a fishing trip that turns into a beguiling (and perhaps cursed) passage through time; in the latter, shot on a Sony Ericsson phone, a father looks for his missing daughter in the villages of Georgia with an invisible friend in tow, a quest that turns into a tour of the country’s fast-disappearing rural communities and ways of life. NYFF is excited to welcome Jenkin and Koberidze for a conversation about their mutual interests in myth and the materiality of cinema, and their proclivity for audacious formal innovation.
Wednesday, October 1 at 5:00pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
Noah Baumbach & Joachim Trier
NYFF veterans Noah Baumbach and Joachim Trier return to the festival this year with a pair of films that explore how artistry, authenticity, and artifice collide in the public and private lives of star actors and famed filmmakers. In Baumbach’s charmingly reflexive “Jay Kelly,” an aging megastar—played, fittingly, by George Clooney—arrives at a crisis point in his career; haunted by the past and uninspired by the present, he embarks on a somewhat reckless, screwball adventure with his entourage (featuring Adam Sandler and Laura Dern) in tow. Meanwhile, Trier’s “Sentimental Value” finds an acclaimed stage actress (Renate Reinsve) and her estranged movie-director father (Stellan Skarsgård) clashing, connecting, and introspecting over a film project that draws from their complicated lives. Dramatizing the dimensions of modern-day, larger-than-life celebrity with deft humor, both films hone in on the relationships—familial, professional, transactional—that undergird the creative process and industrial artmaking. Join Baumbach and Trier for a lively, probing discussion of their approaches to writing grounded, lived-in characters, and the collaborations that have shaped their own illustrious bodies of work.
Wednesday, October 1 at 7:00pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
Oliver Laxe & Ben Rivers
On top of sharing an enthusiasm for mystery, the elements, and utopias, British artist Ben Rivers and Galician director Oliver Laxe also shared a producer and a shooting location on their latest films. Rivers’s “Mare’s Nest” and Laxe’s “Sirât” are both apocalyptic road movies; the first follows a child through a variety of haunted landscapes in Spain and the United Kingdom, while the second follows a man, his young son, and a motley group of ravers as they try to find their way out of a besieged desert on the borderlands of Morocco, near Spain. Each film is a radical enigma that invites spectators to engage with cinema sensorially. NYFF is pleased to welcome Laxe and Rivers for a wide-ranging conversation about the making of their new films and their intersecting artistic and thematic preoccupations.
Thursday, October 2 at 4:30pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
ROUNDTABLES
Panel discussions that connect the festival to the themes of the moment
On Mr. Scorsese
Widely hailed by critics, audiences, and artists alike as one of the greatest directors working today, Martin Scorsese—the subject of Rebecca Miller’s monumental NYFF Spotlight selection “Mr. Scorsese”—is a lifelong trailblazer, a guiding light whose passionately committed artistic vision, ebullient cinephilia, and dedicated stewardship of film history (exemplified through his work with The Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project) have left an indelible mark on the terrain of American and global cinema for the last six decades. On the occasion of Mr. Scorsese’s world premiere, this special panel discussion will take viewers behind the scenes of Miller’s comprehensive biographical portrait and celebrate the enduring influence and still-evolving legacy of this icon of American cinema. The discussion will highlight his vibrant creative relationships with longtime collaborators in front of and behind the camera, placing those artists in conversation with fellow filmmakers whose own work bears the influence of the great auteur’s artistry and mentorship. Panelists include Rebecca Miller, Ari Aster, and additional guests to be announced. Presented in partnership with Rolex.
Sunday, October 5 at 6:15pm – David Rubenstein Atrium
Black World-Making
Taking inspiration loosely from W.E.B. Dubois’s unfinished Encyclopedia Africana project, “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions,” directed by celebrated artist and filmmaker Kahlil Joseph, is a moving-image work like no other—a sui generis gush of images, narratives, and modes that is as erudite as it is irreverent. Ideas from Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Marcus Garvey, and others mix with images from artists like Garrett Bradley and Arthur Jafa, as well as samples from the capacious world of social and broadcast media, offering an alternately riotous and meditative compendium of the Black experience. Joseph, artist Kaneza Schaal (who directed a segment of the film and stars in it), and other artists and thinkers from the film’s orbit will join us for a discussion about cinema as a force for Black world-making, shaping memory, and imagining new futures.
Monday, October 6 at 6:30pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
FILM COMMENT LIVE
Critical conversations about themes of note in the NYFF lineup, hosted by the editors of the eminent magazine
Stealing Time, with Kent Jones, Kelly Reichardt, and Lucio Castro
Three films in this year’s NYFF lineup explore the intersections of quotidian life and the arts, following artists whose efforts to make time and space for their creative passions are thwarted or frustrated by the grind of the everyday. In Kent Jones’s “Late Fame,” adapted from an Arthur Schnitzler novella, a once-upon-a-time New York poet (and now a postal worker) is intoxicated by the sudden attentions of a coterie of twentysomething wannabe poets. In Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind,” set in the 1970s, an aimless art-school dropout executes a comically sloppy heist at a local museum, as if seeking escape from his banal, bourgeois family life. And in Lucio Castro’s “Drunken Noodles,” an art student spends a summer in New York, having a series of serendipitous and erotic encounters around painting, poetry, and writing. Each film dwells in how both the making and consuming of art can force life into a pace incompatible with that of the modern world. Jones, Reichardt, and Castro will join Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute for a conversation exploring the temporality of cinema versus the other arts, the challenge of being a working artist, and the exquisite craft behind their new films.
Sunday, September 28 at 5:15pm – David Rubenstein Atrium
Tik-Talk with Radu Jude and Andrei Rus
No one distills the frenzied, image-saturated contradictions of our world like Radu Jude. His films collide cinema, literature, politics, and theory with the colloquial mediums dominating our present—particularly TikTok videos, which featured prominently in 2024’s “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World” and also make several cameos in his uproarious new epic, “Dracula,” which screens in the Currents section of NYFF63 (Jude’s Berlinale Silver Bear winner “Kontinental ’25” screens in the Main Slate). In this unmissable event, Jude will join us virtually to present “Little Poems in Prose,” a compilation of Romanian TikTok videos created in collaboration with scholar Andrei Rus, followed by a discussion with the two on the cinematic and cultural dimensions of this popular, fast-traveling, and bite-size form, moderated by FC editor Devika Girish.
Friday, October 10 at 3:30pm – Francesca Beale Theater
Festival Report
Every year, as the festival draws to a close, a group of critics gathers together for a spirited wrap-up discussion with Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute about the movies they’ve seen in the NYFF lineup. This year, FC contributors Molly Haskell, J. Hoberman, and Beatrice Loayza will join for the end-of-fest ritual, covering their highlights from the NYFF63 selection.
Saturday, October 11 at 6:00pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
SPECIAL EVENTS
NYFF Trivia Night
Do you want a chance to win tickets to sold-out screenings? The New York Film Festival is proud to welcome back Cinephile for our fourth year of NYFF Trivia Night events during the festival at the EBM Amphitheater! Featuring a mix of movie trivia and other popular Cinephile games like Six Degrees, Filmography, and Inglorious Basterd, the evening is a trivia night like no other.
Hosted by Cinephile: A Card Game creator Cory Everett and co-hosts Jordan Raup (associate director of marketing at Film at Lincoln Center and co-founder/editor-in-chief of The Film Stage) and Conor O’Donnell (co-host of The B-Side: A Film Stage Podcast), along with surprise special guests, the events will feature multiple trivia rounds including NYFF history and beyond, with chances to win tickets to this year’s festival and more prizes. Come meet and mingle with your fellow movie buffs for an evening of festival fun. There’s no need to bring Cinephile to participate—only your movie-loving brain is required.
Saturday, September 27, 8:00pm, Amphitheater – RSVP
Monday, September 29, 8:00pm, Amphitheater – RSVP
Thursday, October 9, 8:00pm, Amphitheater – RSVP
IndieWire Presents: Screen Talk Live
Join IndieWire’s Editor-at-Large Anne Thompson and Deputy Managing Editor Ryan Lattanzio for a special live edition of Screen Talk, the independent news site’s weekly podcast. In what promises to be an animated conversation, the hosts will discuss the fall film festival season, new releases, awards buzz, and industry news.
Monday, October 6 at 4:00pm – Amphitheater at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – FREE
FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) is a nonprofit organization that celebrates cinema as an essential art form and fosters a vibrant home for film culture to thrive. FLC presents premier film festivals, retrospectives, new releases, and restorations year-round in state-of-the-art theaters at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. FLC offers audiences the opportunity to discover works from established and emerging directors from around the world with a passionate community of film lovers at marquee events including the New York Film Festival and New Directors/New Films.
Founded in 1969, FLC is committed to preserving the excitement of the theatrical experience for all audiences, advancing high-quality film journalism through the publication of Film Comment, cultivating the next generation of film industry professionals through our FLC Academies, and enriching the lives of all who engage with our programs.
Rolex is the Official Partner and Exclusive Timepiece of Film at Lincoln Center.
Support for the New York Film Festival is also generously provided by Official Partner The New York Times; Supporting Partner Netflix; Contributing Partners Kino Film Collection from Kino Lorber Media Group, The Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store,Dolby, BritBox, New York Film Academy, the School of Visual Arts BFA Film, IMDbPro, Epson America, Inc., Manhattan Portage, Thompson Central Park New York, and Unifrance; Media Partners Variety, Deadline, WABC-TV, The Hollywood Reporter, The WNET Group, IndieWire, and The Envelope by the Los Angeles Times. Additional support is provided in part by the NYC’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center. For more information, visit filmlinc.org and follow @TheNYFF on X, Instagram, and Bluesky.
What do you think of this announcement? Which talks are you most excited for at NYFF63? Which film festivals will you be attending this year? Will you be coming to New York for NYFF63? Check out the Main Slate here and please let us know in the comments section below or on our X account.
