Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) has announced the 32 films that comprise the Main Slate of the 64th New York Film Festival (NYFF), taking place September 25th through October 12th. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center in partnership with Rolex, the New York Film Festival is an annual celebration of the most significant international films of the year. Since 1963, NYFF has played a vital role in shaping film culture, championing bold and remarkable works by both celebrated auteurs and emerging voices from around the world.
This year’s Main Slate spans 31 countries and brings together new works by renowned auteurs and returning NYFF filmmakers, 17 directors making their Main Slate debut, and acclaimed selections from leading film festivals around the world. The lineup includes three world premieres—Ava DuVernay’s “14th,“ Tony Gilroy’s “Behemoth!,“ and Mani Haghighi’s “I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies”—seven North American premieres, and thirteen U.S. premieres.
This slate of films energetically and thrillingly reflects cinema’s ability to interpret and speak to the world we’re living in. A number of them are striking, original visions that dive boldly into our troubled and complicated political global moment. These include Ava DuVernay’s passionate discourse on the erosion of democracy in the United States, the Closing Night selection “14th;” Valeska Grisebach’s “The Dreamed Adventure,“ an innovative crime saga about immigrant lives on the edges of Europe; unorthodox Iranian filmmaker Mani Haghighi’s “I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies,“ a documentary about an artist and archivist whose path intersects with the ongoing U.S.-Iran war; Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s monumental work of humanism and health care, “All of a Sudden;” Radu Jude’s acerbic “The Diary of a Chambermaid,“ which follows a Romanian woman who leaves her young daughter to work for a well-off couple in France; Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love,“ an extraordinary study of two married couples in crisis against a backdrop of socioeconomic despair in South Korea; Mike Leigh’s new (and reportedly final) film, “Tender Loving Care,“ a deeply moving portrait of resilient lives in post-Brexit England’s fragmented care sector; Julia Loktev’s much-anticipated “My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile,“ which picks right up where the first half (which won numerous critics’ awards for 2025’s best documentary) left off, tracing the paths of several outspoken Russian journalists as they disperse across the globe; Isabelle Stever’s “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming,“ a revelatory queer drama set in Ukraine during Russia’s invasion; and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s riveting, razor-sharp tale of personal, political, and patriarchal corruption in contemporary Russia, “Minotaur.”
Even many of the films not set in the present day function as historical commentaries on our contemporary moment. Among them are James Gray’s Opening Night selection, the 1980s-set New York crime drama “Paper Tiger,“ a frightening and gripping portrait of social and environmental pollution; Emmanuel Marre’s “A Man of His Time,“ about a mild-mannered conservative bureaucrat in Vichy France, who turns a blind eye to his collaboration with the Nazi regime; Paweł Pawlikowski’s morally urgent and philosophically rich “Fatherland,“ set in post–WWII Germany; Ira Sachs’s “The Man I Love,“ about marginalized queer lives during the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York; and Markus Schleinzer’s “Rose,” an enthralling fable of faith and social intolerance starring Sandra Hüller as a 17th-century woman who disguises herself as a man. Also in the lineup is the major historical documentary “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,“ the finally realized passion project about the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, shot in 1972 by the legendary William Greaves, and now finished by his son, David Greaves.
“It’s hard to recall a prior Main Slate program in which the state of the world has been as urgently reflected in so many creative ways,“ said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “You could take any cross-section of this lineup and come away with a vivid picture of what our present looks, sounds, and feels like. I’m deeply encouraged to be able to introduce New York audiences to works by so many fearless, imaginative directors whose artistry has been inspired by the shared realities of our world.”
Among these directors are 16 NYFF favorites returning to the Main Slate after appearing in previous editions. These include Pedro Almodóvar (“Bitter Christmas“), Lisandro Alonso (“Double Freedom“), Ava DuVernay (“14th“), Alain Gomis (“Dao“), James Gray (“Paper Tiger“), Valeska Grisebach (“The Dreamed Adventure“), Andrew Haigh (“A Long Winter”), Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (“All of a Sudden“), Hong Sangsoo (“The Day She Returns” and “Nowhere To Lay My Eyes”), Radu Jude (“The Diary of a Chambermaid“), Lee Chang-dong (“Possible Love”), Mike Leigh (“Tender Loving Care”), Julia Loktev (“My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile”), Paweł Pawlikowski (“Fatherland“), Ira Sachs (“The Man I Love“), and Angela Schanelec (“My Wife Cries”).
17 directors are showing features for the first time in Main Slate, including Marine Atlan (“La Gradiva“), Tony Gilroy (Centerpiece selection “Behemoth!“), David Greaves (“Once Upon a Time in Harlem“), Mani Haghighi (“I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies”), Emmanuel Marre (“A Man of His Time“), Chris Rock (“Misty Green”), Sompot Chidgasornpongse (“9 Temples to Heaven“), Isabelle Stever (“I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming”), and Andrey Zvyagintsev (“Minotaur“). A handful of these first-timers have previously presented films in other series and festivals at Film at Lincoln Center; their titles include Berlin prizewinning documentary-fiction hybrid “The Loneliest Man in Town” by Austrian directors Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel (“The Shine of Day,” New Directors/New Films 2013); “Clarissa,” a surprising “Mrs. Dalloway” adaptation by Nigerian brother filmmakers Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri (“Eyimofe (This Is My Desire),” ND/NF 2020); the body swap mystery “The Unknown” from director Arthur Harari (“Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle,” ND/NF 2022); “Everything Else Is Noise,” a comic portrait of a musical family from Nicolás Pereda (a veteran of NYFF Currents, most recently with 2024’s “Lázaro at Night,” NYFF62); “Rose” from Markus Schleinzer (“Angelo,” ND/NF 2019); and “Everytime,” a mesmerizing tale of suspended grief directed by Austria’s Sandra Wollner (“The Trouble with Being Born,” ND/NF 2020).
“Everytime” won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes, and is one of multiple prize-winners from that film festival screening in the Main Slate. These also include “Minotaur” (Grand Prix), “Fatherland” (Best Director), “A Man of His Time” (Best Screenplay), “The Dreamed Adventure” (Jury Prize), “All of a Sudden” (Best Actress, shared by Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto), and “La Gradiva” (Critics’ Week Grand Prize). Additional award recipients include Sandra Hüller, who won the Silver Bear for her performance in “Rose” at the Berlin International Film Festival.
NYFF64 films are screened in theaters at Lincoln Center and at four venues across the city: BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), the Museum of the Moving Image (Queens), Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), and AMC Bay Plaza Cinema (Bronx).
64th New York Film Festival Main Slate Films and Descriptions:
Paper Tiger (Opening Night)
James Gray, 2026, U.S., 115m
North American Premiere
The gripping, exquisitely foreboding dramas of James Gray reside in the dark space between the American dream and gutting reality. His brilliant new thriller, set in 1986 Queens and Brooklyn, is an authentically drawn New York story and a master class in escalating tension, charting the tragic domestic fallout after family man and engineer Irwin (Miles Teller), who aspires to middle-class comforts, is pulled into a shady deal by his brother, Gary (Adam Driver), a former NYPD cop. Gary thinks he can make a killing on a scheme with Russian criminals dumping oil down by the Gowanus Canal, assisting them to work around regulations; instead, Gary ends up endangering his brother, as well as Irwin’s sons (Gavin Goudey and Roman Engel) and wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson), who is going through her own private crisis. Torn between brotherly love and marital loyalty, Irwin discovers he’s ensnared in forces far beyond his control. With its vivid period detail and marvelous, deeply moving trio of lead performances, “Paper Tiger” is a frightening portrait of pollution in all forms—and the human bonds that can save us from the brink of despair. A NEON release.
Behemoth! (Centerpiece)
Tony Gilroy, 2026, U.S., 124m
World Premiere
Pedro Pascal gives the performance of his career so far as Alex, a cellist picking up the pieces of a fractured life, in this American drama of uncommon intelligence, humor, and grace from Academy Award–nominated writer-director Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton”). A former child prodigy living in the shadow of a storied musical family, Alex has left his position with an orchestra in Chicago—fleeing a soured relationship with a manic ex (a piledriving Olivia Wilde)—and returned to Los Angeles to record Hollywood film scores and resolve unfinished family business. Using a deft flashback structure to weave in and out of his adult life, while cleverly employing a panoply of original movie compositions to both accompany and comment upon them (in a soundtrack featuring nine of the industry’s leading musicians), Gilroy turns Alex’s desire for stability, meaning, and redemption into a sophisticated drama of the highest order. “Behemoth!” is a thundering, savvy tribute to the power of music that builds to an emotional wallop of a climax, also featuring stellar supporting work from Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Kaya Ralls, Erik Griffin, JoBeth Williams, and Margarita Levieva, with Hank Azaria and Will Arnett. A Searchlight Pictures release.
14th (Closing Night)
Ava DuVernay, 2026, U.S., 100m
World Premiere
Ten years ago, filmmaker Ava DuVernay released her epochal documentary “13th” (NYFF54 Opening Night), which argued that loopholes in the U.S. Constitution’s 13th Amendment—the abolition of slavery—led to today’s mass incarceration of Black Americans. That film was released on the eve of Donald Trump’s presidency; since then, an alarming number of our democratic norms and principles have eroded, further disenfranchising Black Americans. In response to our distressing new reality, DuVernay has created a thrillingly expansive sequel of sorts, which passionately and persuasively details how the tenets of the 14th Amendment, ratified post–Civil War, are now under systematic attack. Building her case with an extraordinary chorus of voices—including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), former Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), current Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), legal minds Sherrilyn Ifill, Robert Chang, and Stacey Abrams, and social commentators like conservative author Donald T. Critchlow and cultural critic Hasan Piker—DuVernay demonstrates how the 14th Amendment’s foundational principles of birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection under the law, and the prohibition for heads of state to engage in acts of insurrection all have been challenged to a dangerous degree in recent years. Drawing a direct line from the Reconstruction era to today, DuVernay’s film is a tough-minded reckoning with our moment of crisis. A Netflix release.
9 Temples to Heaven / 9 วัด สู่สวรรค์
Sompot Chidgasornpongse, 2026, Thailand/Singapore/France/Norway/China/Hong Kong/Indonesia/Qatar, 140m
Thai with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A contemplative spiritual journey that’s equal parts travelogue and family drama, this second feature from Sompot Chidgasornpongse—a longtime assistant director to Apichatpong Weerasethakul on such astonishments as “Tropical Malady” and “Memoria“—brings the viewer on a Buddhist rite of passage. After businessman Sakol (Surachai Ningsanond) is told by a fortune teller that his ailing mother (Amara Ramnarong) is near death, he packs up the entire family in a van to accompany her on a pilgrimage to nine separate temples all in one day—a tradition of “making merit” that will bring her good karma, as well as put some cash and gifts in the pockets of the temples’ monks. Focusing on both the mundane, sometimes squabbling interactions between the family members and the grandeur of Thai architecture, “9 Temples to Heaven” beautifully balances the modern and the sacred in its inquiry into morality and mortality.
All of a Sudden / Soudain
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, 2026, France/Japan/Germany/Belgium, 196m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Academy Award–winning director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car,” NYFF59) expands into even more contemplative, emotional territory with his radiant new film. The newly appointed director of an elder care facility in Paris, Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), is promoting a radical new flagship program that prioritizes respect and empathy over profit and aims to treat not just the body but also the mind and soul of patients suffering from dementia and other cognitive disorders. Though she meets some resistance from staff and board, Marie-Lou finds a true kindred spirit in Mari (Tao Okamoto), a theater director from Kyoto with terminal cancer whose latest stage work moves Marie-Lou on a profound level. Bonded by artistry, kindness, and moral clarity, the women (beautifully embodied by Efira and Okamoto, who shared the Best Actress prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival) embark on a friendship that constitutes its own sort of love story, joining forces to bring dignity to the nursing home’s residents and compassion to one another. Like Marie-Lou’s humane philosophy about health care, Hamaguchi’s film demands time and consideration, rewarding the viewer with an almost transcendent faith in humanity to overcome the strictures of our economic and political systems. A NEON release.
Bitter Christmas / Amarga Navidad
Pedro Almodóvar, 2026, Spain, 111m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
The incomparable Pedro Almodóvar has been rendering the life of the creative mind on screen for five decades, with exquisite attention to every nuance of both aesthetic design and human emotion. With his complexly conceived latest, he uses a metacinematic framework to explore the artist’s tenuous relationship between fiction and reality. The sublimely expressive Bárbara Lennie stars as Elsa, a well-known actress suffering from debilitating migraines whose directorial efforts had failed upon release but have become cult classics. While trying to maintain a relationship with her loyal boyfriend Bonifacio (Patrick Criado), a fireman moonlighting as a stripper, she becomes inspired by the travails of her friends to write a new script. Yet Elsa’s story is itself a story—being written by Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), an Almodóvar-esque filmmaker who is, in turn, taking his cues from the lives of those around him. Mixing the irreverence of early Almodóvar with the somber melodrama of his later work, “Bitter Christmas” insightfully details the vampiric nature of artistic creation and how we use fiction to try and right the wrongs of our lives. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Clarissa
Arie Esiri, Chuko Esiri, 2026, Nigeria/U.S., 125m
U.S. Premiere
In this tender, quietly virtuosic adaptation of “Mrs. Dalloway,” twin filmmakers Arie and Chuko Esiri transport Virginia Woolf’s great 1925 novel to contemporary Nigeria, where the affluent Clarissa (Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo, in a richly contemplative performance) is getting her opulent home ready for an elaborate party. These preparations send Clarissa into reverie over her past and the unresolved loves of her youth, while, as in Woolf’s book, the film expands to follow the parallel story of Septimus (Fortune Nwafor), a soldier suffering from PTSD, in this case after his experiences fighting the country’s Boko Haram jihadist insurgency. Affirming the promise of their dazzling 2020 debut “Eyimofe (This Is My Desire)” (New Directors/New Films 2021), the Esiri brothers demonstrate their wizardry for intricate, overlapping narratives, retaining the spiritual essence of Woolf’s themes—memory and time, modernity and progress, class and privilege—while placing them in an enriching, new cultural context. The outstanding ensemble cast also includes David Oyelowo, India Amarteifio, Toheeb Jimoh, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Jude Akuwudike, and Ayo Edebiri. “Clarissa” had its world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. A NEON release.
Dao
Alain Gomis, 2026, France/Senegal/Guinea-Bissau, 183m
French, Wolof, Manjak, and Portuguese Creole with English subtitles
North American Premiere
In his most sprawling and ambitious film to date, French Senegalese filmmaker Alain Gomis (“Félicité,” NYFF55) has crafted a remarkable cinematic experience, an immersion into the rituals of one extended family, set across two continents. “Dao” plunges headfirst into two separate yet intrinsically interconnected ceremonies—a memorial in Guinea-Bissau and a wedding in Paris—which Gomis cuts between with kinetic abandon. Both are attended by the taciturn yet soulful middle-aged Gloria (Katy Correa), whose father has recently died and whose daughter, Nour (D’Johé Kouadio), is about to be married. Reaching ecstatic highs while also remaining grounded in the pragmatic details of the celebrations it depicts, “Dao” illustrates the power and persistence of African diaspora traditions. Cast with both professional actors and amateur performers, including members of the director’s own family, Gomis’s epic unfolds as a tapestry being woven before our eyes, a constant flow of movement that delicately raises questions of ancestry and assimilation, life and death, and, in its surprising construction, fiction and documentary. A Janus Films release.
The Day She Returns / 그녀가 돌아온 날
Hong Sangsoo, 2026, South Korea, 84m
Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Returning to themes of aging and the creative pursuit, Hong Sangsoo’s 34th feature is a work of uncommon restraint that centers on a middle-aged actress (a mesmerizingly serene Song Sunmi) who has returned to the spotlight after years of retirement. Having starred in her first film following a divorce, she is now giving interviews on a brief press tour, and, in prime minimalist Hong fashion, we come to know her primarily through three of these formal chats—each a single take filmed from the same camera position. More willing to discuss her love of German beer than her recent breakup, she is both guarded and thoughtful, and Hong uses these conversations, which naturally hit similar beats and topics, to explore ideas of performance, repetition, and personal authenticity. As always, Hong’s jewel-like precision creates an effect of hypnotic candor, enhancing both the realism and artifice of everyday life. A Cinema Guild release.
I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies / Mara Ashaegh Chenan Bayad Ke Har Bari ke Barkhizad Ghiamat-haaye por Atash Ze Har Su-i
Barangizad
Mani Haghighi, 2026, Iran, 76m
Turkish and Farsi with English subtitles
World Premiere
Among contemporary Iranian filmmakers, Mani Haghighi stands out for his refusal to conform to easy categorization or genre. His latest is a lively, stimulating, and unorthodox documentary about Nasser Bakhshi, an Iranian painter, conceptual artist, collector, and curator—and some would say hoarder—whose monumental archive of found objects and recovered non-official historical documents, from the pre-Islamic era to today, creates a sui generis record of collective memory. Situated in the northwestern city of Tabriz, Bakhshi’s museum-archive speaks to the need for individual stories, often erased by authority, to paint the larger picture. His collecting process—excavating, labeling, storing, archiving—is both an artistic and political act, one that, as Haghighi shows, inevitably intersects with Iran’s ongoing war with the U.S. and Israel. In profiling Bakhshi, alongside his partner, Roghayeh Najdi—whose surrealist paintings complement his work by commenting on the place of women in Iranian society—Haghighi comes up with a distinct visual language, one that feels in dialogue with filmmakers from Bergman to Parajanov.
The Diary of a Chambermaid / Le Journal d’une femme de chambre
Radu Jude, 2026, France/Romania, 94m
French and Romanian with French and English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Our most prolific contemporary cinematic satirist, Radu Jude (“Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World,” NYFF61), returns with an absorbing and trenchant chronicle of a young Romanian woman, Gianina (Ana Dumitrascu), who works for a well-to-do married couple in Bordeaux, cleaning their home and tending to their little boy. As she counts down the days until Christmas, when she can return to her country and see her own young daughter, Gianina bears witness to her employers’ liberal-minded condescension; at the same time, she rehearses in a local theater production adapting Octave Mirbeau’s transgressive 1900 novel “The Diary of a Chambermaid,” which itself inspired Jude’s overall project. In his humane yet meticulously barbed film, Jude brilliantly explores Europe’s irreconcilable modern-day power and class dynamics in one domestic space, resulting in perhaps his most heartfelt film to date. A Film Movement release.
Double Freedom / La Libertad Doble
Lisandro Alonso, 2026, Chile/Argentina/Luxembourg/Germany/U.K., 100m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Twenty-five years after his debut, “La Libertad” (NYFF39), Argentine director Lisandro Alonso returns to and expands upon that remarkable first feature with an unexpected sequel of sorts. “Double Freedom” is a contemplative, emotionally gratifying extrapolation of Alonso’s recurring themes, again following charismatic everyman Misael (Misael Saavedra), a taciturn woodcutter and man of the land who lives in Argentina’s lowland pampas region. Alonso closely observes Misael’s routine with loving attention and care, becalmed long takes emphasizing the beauty and exertion of his labor. Yet Alonso has a curveball for Misael and for us: his mentally unstable sister (Catalina Saavedra, star of the beloved dark comedy “The Maid”) has been released from a care facility that has lost its government funding, and he must take her in. In enhancing the split between documentary and fiction—and between nonprofessional performer and actor—Alonso has created a drama about the limits of personal freedom that feels both elegantly crafted and weighted by lived experience.
The Dreamed Adventure / Das geträumte Abenteuer
Valeska Grisebach, 2026, Germany/France/Bulgaria/Austria, 164m
Bulgarian with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
In her quietly thrilling, innovatively structured new film, German director Valeska Grisebach tells a story of immigrant lives on the fragile boundaries of Eastern and Western Europe that gradually shifts into a wide-ranging crime saga. Set in the Bulgarian border town of Svilengrad, “The Dreamed Adventure” initially follows Said (Syuleyman Letifov), a local worker reacclimating to the community after time away; yet soon Said disappears and the perspective shifts to that of his old flame Veska (Yana Radeva), an archaeologist who has also come back to town—and who grows worried that Said has fallen in with violent local gangsters. Taking it upon herself to track down Said, Veska intrepidly confronts a lawless, patriarchal network, which Grisebach depicts with remarkable authenticity and keen insight. As in her absorbing previous feature, “Western” (NYFF55), the director uses a vérité approach to engage with tried-and-true movie genres, subtly re-contextualizing the contours of cinematic grammar. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. A Janus Films release.
Everything Else Is Noise / Todo lo Demás es Ruido
Nicolás Pereda, 2026, Mexico/Germany/Canada, 70m
Spanish with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
In this incandescent yet barbed comic portrait of a family of musicians, a middle-aged composer named Tere (Teresita Sánchez) allows her friend and colleague Rosa (Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas) to use her apartment to film a television interview. When no-nonsense Tere and her waggish cellist daughter Luisa (Luisa Pardo) join in the process, the recording opens up a quietly revealing space—despite persistent technical hiccups and sound disruptions. Confirming his status as one of contemporary international cinema’s most skilled balancers of realism and subtle absurdity, Mexican filmmaker Nicolás Pereda (“Lázaro at Night,” NYFF62) has crafted a gratifyingly funny, minimalist tale about music-making that keeps revealing new edges—it’s both a feminist-minded domestic comedy about professionally ingrained sexism and an exploration of the creative impulse itself.
Everytime
Sandra Wollner, 2026, Germany/Austria, 121m
German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Austrian director Sandra Wollner’s atmospheric, constantly surprising new film is a work of cinematic revelation and a mesmerizing, highly unexpected passage into a state of suspended grief. After unsettling viewers with her startling, sci-fi-tinged breakthrough “The Trouble with Being Born” (New Directors/New Films 2020), Wollner here immerses the viewer in a different sort of reality bending: after a shocking accident befalls a teenage girl (Carla Hüttermann) in Berlin, her mother, Ella (Birgit Minichmayr), younger sister (Lotte Shirin Keiling), and boyfriend (Tristan López) drift into a state of suspended grief somewhere between nightmare and reverie. With its extended, audacious climax set on the sun-dappled Spanish island of Tenerife, where Ella takes her fellow grieving survivors on the family vacation that never was, the film moves into an eerie, perhaps redemptive realm of perception. Featuring astonishing, sense-heightening cinematography by Gregory Oke (DP of “Aftersun,” NYFF60), “Everytime” won the Un Certain Regard prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A 1-2 Special release.
Fatherland
Paweł Pawlikowski, 2026, Poland/Germany/Italy/France, 82m
German, English, French, and Russian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Academy Award–nominated director Paweł Pawlikowski (“Cold War,” NYFF56) specializes in narratively economical yet emotionally and philosophically expansive historical drama, and his latest film, which earned him a Best Director prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, might be his most potent and provocative yet. Set in the aftermath of World War II, “Fatherland” follows the Nobel Prize–winning novelist Thomas Mann (Hanns Zischler) and his daughter Erika Mann (Sandra Hüller) on a fictionalized 1949 road trip across a torn Germany that’s at once reeling from the destruction of battle and in profound denial about its evils and culpability. As they move from the East to the occupied West, Pawlikowski uses Thomas and Erika’s fraught interpersonal dynamics and their own familial tragedies to reflect upon a country facing an ever-evolving moral urgency. Cinematographer Łukasz Żal’s beautifully stark black-and-white frames and Hüller and Zischler’s expertly restrained performances combine to evoke a Europe gradually awakening to a new historical reckoning. A MUBI release.
La Gradiva
Marine Atlan, 2026, France, 145m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
A high school trip to Naples for a group of French teenagers becomes a multifaceted, revelatory experience in Marine Atlan’s exceptionally accomplished feature debut, which won the Grand Prize at the 2026 Cannes Critics’ Week. Also working as her own cinematographer, Atlan captures the interactions and intimacies of her compelling cast of characters with pinpoint emotional precision, their desires and frustrations pinballing off each other with escalating tension as they visit frescoes, museums, and volcanic sites near Pompeii. Atlan’s vividly drawn characters—troubled, working-class Toni (Colas Quignard), who firmly believes he’s related to an aristocratic Neapolitan family due to family lore; preternaturally self-composed lothario James (Mitia Capellier-Audat); melancholy yet coolheaded Suzanne (Suzanne Gerin), who feels invisible; their animated yet wearied Latin teacher, Mme. Mercier (Antonia Buresi)—are further enriched when placed within the historical continuum of love and death that defines the history of the region, granting them an almost mythic grandeur. A 1-2 Special release.
I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming
Isabelle Stever, 2026, Germany/Ukraine, 100m
Ukrainian with English subtitles
North American Premiere
The personal and the political collide in German filmmaker Isabelle Stever’s striking queer drama set in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. “I Rarely Wake Up Dreaming” centers on a young couple navigating unprecedented waters in their newly redefined relationship: Olha (Tania Myronyshena) has always identified as a lesbian and is now cohabitating with her boyfriend Oleh (Markus Bright), who has recently transitioned gender. As they struggle with the challenge of their own identity shifts, the war intensifies, and their attempt to evacuate Kyiv is complicated by their country’s strict passport policies and systemic transphobia. Based on true events experienced within Stever and Ukrainian screenwriter Anna Melikova’s circle of friends, the film is a delicately rendered, timely, and tender account of internal and external transformations, and how society demarcates boundaries of masculine and feminine.
The Loneliest Man in Town
Tizza Covi, Rainer Frimmel, 2026, Austria, 86m
German with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Vienna meets the Mississippi Delta in this delightful and poignant portrait of Austria’s preeminent American blues musician Al Cook (né Alois Koch), who comes to stand in for a vanishing way of life. Playing a fictionalized version of himself, Al discovers that he must evacuate his beloved apartment, which is being demolished by real estate developers. Filled with objects—VHS tapes, record albums, newspaper clippings—that connect him to his past and true self, his home is a fragile sanctuary of tactile memories. Equally influenced by Elvis Presley and Robert Johnson, Al Cook was part of the rockabilly revival in his country in the 1980s and proved influential for subsequent generations of Austrian musicians. Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel’s evocative and gently soulful film turns him into a charismatic camera subject, as well as a hero of his own world—one we feel privileged to enter. The film won the Giuseppe Becce Award and a Special Mention for the Prize of the Guild of German Arthouse Cinemas at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival.
A Long Winter
Andrew Haigh, 2026, Canada/U.K., 118m
New York Premiere
High up in the stark Mountain West in the early 1950s, younger son Mikey (Fred Hechinger) watches as his family slowly comes undone. After his brother Tommy (Kit Connor) heads off to fight in the Korean War, his mother (Caitríona Balfe) begins to exhibit signs of depression and disenchantment with his coal miner father (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and with her provincial, isolated life. One day, during a blinding snowstorm, she disappears into the wild, leaving her son and husband to both search for her and fend for themselves. This simple premise, adapted from a short story by Colm Tóibín, grows into something unexpected and rich in the hands of filmmaker Andrew Haigh (whose work includes the acclaimed “45 Years” and “All of Us Strangers,” NYFF61), blossoming into a subtly observed tale of emotional growth and sexual awakening, its beautiful yet forbidding landscape captured in ravishing cinematography by André Turpin. With precise period detail and riveting performances, “A Long Winter” continues Haigh’s ongoing search for the private spaces and unspoken longings that exist between us. A MUBI release.
The Man I Love
Ira Sachs, 2026, U.S., 97m
New York Premiere
One of American cinema’s most resolutely independent voices, Ira Sachs continues his remarkable recent run of audacious queer storytelling—following “Passages” and “Peter Hujar’s Day” (NYFF63)—with this finely detailed period drama about an emotionally complicated cabaret star and performance artist named Jimmy George (Oscar winner Rami Malek), who is living with AIDS in 1980s New York. Rather than just focus on the despair and horror of illness, Sachs creates a vibrant world flourishing with creativity, one pulled from his own experiences moving to the city at the height of the epidemic. It’s here that Jimmy, his lover (Tom Sturridge), his sister (Rebecca Hall), and a young new crush (Luther Ford) navigate the difficulties of sustaining relationships and forging artistic identities amidst the dread of mortality. Featuring bracing musical performances, “The Man I Love” is a reminder that art and imagination are keys to human survival in the darkest times.
A Man of His Time / Notre Salut
Emmanuel Marre, 2026, France, 155m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
At the start of the 1940s, mild-mannered Henri Marre (Swann Arlaud from “Anatomy of a Fall“) arrives in Vichy, France, motivated by patriotism and armed with a self-published manifesto on the importance of conservative national ideals. A diehard supporter of Philippe Pétain determined to assist the new administration during and after the ongoing war, he lands a coveted job in the Ministry of Labor overseeing unemployment, the census, and the placement of foreign workers. However, his perspective gradually shifts when the extent of the Vichy government’s collaboration with Nazi Germany becomes clear. Anchored by Arlaud’s complex, ferociously unsentimental performance, Emmanuel Marre’s elegant, unsettling film—inspired by true stories of the writer-director’s civil servant great-grandfather—is a quietly sinister portrayal of the incremental, bureaucratic evil of fascism. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A 1-2 Special release.
Minotaur / Минотавр
Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2026, Latvia/France/Germany, 140m
Russian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
Now living in exile, Russian filmmaker Andrey Zvyagintsev has been creating impeccable, trenchant allegories about the moral and political condition of his home country throughout the 21st century, and his latest is one of his most riveting and razor-sharp. Set in 2022 Russia, “Minotaur” centers on middle-aged businessman Gleb (Dmitry Mazurov), a transport company CEO who lives an ultra-comfortable domestic life with his wife Galina (Iris Lebedeva) and teenage son in a sleek modernist home in a private wooded area. As the film begins, he is tasked by the town’s powerful mayor with drafting a quota of his employees to send to the newly ongoing war in Ukraine; at the same time, he begins to suspect that Galina is having an affair, which leads him to take drastic action. With the finesse of his stated inspiration Claude Chabrol, Zvyagintsev has constructed a tale of corruption—personal, patriarchal, and governmental—that slow-burns with rage and fearless dark humor. Winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A MUBI release.
Misty Green
Chris Rock, 2026, U.S., 100m
U.S. Premiere
In the captivating, star-making performance at the center of writer/director Chris Rock’s L.A. odyssey, Rosalind Eleazar plays Misty Green, an Emmy-winning former actress now struggling to make ends meet in an unforgiving Hollywood of humiliating auditions and fair-weather friends. With seven days to move out of her dead ex-boyfriend’s house, Misty is thrust into a frantic week in which she tries to secure a job and get her life on track—no easy task in any case, but especially complicated by run-ins with a sleazy former colleague (Adam Driver), her brother (Daniel Kaluuya) who’s struggling with mental illness, and an acclaimed movie director (Rock) who might provide Misty’s path to her dream role. Rock, clearly well-versed in the city’s culture and lifestyle—as well as its blind spots and bigotries—never settles for easy solutions, as his freewheeling, deft, and ambitious drama offers genuine darkness beneath its sunny veneer. The marvelous supporting cast includes Anna Kendrick, Topher Grace, and Anthony Anderson. An A24 release.
My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile
Julia Loktev, 2026, U.S., 355m
Russian with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In the first part of her monumental documentary diptych, “Last Air in Moscow” (NYFF62), Julia Loktev closely followed a network of fearlessly outspoken broadcast journalists whose independent Russian news network, TV Rain, became endangered for dissent against the Putin regime in the buildup to the invasion of Ukraine in 2021. Its staff, mostly women, finally had to escape their country, which Loktev captured with remarkable immediacy and escalating tension. In her expansive and equally intimate second chapter, Loktev picks up precisely where she left off, continuing to trace the paths of these government-branded “foreign agents,” who have dispersed across Eastern and Western Europe and even farther afield. Despite having been sentenced in absentia to prison on charges of espionage, many of them plan to return home one day; in the meantime, they persist in spreading the word about the battlefield atrocities in Ukraine, whether from the embattled, rebuilt TV Rain or their own channels. An epic that’s spread across Kyiv, Prague, Tbilisi, Amsterdam, Latvia, and New York, “My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile” brings Loktev’s cinematic achievement into full focus: like her undaunted subjects, she shows a commitment to bearing witness to the world’s injustices despite the powerful forces that try to silence us. A MUBI release.
My Wife Cries / Meine Frau Weint
Angela Schanelec, 2026, Germany/France, 93m
German with English and French subtitles
U.S. Premiere
A withdrawn construction worker named Thomas (Vladimir Vulevic) leaves work one day to discover his wife, Carla (Agathe Bonitzer), on a park bench, tearful and distraught following an emergency. What she proceeds to reveal tests the limits of their seemingly comfortable marriage, her sudden honesty upending their perceptions about themselves and one another. This simple yet gripping set-up beckons into being a formally audacious portrait of contemporary anxieties around love, gender, and trauma, set against the beautifully forlorn countryside surrounding Berlin. Once again expertly balancing enigmatic detachment and emotional transparency, the singular German director Angela Schanelec (“Music,” NYFF62) has crafted one of her finest and most unexpected relationship dramas, working against melodrama while spellbinding the viewer with its drifting inquiry into human behavior.
Nowhere To Lay My Eyes / 눈둘데가 없네
Hong Sangsoo, 2026, South Korea, 72m
Korean with English subtitles
North American Premiere
In this emotionally grounded yet customarily elusive exploration of aging, family, and the artistic impulse, Hong Sangsoo follows Sanghee (Kim Min-hee), an experimental filmmaker on a rare visit to see her semi-estranged mother (Choi Myung-gil), who would like her daughter to be a more constant presence in her life. Having journeyed from Seoul to Jeju Island, accompanied by her more straitlaced brother (Shin Seok-ho), Sanghee first meets her mother’s new husband (Kwon Hae-hyo), a sometime documentarian, and his daughter (Park Mi-so), an artistic kindred spirit to whom she hesitantly bonds. In the minute yet deeply felt interactions among these five characters, who prove as mercurial as the island’s weather, Hong inquires gently about the process of creation versus the responsibilities of parental caregiving, asking how they might coexist. At the center of Hong’s 35th feature is a performance of delicate complexity by Kim Min-hee, a lifetime of unspoken history playing across her face as she is drawn back into the family orbit. A Cinema Guild release.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem
William Greaves, David Greaves, 2026, U.S., 100m
New York Premiere
This breathtaking miracle of a movie is the finally realized, posthumous passion project of legendary filmmaker William Greaves, an intimate chronicle of the people, culture, and meaning of the Harlem Renaissance of the early 20th century. In 1972, Greaves—best known today as the director of the beloved meta-documentary “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One” and director-producer of the groundbreaking TV program “Black Journal”—threw a party in Duke Ellington’s apartment, gathering an extraordinary group of artists, writers, poets, actors, musicians, and thinkers who were part of that singularly fecund period of American history. With loose-limbed camerawork that captures such hallowed figures as Richard Bruce Nugent, Aaron Douglas, Arna Bontemps, James Van Der Zee, and other legends in astonishingly beautiful color footage, Greaves created a living, breathing, one-of-a-kind document never seen by audiences in Greaves’s lifetime, but now completed by the filmmaker’s son, David Greaves. “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” is at once a portrait of a community of the 1920s and the changing sociopolitical tides of the 1970s, and a centenary celebration of the highest order. A NEON release.
Possible Love / 가능한 사랑
Lee Chang-dong, 2026, South Korea, 164m
Korean with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
In such searing dramas as “Secret Sunshine” (NYFF45) and “Burning” (NYFF56), the great filmmaker Lee Chang-dong pierces the heart of contemporary South Korea, laying bare the scars of personal trauma and socioeconomic grievance. His extraordinary latest concerns two middle-aged couples from different walks of life who become unlikely acquaintances. Working-class Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) and Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu), who have been together since middle school and are the parents of a taciturn 10-year-old, are still reckoning with the fallout from Ho-seok’s firing from his factory job after a violently suppressed labor union strike. The well-off Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong) and Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) are a documentary filmmaker and her businessman husband; Ye-ji has decided to make a movie about job layoffs and wants to make Mi-ok and Ho-seok her main camera subjects. The result is a brilliantly unfolding narrative of simmering resentments, shifting allegiances, sexual tensions, and queries around nonfiction filmmaking ethics that keeps revealing new layers and meanings, anchored by four towering performances that hit a varying array of fragile emotional registers. “Possible Love” speaks profoundly to our shared current moment of emotional and economic precarity. A Netflix release.
Rose
Markus Schleinzer, 2026, Austria/Germany, 94m
German with English subtitles
New York Premiere
In this enthralling fable of faith and social intolerance, the protean Sandra Hüller (“Anatomy of a Fall,” NYFF61) fully inhabits the daunting role of a 17th-century woman who has disguised herself as a male soldier in the Thirty Years’ War, only to continue the ruse after battle as she reintegrates into society. Though at first she is welcomed into the secluded, woodsy Protestant community, where she is able to own property, marry, and father a child, Rose increasingly draws suspicion from the locals as rumors about her arise. Shot in austere black-and-white, this meticulously detailed historical drama about a woman’s drive toward self-empowerment elegantly dramatizes the two-sided coin of human nature—the striving for personal freedom we all crave and the narrow-minded bigotry that stands in our way. Hüller won the Silver Bear for Best Leading Performance at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival. A MUBI release.
Tender Loving Care
Mike Leigh, 2026, U.K., 107m
New York Premiere
One of our most steadfast, unflinching chroniclers of the human condition, Mike Leigh has now crafted, along with a customarily brilliant ensemble, a portrayal of overwhelmed, resilient lives in post-Brexit England that should be received as one of his signature works. At its center is Amy (Kate O’Flynn), a government child protection worker who, after a failed relationship, has moved back in with her chipper best friend, Rosie (Alice Bailey Johnson), whose job as a social services officer is a daily confrontation with anger and resentment. Meanwhile, Amy’s aging parents (Marion Bailey and Paul Jesson), concerned with their daughter’s happiness, suddenly have to contend with a crisis of their own. Smiling through their struggles—with or without a trusty bottle of wine—these finely drawn characters, and all of the remarkable supporting characters with whom they come into contact, speak volumes about the U.K.’s underfunded and fragmented care sector. Avoiding didacticism and maintaining a leveling sense of humor, Leigh shows, with clear-eyed compassion, the difficulty of asking for—and accepting—help in a world that continually lets us down. A Bleecker Street release.
The Unknown / L’Inconnue
Arthur Harari, 2026, France, 137m
French with English subtitles
New York Premiere
One night, in a deserted backroom of a costume party, Parisian photographer David (Niels Schneider) impulsively hooks up with a stranger named Eva (Léa Seydoux); after their intense sexual encounter, David wakes up alone to find that he has somehow swapped bodies with the woman. This wild metaphysical gambit is treated with the utmost sincerity and unsettling realism in the confident hands of versatile filmmaker Arthur Harari, the Academy Award–winning co-writer of “Anatomy of a Fall” (NYFF61) and director of the sweeping historical drama “Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle” (New Directors/New Films 2022). He takes the viewer on a series of leaps and turns as narratively absorbing as the scenario is metaphorically rich. Refusing to be read in any single or simple way, “The Unknown“ pushes a pulpy supernatural premise into the realm of the genuinely uncanny, its tricky play with subjectivity and identification reinforced by the brilliantly embodied performances of its two leads. A NEON release.
The NYFF Main Slate selection committee is chaired by Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director, and includes Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, and Rachel Rosen. Violeta Bava, Michelle Carey, K. Austin Collins, and Antoine Thirion are NYFF program advisors.
NYFF64 is generously supported by Festival Co-Chairs Susannah Gray and John Lyons, Susan and John Hess, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, and Nanna and Dan Stern; Vice-Chairs Jack Heller, Tara Kelleher and Roy Zuckerberg, and Ronnie Planalp; and Supporters Kathy and Kris Heinzelman, Hillary Koota Krevlin and Glenn Krevlin, Marcia DB Levy and William G. Levy, Ari Rifkin, and Mary Solomon / GS Gives.
Secure your tickets with Passes; limited quantities on sale now. NYFF64 single tickets will go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, September 15th at noon ET, with pre-sale access for FLC Members and Pass holders prior to this date. Become an FLC Member by August 28th to secure NYFF64 pre-sale access and discounted tickets year-round. NYFF64 Press and Industry accreditation is now open through August 14th.
Explore the legacy of the New York Film Festival since 1963 in an online archive, featuring complete festival lineups, photographs from the archive, and official posters from all past editions.
What do you think of the films announced for this year’s festival? What do you think will be announced for the Currents, Revivals, Spotlight, and Talks sections? Are you planning on attending this year? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below or on our X account.
