The New York Film Festival (NYFF) Announces The 2026 Spotlight Lineup

Film at Lincoln Center announces the Spotlight lineup for the 64th New York Film Festival (NYFF64), which offers a curated, eclectic survey of the year’s most eagerly anticipated films. Dynamic in scope and wide-ranging in style, the section highlights festival favorites, special presentations, timely conversation starters, and stellar performances. Presented by Film at Lincoln Center in partnership with Rolex, NYFF64 takes place September 25th through October 12th at Lincoln Center and venues across the city.

The selection of 13 features and 10 shorts—shown in two programs—includes several world premiere titles, among them Takashi Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus Zero” as the Spotlight Gala on September 26th; Tom McCarthy’s “A Statement,” a gripping ensemble piece about a crucial 1980 conference on the threat of climate change; and Jonathan Glazer’s “Joy of Joys,” a documentary made in collaboration with Mica Levi about the recording of a star-studded charity album aiding children in conflict zones.

Several standouts from this year’s Cannes Film Festival are featured in Spotlight: Romanian auteur and NYFF regular Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or–winning “Fjord,” starring Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan; Jordan Firstman’s smashing debut, the New York–set “Club Kid;” and Louis Clichy’s gorgeously hand-painted animated feature “Iron Boy,” winner of the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize. Spotlight also presents Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” following its world premiere at the upcoming Venice Film Festival and marking the filmmaker’s return to NYFF after more than four decades, since “Fitzcarraldo” was the Closing Night selection of NYFF20 in 1982.

This year’s edition of Spotlight provides mesmerizing showcases for some of our most beloved actors. John Turturro brilliantly deepens a classic archetype in Noah Segan’s poignant “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.” Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti command the screen in “The Debut,” Jesse Eisenberg’s comic love letter to life on the stage. Giamatti and Turturro both appear again, alongside Paul Rudd, Amy Ryan, Evan Peters, Tatiana Maslany, and many others, in “A Statement.” André Gregory, now in his nineties, performs Samuel Beckett with his longtime collaborators Larry Pine and Gerry Bamman in Cindy Kleine and Gregory’s invigorating documentary “One More Time.”

Other documentaries are prominent throughout Spotlight, including “Joy of Joys,” which equips London schoolkids with cameras to document the recording of War Child Records’ benefit album “HELP(2)” at Abbey Road; Maiken Baird’s rigorous archival portrait “Edward Said: Between Worlds;” “Making Marie Antoinette,” the late Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes record of her daughter Sofia’s 2006 feature, which premiered at NYFF 20 years ago; and Albert Serra’s “Sixteen Moments of My Life,” a stylish concert film of a remarkable performance in Paris by the German film and fashion legend Ingrid Caven.

Two special shorts programs feature world premieres from internationally acclaimed filmmakers. In Spotlight Shorts, “The Secret Agent” director Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “South of Tehran”—the inaugural film of this year’s new NYFF Encounters initiative—will make its debut alongside works by Kamal Aljafari, Jia Zhangke, Camilo Restrepo, and Morgan Fisher, whose site-specific “Screening Room,” meant to be shown only in the place it was filmed (in this case the Walter Reade Theater), is also featured in this year’s Currents section. In New York Shorts, “Aftersun” director Charlotte Wells returns to the festival to present the world premiere of “New York Never Let Me Down,” which will screen alongside films by Eliza Barry Callahan, Heather Landsman, Fanny Texier, and J. Wortham.

64th New York Film Festival Spotlight Films and Descriptions

Godzilla Minus Zero / ゴジラ-0.0 (Spotlight Gala)Takashi Yamazaki, 2026, Japan, 135m
Japanese with English subtitles
World Premiere

After “Godzilla Minus One’s” triumphant reimagination of the timeless Godzilla franchise in 2023, with its ingenious, Oscar-winning visual effects and emotionally gripping back-to-basics storytelling approach, director Takashi Yamazaki returns with a supremely satisfying sequel. “Godzilla Minus Zero” picks up in 1949, two years after the tumultuous events of “Godzilla Minus One,” and continues the story of the Shikishima family as they face an all-new calamity. An experience that demands the big screen, featuring even more astounding effects choreography than its predecessor, “Godzilla Minus Zero” cranks up the terror while always keeping its post-WWII Japan narrative at human eye level. A GKIDS release.

Bucking FastardWerner Herzog, 2026, Ireland/U.S., 109m
New York Premiere

The oddball brilliance of Werner Herzog is in full effect in this tale of two sisters, Jean and Joan Holbrooke, who live entirely by their own social and emotional rules. They speak in unison, fall in love with the same man, and try to fulfill the same wild dreams and ambitions. As played by Kate and Rooney Mara, in total sync, the driven, single-minded Jean and Joan become classic Herzogian outsiders, like Kaspar Hauser or Fitzcarraldo, daring to transcend the limitations of everyday living and language. Shot across the teeming city streets and the majestic underground caves of Ireland, “Bucking Fastard” features operatic imagery from the director’s longtime cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger. It’s an uncanny, funny, properly eccentric film that moves from the comic to the grandly pastoral.

Club KidJordan Firstman, 2026, U.S., 122m
New York Premiere

Washed-up thirtysomething New York scenester Peter (Jordan Firstman), awakening from a decade-long hangover, receives an unexpected visitor: the 10-year-old British son (Reggie Absolom) he never knew he had. The result of a lone, long-forgotten sexual encounter with a woman, the kid is in desperate need of care after his mother’s death, and though Peter has never put his heart into anything other than promoting massive parties, the experience of becoming an insta-dad prompts a reconsideration of his hedonistic, drug-fueled party boy lifestyle. Swerving from irreverent satire to genuine pathos, this wildly funny and remarkably assured feature debut from writer-director-actor Firstman is an unusual and satisfying take on the challenges and pleasures of queer millennial living, and a loving reminder that it’s never too late to come of age. An A24 release.

The DebutJesse Eisenberg, 2026, U.S., 105m
New York Premiere

Julianne Moore flings herself with delicious abandon into the role of Mona, a middle-aged New Jersey housewife who lands a part in a local musical production despite having zero stage experience. She quickly finds herself at odds with the show’s irascible and demanding director, Jerry (Paul Giamatti, in prime exasperation mode), who’s nevertheless determined to mold Mona into a performer. In contrast to her home existence, where she’s almost surreally neglected by her husband and teenage twins, the theater life proves enriching, transformative, and, as she begins to dig deeper into the reality of her character, excitingly dangerous. Writer-director Jesse Eisenberg (“A Real Pain,” NYFF62), who also wrote the show’s music and lyrics, keeps things expertly balanced on a knife’s edge between musical theater satire and cathartic character study. A lovingly crafted comedy, “The Debut” reminds us that to find your true self, it might also be necessary to lose yourself a little. An A24 release. 

Edward Said: Between WorldsMaiken Baird, 2026, U.S., 107m
English and Arabic with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

The life and mind of the brilliant Palestinian-American professor, author, and public intellectual Edward Said (1935–2003) fuels this rich, engrossing documentary. Born in Jerusalem, Said was displaced, along with his refugee family, in 1948, with the founding of Israel. Sent to boarding school in Massachusetts, he would go on to become a Professor of Literature at Columbia University, later finding his calling as a world-renowned advocate for the Palestinian cause, and in essential books like “Orientalism,” a crucial critic of the way Arab people are othered in Western culture. Using all archival footage, Maiken Baird’s film follows Said from childhood to education to his social politicization, his relationship with his wife Mariam, and his battles with leukemia, always remaining committed to representing the power of his words, thoughts, and humanism. 

FjordCristian Mungiu, 2026, Romania/France/Norway/Sweden/Denmark, 146m
Romanian, Norwegian, English, and Swedish with English subtitles
New York Premiere

A foundational figure of 21st-century Romanian cinema, Cristian Mungiu earned his second Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival (following his 2007 win for the groundbreaking “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” NYFF45) for this searing, discomfiting social drama. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve give superbly restrained performances as a married couple who have immigrated from Romania to a small seaside town in Norway with their four children. Members of a conservative Pentecostal religious sect, the outsiders are initially accepted into their progressive community, but they soon fall under suspicion from the local townsfolk after an allegation of parental abuse. Mungiu refuses to supply easy answers or simple paths to identification in this compelling provocation, which poses unresolvable questions to viewers about our biases and presumptions. “Fjord” returns the director to many of his recurring themes: the freedom of the individual within contemporary political systems, the culture clash between modernity and tradition, and how human care can imperceptibly evolve into a form of control. A NEON release.

Iron BoyLouis Clichy, 2026, France/Belgium, 90m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

In this gorgeously hand-painted coming-of-age tale, 11-year-old Christophe lives with his struggling farming family in the rural Beauce region in France in the late 1980s. In addition to a stern, demanding father, the boy is further plagued by a sudden physical instability, requiring an iron body brace that keeps him ramrod-straight. Despite this, Christophe finds moments of joy, love, and surprising heroism. Louis Clichy, who worked as an animator for Pixar on “Wall-E” and “Up,” has made a deeply personal directorial debut of rustic beauty and spiritual grace; every loving brushstroke brings a sense of detailed authenticity to his vision, based on memories of growing up working-class in the French countryside amid vast farmlands, electric towers, and churches. Accompanied by an ethereal score of classical organ and choral music, “Iron Boy” is a delicately transporting story of a young boy’s emergence into individuality, and a family film of rare nuance. Winner of the Un Certain Regard Special Jury Prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Joy of Joys Jonathan Glazer, 2026, U.K., 38m
World Premiere

This exuberant yet sobering documentary from Oscar-winning director Jonathan Glazer (“The Zone of Interest,” NYFF61) goes behind the scenes at Abbey Road Studios to capture the recording of the Mercury Prize–nominated “HELP(2),” a 2026 charity album from War Child Records, which aids children in conflict zones around the world. To make the film, Glazer enlisted some crucial help: young schoolkids from London were equipped with their own digital cameras and encouraged to shoot the studio recordings any way they wanted. Their curiosity and creativity are paralleled in footage taken by high-spirited children in war-torn parts of the globe—Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen—whom Glazer also supplied with cameras. The resulting film, which Glazer and regular music collaborator Mica Levi have dubbed “by children, for children,” serves as a testament to youthful openness and wonder amidst the evils of the adult world. Contributing artists from the album featured in the film include Olivia Rodrigo, Damon Albarn, Cameron Winter, Arctic Monkeys, Beth Gibbons, Fontaines D.C., and Jarvis Cocker. The screening will be followed by an extended Q&A with Jonathan Glazer.

Making Marie AntoinetteEleanor Coppola, 2026, U.S., 86m
New York Premiere

Polarizing upon its release, Sofia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” (NYFF44) is now, 20 years later, widely embraced as a 21st-century cinematic cornerstone and a distilled expression of its director’s recurring themes of celebrity, wealth, and isolation. For the first time, Coppola’s dynamic craftsmanship in creating her personal vision for the brief life of the 18th-century queen (Kirsten Dunst) in the years leading up to the French Revolution is on full display in this diary shot by her mother, filmmaker Eleanor Coppola, on the film’s set in Versailles in 2005. From almost 80 hours of video, Eleanor began to assemble the footage during the pandemic lockdown, and Sofia helped finish editing it after Eleanor’s death in 2024. Narrated by Diane Lane, reciting Eleanor’s journals from the time, this is a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse that is both process-oriented and touchingly personal. A MUBI release. 

One More TimeCindy Kleine, André Gregory, 2026, U.S., 88m
New York Premiere

André Gregory has been a pillar of the American avant-garde stage and film world for more than half a century. Now in his early nineties, Gregory (“My Dinner with André,” NYFF19) shows no sign of slowing down, as evidenced by this delightful, enormously moving document of his inextinguishable creative spark. Directed by his partner of 25 years, Cindy Kleine, “One More Time” follows Gregory as he and two longtime creative collaborators, actors Larry Pine and Gerry Bamman, decide to film a reading of scenes from Samuel Beckett’s absurdist, apocalyptic “Endgame”—a play they’ve produced together multiple times over the decades—in Pine’s Long Island home. Undaunted by Bamman’s limited physical mobility or Pine’s struggles with memory loss, the trio find that Beckett’s words still course through their minds and bodies. The invigorating result, executive produced by Martin Scorsese, is a portrait of friendship and camaraderie as much as a paean to an era of experimental New York theater that still shines like a beacon. An Abramorama release. 

The Only Living Pickpocket in New YorkNoah Segan, 2026, U.S., 88m
New York Premiere

In a star performance of effortless command and charisma, John Turturro plays Harry, an aging petty thief from the Bronx who knows his professional days are numbered: the tactile craft of the pickpocket has become increasingly irrelevant in a digital world. Yet he must still make ends meet, especially in caring for his severely disabled wife. When Harry swipes the wallet of an ill-chosen mark (Will Price), however, he is thrust into a borough-hopping race against time to put things back in their right place. Building to a poignant climax, writer-director Noah Segan’s elegant love letter to both New York and to bygone cinematic eras recalls both the 1970s, with its grungy urban antiheroes, and the 1990s, in its American indie ethos. In addition to being a peak of Turturro’s illustrious career, the terrific cast includes Steve Buscemi, Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Victoria Moroles, and Kelvin Han Yee. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Sixteen Moments of My Life / Seize moments de ma vieAlbert Serra, 2026, France/Spain, 86m
French and German with English subtitles
North American Premiere

Now in her eighties, Ingrid Caven is known for many things: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s longtime theater and screen collaborator (and onetime wife), a muse to Yves Saint Laurent, and a singular cabaret singer. She looms large in every shot of this mesmerizing concert film by Albert Serra (“Afternoons of Solitude,” NYFF62), which captures an entrancing one-night-only 2025 performance—also stage-directed by Serra—at the grand Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris. With her rich rupture of a voice, Caven warbles and quavers 16 autobiographical songs in German and French, accompanied by the electronic Catalan band Molforts. Serra’s immersive event, a rapture of colors and shadows, pays fittingly grandiose tribute to an emissary of a legendary cinematic era.

A StatementTom McCarthy, 2026, U.S., 104m
World Premiere

In October 1980, on the eve of a presidential election that would change the course of history, a group of environmental activists, scientists, and U.S. policymakers convened in a hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida, to discuss an alarming recent government study on the dangers of carbon dioxide emissions and rising global temperatures. Their goal: to come up with a statement with suggestions for how congress should react to the threat. But agreeing upon the wording proves not so easy. Academy Award–winning “Spotlight” writer-director Tom McCarthy has ingeniously constructed a funny, frightening, and ever timely re-creation of these events, set in the same hotel where the actual meeting took place and using the transcription from the conference to help build the screenplay. A brilliant ensemble cast—including Paul Rudd, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan, Paul Giamatti, John Turturro, Tatiana Maslany, Mary Catherine Garrison, Nina Arianda, and Zach Woods—brings to vivid life a seemingly small moment in history that would have wide repercussions for the fate of the world. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

Spotlight Shorts (85m)

South of Tehran

Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2026, Brazil/U.S., 8m
Farsi with English subtitles
World Premiere

“South of Tehran” is the first film in the new NYFF Encounters initiative, a commissioning program that invites a filmmaker in the lineup to create an original short during the course of the festival. This prismatic reflection on cinema and memory emerged from conversations between Kleber Mendonça Filho (“The Secret Agent“) and Jafar Panahi (“It Was Just an Accident“), both of whom screened films at the 2025 New York Film Festival.

Masao Adachi Takes a Passport Photo / 足立正生、パスポート写真を撮る

Kamal Aljafari, 2026, Germany/France/Japan, 27m
Japanese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere

Now 87, the Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi (“Escape,” NYFF63) does not have a passport, as a consequence of his 1970s involvement with the revolutionary Japanese Red Army. In a last-ditch attempt to apply for one, he obtains his photos from a small neighborhood shop, maintained for decades by an elderly widow at the mercy of her ancient, fiddly printer. Shot by Neo Sora (“Happyend,” NYFF62), Aljafari’s film is a work of deadpan hilarity and, like his 2025 feature “With Hasan in Gaza” (NYFF63), a search for lost time.

A Stolen Movie / Una película robada

Camilo Restrepo, 2026, Colombia, 12m
Spanish with English subtitles
World Premiere

Camilo Restrepo, the director of 2020’s “Los conductos” (New Directors/New Films 2020), reappropriates and remixes a real General Motors promotional film depicting an early-1960s exhibition across the Darién Gap in Chevrolet Corvairs. As the representatives of the global North’s industrial might bridge the same chasm that stands between today’s migrants and the United States, Restrepo considers the unequal flows of people and property between the Americas.

Torino Shadow

Jia Zhangke, 2026, China/Italy, 32m
Mandarin Chinese and Italian with English subtitles
North American Premiere

An anniversary commission of Torino’s Museo Nazionale del Cinema, Jia Zhangke’s (“Caught by the Tides,” NYFF62) latest spans the past, present, and future of moving-image culture, from the shadow puppets made by a girl in Guangdong to the smartphone videos her mother sends her from Torino, where she’s traveled to reunite with her husband, but found only a stranger. As in her spouse Jia’s features, Zhao Tao is the still point in a turning, globalized world, with all its disconnections and surprising symmetries.

Screening Room

Morgan Fisher, 1968/2026, U.S., 35mm, 6m
World Premiere

Initiated in 1968, Morgan Fisher’s Screening Room is a site-specific work, a film remade for and shown only in the place in which it was filmed. This latest version (or, to use Fisher’s term, “state”) of the film—with production executed by filmmaker James N. Kienitz Wilkins with the support of Mostly Works and camerawork by Dan Fridman—leads the spectator into Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater in a single tracking shot, a journey that unveils cinema’s enigmatic status as, at once, a physical space, a filmic object, and an ephemeral image. 

New York Shorts (80m)

The People’s Beach

J. Wortham, 2026, U.S., 15m
World Premiere

One of the city’s legendary cruising spots, Jacob Riis Park in the Rockaways, is today, despite encroaching gentrification, the public space where queer and trans New Yorkers, especially of color, can be most comfortable in the least clothing. Juxtaposing priceless archival material with sunny and sensual new footage, J. Wortham’s documentary is a history, a celebration, and a rallying cry.

ee

Heather Landsman, 2026, U.S., 8m
New York Premiere

A girl in a collectibles store covets a rare figurine in Heather Landsman’s sexy hyperpop vignette. Online communities, fandom, shoplifting, and the stealth action video game “Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty” become interlocking, quicksilver metaphors for the furtive, grasping workings of identity and desire under surveillance. Featuring local cult heroes Isobel Fox and Will Menaker in key supporting roles.

The House Call

Eliza Barry Callahan, 2026, U.S., 21m
English and Italian with no subtitles
World Premiere

A veterinarian (Victoria Pedretti) drives through the dark to check on a prized white horse, only to be caught up in the intrigues of its shady owners, and a probing late-night conversation about classical philosophy, modern dance, and the nature of vocation. Novelist, musician, and filmmaker Eliza Barry Callahan turns genre on its ear, with voluptuous nocturnal celluloid cinematography by Alfonso Herrera Salcedo.

A Woman’s Place Is Everywhere

Fanny Texier, 2026, U.S., 22m
North American Premiere

Identical twins Emilija and Ona Rygelis have lived their whole lives in an industrial Williamsburg loft renovated by their artist mother in the 1970s. Filmmaker Fanny Texier follows the sisters over three years as they grieve their mother, welcome Ona’s new baby, and fight eviction proceedings, drawing a sharp, sensitive portrait of sisterhood, survival in the city, and the meaning of home. Winner of a Silver Bear Jury Prize at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival.

New York Never Let Me Down

Charlotte Wells, 2026, U.S., 14m
World Premiere

Charlotte Wells (“Aftersun,” NYFF60) drops into the YWCA of the Greater Capital Region to visit Paula Spiro, a legendary drummer and drum teacher (whose former students include Luscious Jackson drummer and original Beastie Boy Kate Schellenbach). Having left New York in 2024, the elderly Spiro recalls her life in the city with wonderment and an unerring sense of rhythm, in a tribute to the artists and queer elders being pushed out of the place they shaped.

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).

The NYFF Main Slate and Spotlight selection committee is chaired by Dennis Lim, NYFF Artistic Director, and includes Florence Almozini, Justin Chang, and Rachel Rosen. Leo Goldsmith, Aily Nash, and Tyler Wilson are NYFF shorts programmers. New York Shorts is programmed by Katie Zwick. 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 NYFF64 lineup and sign up for forthcoming announcements, including Currents, Revivals and Talks.