Twenty French films will be presented at the 59th New York Film Festival, which will take place September 24 through October 10.
Created in 1963, the NYFF is a major American film festival. Film at Lincoln Center, which also partners with UniFrance for the Rendez-Vous With French Cinema à New York, oversees the selection and is the festival's central venue.
In addition to presenting the best of international cinema each year, the NYFF is also an event where avant-garde and repertory cinema are treated almost equally with contemporary cinema.
This year, the continued closure of the U.S. border to Schengen Area citizens makes it difficult for French artists to travel. For now, Julia Ducournau, Mia Hansen-Løve, Vicky Krieps, Agathe Rousselle, Vincent Lindon and Avi Mograbi have been confirmed, although the festival has invited all French artists with a selected film.
It should be noted that almost all the films in the Main Slate have American distributors. For example, the new distributor Utopia (launched in early 2020 by alumni of The Orchard) has notably purchased two French films recently: Vortex and Jane by Charlotte. French films continue to be acquired across the Atlantic despite a market that is only slowly starting up again, especially for independent films.
The French films selected at the 59th NYFF
Main Slate
- Ahed's Knee by Nadav Lapid
- Petite Maman by Céline Sciamma
- Bergman Island by Mia Hansen-Løve
- France by Bruno Dumont
- Titane by Julia Ducournau
- Benedetta by Paul Verhoeven
- Vortex by Gaspar Noé
- The First 54 Years – An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation by Avi Mograbi
- Memoria by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (minority French coproduction)
- Il buco by Michelangelo Frammartino (minority French coproduction)
- Flee by Jonas Poher Rasmussen (minority French coproduction)
Spotlight on Documentary
Currents
- Return to Reims [fragments] by Jean-Gabriel Périot
- I Want to Talk About Duras by Claire Simon
- Just a Movement by Vincent Meessen
- Kindertotenlieder by Virgil Vernier
- A Night of Knowing Nothing by Payal Kapadia
- Le Grand Mouvement by Kiro Russo (minority French coproduction)
- The Tale of King Crab by Alessio Rigo De Righi, Matteo Zoppis (minority French coproduction)
Also noteworthy is the programming of two films produced by the Fondation Cartier, presented in the Currents section: Nature by Artavadz Pelechian (63 mins) and 2 Pasolini by Andrei Ujica (10 mins).
