The 46th annual New York Film Festival has announced its line up and the two films highlighting the festival will be Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” and Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling” (the former is the closing night screeening, the latter is the centerpiece film).
But more importantly, much our own wild happiness, Steven Soderbergh’s 4-hour epic “Che” will screen at the festival!
As previously reported, opening night will be devoted to the Cannes 2008 Palme d’Or winner, “The Class” (“Entre les Murs“) by French director Laurent Cantet.
Other films in attendance at NYFF ’08 include Olivier Assayas’ “Summer Hours,” Israeli director Ari Folman’s animated wartime autobiography “Waltz with Bashir,” Antonio Campos’s “Afterschool,” Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy,” Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Jia Zhangke’s “24 City” and Alexander Olch’s “The Windmill Movie.”
Like the Toronto Film Festival, NYFF is heavy on Cannes ’08 films including including Soderbergh’s aforementioned two-part epic, Wong Kar Wai’s “Ashes of Time Redux” Matteo Garrone’s “Gomorrah” (Cannes Grand Prize), Steve McQueen’s “Hunger” (Camera d’Or), Sergey Dvortsevoy’s “Tulpan” (Un Certain Regard Prize) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s “Tokyo Sonata” (Jury Prize, Un Certain
Regard).
As predicted by Variety, big-name American films like “The Road,” with Viggo Mortensen, Gus Van Sant’s “Milk” and Sam Mendes’ “Revolutionary Road,” were all not ready for the fall festival season. One film we expected screen that won’t be there is Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York.” Does this mean it will play the Toronto International Film Festival or is it simply being left out in the cold?
One things for sure: All of these festivals are extremely picky, whether there’s a name attached or not (see ‘Synecdoche’) which means if Aronofsky’s ‘Wrestler’ is playing NYFF, TIFF ’08 and the Venice Film Festival it must be something else and bodes really friggin’ well (someone please send us the script).
A newly restored print of Max Ophuls’ final masterwork “Lola Montès” will be featured as the festival’s spotlight retrospective. The 46th annual New York Film Festival runs Sept. 26-Oct. 12 and you bet your ass we’ll be there. We’ll be away until the 28th of September, but hopefully we’ll be around for the North American premiere of ‘Che.’