The 63rd New York Film Festival arrives with a characteristically rich program that fuses high-profile premieres with formally daring auteur works, shaping awards-season narratives while offering audiences a first look at the year’s most anticipated cinema. The lineup highlights both established masters and striking new voices, reaffirming NYFF’s role as a platform where global cinema finds its sharpest expression.
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The festival opens with Luca Guadagnino’s “After the Hunt,” a tightly wound academic thriller led by Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, and Ayo Edebiri. The Centerpiece is Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother,” a triptych of familial reckoning featuring Adam Driver and Cate Blanchett. Closing Night brings Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?,” a world-premiere dramedy starring Laura Dern and Will Arnett that finds bruised grace in midlife course corrections.
Beyond those marquee films, NYFF63 stretches across politically charged thrillers, metacinematic provocations, and portraits of icons from Bruce Springsteen to Martin Scorsese. Running September 26 through October 13, 2025, the festival captures contemporary cinema’s scope, urgency, and pleasures at its most ambitious.
“Is This Thing On?”
Bradley Cooper follows “Maestro” with a world-premiere dramedy set in the world of stand-up. Will Arnett stars as a comic confronting collapse, with Laura Dern as his estranged partner. Cooper appears in a supporting role, and the ensemble includes Andra Day, Amy Sedaris, Sean Hayes, Christine Ebersole, and Ciarán Hinds, with cameos from Peyton Manning, Chloe Radcliffe, Reggie Conquest, and Jordan Jensen. Co-written by Cooper, Arnett, and Mark Chappell, the film promises a bruising but funny look at how performance becomes both a survival mechanism and self-exposure.
“Anemone”
The debut of Ronan Day-Lewis marks the return of his father, Daniel Day-Lewis, alongside Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley, and Safia Oakley-Green. Set on the Irish coast, the film traces a family fractured by grief and memory. With its windswept setting and intergenerational cast, it promises a quietly devastating portrait of estrangement and reconciliation.
“Mr. Scorsese”
Rebecca Miller directs a five-part documentary about Martin Scorsese, interweaving personal reflections and archival material with testimony from longtime collaborators. The film features Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Daniel Day-Lewis, Isabella Rossellini, Sharon Stone, Rodrigo Prieto, Thelma Schoonmaker, and Steven Spielberg. Miller, known for “Personal Velocity” and “Maggie’s Plan,” brings a novelist’s structure and an intimate lens to cinema’s most restless master.
“Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost”
Directed by Ben Stiller, this world-premiere documentary pays tribute to his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. Blending archival material with reflections from Amy Stiller, Christine Taylor, and comedy peers including Christopher Walken and John Guare, it traces a marriage and creative partnership that shaped American comedy. As a filmmaker, Stiller channels both his comic timing and dramatic precision, crafting a family portrait rich with affection and insight.
