While the New York Film Festival (NYFF) doesn’t typically have as many glamorous world premieres, there’s no denying the event packs a ton of interesting and quality picks in its lineup. And the 2024 edition is no different.
According to the folks at NYFF, this year’s main slate includes 32 features from esteemed filmmakers such as Sean Baker, Pedro Almodóvar, Brady Corbet, David Cronenberg, and many more. In total, the films come from 24 countries, and 18 of the filmmakers in the main slate are making their NYFF debuts. Those are impressive numbers for an event that has really tried to diversify its selections in recent years.
“The festival’s ambition is to reflect the state of cinema in a given year, which often means also reflecting the state of the world,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “The most notable thing about the films in the Main Slate—and in the other sections that we will announce in the coming weeks—is the degree to which they emphasize cinema’s relationship to reality. They are reminders that, in the hands of its most vital practitioners, film has the capacity to reckon with, intervene in, and reimagine the world.”
As for the big name films coming to NYFF 2024, the headlining feature has to be Sean Baker’s “Anora,” which took home the Palme d’Or earlier this year at Cannes. There are two World Premieres in this year’s main slate. Those include Robinson Devor’s “Suburban Fury,” a nonfiction portrait of would-be presidential assassin Sara Jane Moore dramatized against the background of 1970s political unrest and militancy, and Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” a documentary on the persistence of independent journalism in Putin’s Russia during the period leading up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
This year’s NYFF begins on September 27. Here’s the full list of Main Slate films:
Opening Night
Nickel Boys
Dir. RaMell Ross
Centerpiece
The Room Next Door
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Closing Night
Blitz
Dir. Steve McQueen
All We Imagine as Light
Dir. Payal Kapadia
Anora
Dir. Sean Baker
April
Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
The Brutalist
Dir. Brady Corbet
By the Stream
Dir. Hong Sangsoo
Caught by the Tides
Dir. Jia Zhangke
Dahomey
Dir. Mati Diop
The Damned
Dir. Roberto Minervini
Eephus
Dir. Carson Lund
Grand Tour
Dir. Miguel Gomes
Happyend
Dir. Neo Sora
Hard Truths
Dir. Mike Leigh
Harvest
Dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari
Misericordia
Dir. Alain Guiraudie
My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow
Dir. Julia Loktev
No Other Land
Dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor
Oh, Canada
Dir. Paul Schrader
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
Dir. Rungano Nyoni
Pepe
Dir. Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof
The Shrouds
Dir. David Cronenberg
Stranger Eyes
Dir. Yeo Siew Hua
Suburban Fury
Dir. Robinson Devor
Transamazonia
Dir. Pia Marais
A Traveler’s Needs
Dir. Hong Sangsoo
Việt and Nam
Dir. Trương Minh Quý
Who by Fire
Dir. Philippe Lesage
Youth (Hard Times)
Dir. Wang Bing
Youth (Homecoming)
Dir. Wang Bing