The New York Film Festival has unveiled the Currents lineup for its 64th edition, with Tala Hadid’s “Bardi” set as the section’s Centerpiece and new films from Carlos Reygadas, Bruno Dumont, Éric Baudelaire, Dan Sallitt, and Mariano Llinás among the highlights.
This year’s Currents section features 15 feature films and 28 shorts across six programs, representing 24 countries and regions. Five of the features will have their world premieres at NYFF, alongside five North American premieres, three U.S. premieres, and the world premiere of a new restoration of Fred Camper’s “Suicide Note.”
Hadid’s “Bardi,” which will have its world premiere at the festival, finds the filmmaker and photographer immersing herself in the world of horse riders in central Morocco. The film focuses on Tbourida, an equestrian military ritual dating back to the 16th century.
“The Currents lineup pushes against the conventions of cinematic form, putting into relief the standardization that dominates the film landscape,” Dennis Lim, NYFF’s Artistic Director, said in a statement. “This year’s selection is especially thrilling in its scope and diversity, encompassing multiple modes of production and possibilities for film language, and visions that range from the dynamically intimate to the genuinely—sometimes literally—cosmic.”
Among the more notable world premieres is “Heil Jupiter!,” the latest from Mexican filmmaker Reygadas (“Silent Light”), described as a dreamlike exploration of transgression and authoritarian surveillance. Hong Kong-born artist Tiffany Sia will premiere “Overt Listening,” a landscape film confronting the Cold War legacy of China and Taiwan, while Baudelaire’s “For the Moon” was created in collaboration with children at Paris’ National Institute for Blind Youth.
Sallitt returns with “What Can’t Be Mentioned,” a new film that catches up with characters from his acclaimed “The Unspeakable Act.” Elsewhere, Dumont brings “Red Rocks,” an observational yet fanciful story centered on young children in a French Riviera town.
Other Currents selections include Beatrice Gibson’s “At Night,” Sebastian Brameshuber’s “London,” John Torres’ “The Remotes,” Luise Donschen’s “Tomorrow a Long Time Ago,” Jacqueline Lentzou’s “A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra,” Ana Vaz’s “Hanabi,” and Ted Fendt’s “Foreign Travel.”
Perhaps the section’s most formidable undertaking is Llinás’ “Life of Jorge Luis Borges,” a 330-minute portrait of the Argentine writer assembled from archives, private collections, rediscovered documents, poems, drafts, readings, recitations, and narration. Llinás previously brought his 14-hour “La Flor” to NYFF in 2018.
Currents will also overlap with the festival’s Revivals section through a new restoration of Camper’s “Suicide Note.” Shot largely in New York during the late 1970s and rarely screened since, the diaristic work was designed so that each presentation can differ slightly through a chance operation.
The six shorts programs span work from emerging filmmakers and experimental-cinema veterans, including Artavazd Pelechian, Morgan Fisher, Tatsu Aoki, Peggy Ahwesh, Kevin Jerome Everson, and Laura Poitras. Several presentations also foreground the physical format itself: Johann Lurf’s “Forever…Forever” was shot with a specially developed 65mm camera and will screen from a 70mm print, Aoki’s “Harmony” will screen in restored 16mm, Yixuan Zhang’s “Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness” will be presented in 3D, and Cameron Worden’s “Day One” was made through an entirely photochemical 35mm process.
NYFF will additionally premiere the latest iteration of Fisher’s “Screening Room,” the artist’s site-specific project first initiated in 1968. This version was shot in the Walter Reade Theater and can only be screened there.
The 64th New York Film Festival runs September 25 through October 12, with screenings at Lincoln Center as well as BAM, the Museum of the Moving Image, Alamo Drafthouse Cinema on Staten Island, and AMC Bay Plaza Cinema in the Bronx.
