What a difference a year makes. Twelve months ago, when the New York Film Festival raised the curtain on its 2007 edition, audiences were enticed by an accomplished lineup of American projects, helmed by major directors all working at the top of their game. Now, with the 44th edition of the festival preparing to launch in two weeks (tickets officially went on sale this week), audiences are poring over a catalog of almost entirely international titles, including a large selection of works that screened in May at the Cannes Film Festival. So what changed?

Kent Jones, the associate director of programming for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and a member of the film festival’s jury, noted that it’s not unusual for the annual slate of titles to vary considerably from year to year. But, he said, the dearth of American titles appearing at this year’s NYFF can be linked to the writers’ strike that crippled Hollywood over the winter.

“People always look at our schedule, and they try to find patterns that we don’t often see,” Mr. Jones said. “In part, that’s because we don’t set out to have a theme; we’re just involved in the business of picking the best 24 or 26 films we’ve seen. There are years when certain things stand out, but the lack of American films this year is partially due to the writers’ strike. Because of that, a lot of projects didn’t get to be seen because they weren’t quite ready by the time [we programmed the festival].”

So, instead of such American mainstays as David Fincher and Gus Van Sant — both of whom are returning to the screen this fall with anticipated new films — festival audiences will be introduced to such filmmakers as Agnes Jaoui (“Let It Rain,” showing October 10 and 12), Kiyoshi Kurosawa (“Tokyo Sonata,” October 9 and 11), and Matteo Garrone (“Gomorrah,” October 3 and 5).

Of the international contingency, the brightest festival spotlight is being shone on the French director Laurent Cantet, whom some may know for his 2005 sex tourism tale “Heading South” or for his 2001 unemployment drama “Time Out.” His latest work, “The Class,” which won the top prize at Cannes, was chosen to open this year’s festival on September 26. Based on François Bégaudeau’s nonfiction book about teaching, and incorporating real high school students and teachers (including Mr. Bégaudeau as himself), “The Class,” Mr. Jones noted, defies many of the conventions of the standard dramatic film.

“We’re inundated nowadays by films that feel obliged to announce what they’re about — and to keep announcing what they’re about through various means,” he said. “This film doesn’t do that. What it does is build up. It accumulates as we watch the days go by. It’s cumulative, not a film that follows the standard trajectories of characters and conflict.”

Of course, “The Class” is only one of the groundbreaking films that caught Mr. Jones’s attention this year. There’s Alexander Olch’s “The Windmill Movie” (October 5), which could be described as a third-party autobiography, in which Mr. Olch constructs a meditation on the life and work of his former teacher, the filmmaker Richard P. Rogers, by turning to Mr. Rogers’s own autobiographical footage.

“Then there’s ‘Chouga,’ from Kazakhstan,” Mr. Jones said. “I’ve loved every single movie that I’ve ever seen by Darezhan Omirbaev. This film takes place in modern-day Kazakhstan and uses the entire narrative of ‘Anna Karenina’ to take us through not just the lives of the women but the strangeness of this country now. There’s all this new oil money flowing through the country now, Western capital, and it seems like it has quickly become a much different place.”

Mr. Jones also pointed to Lucrecia Martel’s “The Headless Woman” (October 6 and 8), about a woman who hits something indiscernible while driving alone on a dirt road — perhaps a dog, perhaps a child? — as one of the festival’s more unconventional works, particularly for the work of Maria Nieto in the lead role.

“The film is so precise and so powerfully rendered that I could see the acting getting overwhelmed,” he said, “but it’s impossible to imagine this film without Maria Nieto.”

Holding her own against Ms. Nieto is Sally Hawkins in Mike Leigh’s “Happy-Go-Lucky” (September 27 and 28). Starring as Poppy, a chipper single woman in London, Ms. Hawkins, who won the Best Actress award at the Berlin Film Festival, collides with an array of less-than-happy characters who try to weigh her down. But as the movie unwinds, it becomes clear that Poppy’s smile is anything but effortless.

But no performance has garnered more buzz during the current festival season — nor been billed with more enthusiasm in the New York Film Festival’s promotional materials — than that of Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” (October 12). Starring as a washed-up wrestler who returns to the ring in hopes of winning back his reputation match by match, Mr. Rourke won over crowds at the Venice International Film Festival last weekend, helping “The Wrestler” earn the festival’s top prize.

Unlike last year, when the festival’s brightest stars were directors such as Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers, 2008 is very much the year of the actor, from Mr. Rourke and Ms. Nieto’s strong turns to Benicio Del Toro in Steven Soderbergh’s “Che” and Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling.” Yet when pressed to divulge which film made the deepest impression on him during the jury process, Mr. Jones did not single out the opening night, closing night, or centerpiece selections. Nor did he mention the work of Messrs. Leigh or Soderbergh. Instead, he pointed to Olivier Assayas’s “Summer Hours” (October 1 and 2).

“Of all the films we’re showing, it’s probably the work that has moved me most,” he said. “It’s a film that looks at what happens when someone dies, at the odd way in which their home becomes just this odd space, where their possessions become mere objects. It’s a very subtle and moving thing.”

ssnyder@nysun.com