While the Venice Film Festival may be wowing film fans with its stars, watery glamor, and world premieres, New Yorkers and tri-state connoisseurs don’t have long to wait to share in a movie lovefest. Starting September 27, the New York Film Festival returns to Lincoln Center with a roster of anticipated titles, U.S. and North American premieres, celebrity appearances, worthy revivals, and more.



Commencing this year’s program will be “Nickel Boys,” director RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centering on Jim Crow-era Florida. The NYFF’s artistic director, Dennis Lim, calls it “the most audacious American movie” he has seen in a while, so expectations are high.



Midway through the festival, on October 4, a beloved Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar, will once again grace the city with his presence, when he introduces his first feature-length English-language film, “The Room Next Door.” The movie’s main actresses, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, will also be on hand. A few days later, a special screening of Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” based on the William Burroughs novel and starring Daniel Craig, will serve as the festival’s spotlight gala.



An impactful closing-night film can influence how any cinematic curation is ultimately perceived, and this year’s chosen closer may prove to be a classic: Steve McQueen’s “Blitz.” Recreating the brutal Nazi bombing of London, the picture stars Saoirse Ronan as a single mother who gets separated from her 9-year-old son.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" srcset="https://wp.nysun.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/New-York-Film-Festival.jpg 1024w, https://wp.nysun.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/New-York-Film-Festival-300x200.jpg 300w, https://wp.nysun.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/New-York-Film-Festival-144x96.jpg 144w, https://wp.nysun.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/New-York-Film-Festival-768x512.jpg 768w" class="wp-image-233467" alt="" src="https://wp.nysun.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/New-York-Film-Festival.jpg" height="683" width="1024" loading="lazy" decoding="async"><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Tilda Swinton, Pedro Almodovar, and Julianne Moore on the red carpet for ‘The Room Next Door’ during the 81st Venice International Film Festival, September 2, 2024. Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



A recent Palm d’Or winner, “Anora,” will join other Cannes prize winners, including the Mumbai-set “All We Imagine as Light” and the Portuguese/East Asian “Grand Tour,” over the course of the event’s 18 days. “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” a multiple award winner at Cannes whose director was sentenced to prison in his native Iran over the film, will also screen at the famed Alice Tully Hall.



The four women who shared the Best Actress award on the Croisette — Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, and Adriana Paz — will again share the limelight in person when their movie musical “Emilia Pérez” arrives at New York. It should be noted that Ms. Gascón became the first openly trans actor to win an acting award at the French festival.



In addition to “Nickel Boys” and “Anora,” the American main slate selections include Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist,” about a Jewish architect and World War II survivor played by Adrien Brody, and Carson Lund’s “Eephus,” which centers on amateur recreation league baseball teams. Also delving into American subject matter is Robinson Devor’s nonfiction drama “Suburban Fury,” profiling the woman who attempted to shoot President Ford at San Francisco in 1975, Sara Jane Moore. In a coup for the late-in-the-year festival, the film will have its world premiere on October 9.



Other documentary entries include Mati Diop’s “Dahomey,” which focuses on art repatriation and won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and Brett Story and Stephen Maing’s “Union,” concerning the historic unionization of Staten Island’s JFK8 Amazon warehouse. For those who like self-recrimination with their theatergoing experience, there’s “San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood,” a look at the forgotten locale on which Lincoln Center was built.&nbsp;



Another doc of particular local interest is “TWST/Things We Said Today,” by Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică. Using only archival material, Mr. Ujică pieces together the August 1965 weekend when the Beatles played Shea Stadium.



Lovers of Ernest Hemingway may want to check out Albert Serra’s “Afternoons of Solitude,” a documentary on torero Andrés Roca Rey that promises not to skirt the beauty and brutality of bullfighting.&nbsp;



Rounding out the fest’s program with its revivals, cineastes can re-watch Clive Barker’s “Hellraiser” (1987), Frederick Wiseman’s “Model” (1981), and Robert Bresson’s “Four Nights of a Dreamer” (1971) on the big screen, among others.



A complete schedule of films is available on the Film at Lincoln Center site, which offers the chance to purchase early access passes. Those moviegoers willing to wait can buy tickets on September 17 at 12 p.m. local time, when all events become available for purchase to the general public.

A still from 'Blitz.'

The New York Film Festival Returns This Month With Premieres, Personalities, and Passionate Cinema

The festival commences on September 27 with ‘Nickel Boys,’ director RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centering on Jim Crow-era Florida.

The New York Film Festival Returns This Month With Premieres, Personalities, and Passionate Cinema | The New York Sun

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The New York Film Festival Returns This Month With Premieres, Personalities, and Passionate Cinema

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