The New York Film Festival is New York City’s big fall film festival. It’s one of America’s longest-running film festivals, and lands just as studios are preparing to release their best films into the holiday and Oscar seasons.
#NYFF62
63rd New York Film Festival 2025
The 63rd New York Film Festival 2025 (#NYFF63) brings international filmmakers, movie stars, and film lovers to red carpet premieres, screenings, Q&As, and talks at Lincoln Center and partner venues in each of NYC’s boroughs, for a little over two weeks from September 26 to October 13, 2025.
New York film fans will like Rebecca Miller’s “Mr. Scorsese,” a portrait of the iconic New York filmmaker (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Irishman), produced by his wife Helen Morris.
“Sirât,” by Oliver Laxe, a father’s psychological journey searching for his missing daughter in the Moroccan desert, was a joint winner of the Cannes Jury Prize. The film in Spanish and French with English subtitles, is Spain’s entry for Best International Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards. 🇪🇸
“Magellan,” a monumental film by Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz, stars Mexican actor Gael García Bernal as the Portuguese captain who died in the Philippines on the first expedition to circumnavigate the world. It’s in Portuguese, Spanish, Tagalog, and French with English subtitles. 🇵🇹 🇪🇸 🇵🇭
“La Grazia,” by Italian Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino (The Great Beauty), is the story of a fictional ruler who faces his age, power, and morals as his political career winds to a close. This recalls a certain American president’s statement that “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible.” Do politicians go to heaven?
“Barrio Triste,” by Colombian music video director Stillz (Bad Bunny, Rosalía), is a high-style gangland tale. 🇨🇴
Argentine director Lucrecia Martel offers “Nuestra Tierra” (Landmarks), a feature documentary about an Indigenous Chuchagasta who was killed during a forced eviction. 🇦🇷
“The Fence” by acclaimed French director Claire Denis, stars the renowned Ivorian American actor Isaach de Bankolé and Matt Dillon in a story of post-colonial tensions in West Africa, in English and Yoruba. 🇨🇮
“Mortu Nega” is a revival of the 1988 Flora Gomes film about a devoted wife’s journey to support her husband in the Guinea-Bissau War of Independence (1963-1974) the long guerrilla war known as Portugal’s Vietnam. It’s in Portuguese and Guinea-Bissau Creole. 🇬🇼
There are 13 films in Spanish, 13 in French, 5 in Portuguese, 5 in Italian, 3 in Romanian, 1 in Yoruba, 1 in Wolof, 1 in Hindi, 1 in Bengali, 1 in Tagalog, 2 in Lakota (Sioux), and 1 in Anishinaabemowin (Indigenous Algonquin of the Northeast).
It’s at Film at Lincoln Center’s home ground at Alice Tully Hall, the Walter Reade Theater, and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, but also in each borough. In the Bronx, it’s at AMC Bay Plaza Cinema. In Brooklyn, it’s at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In Queens, it’s at the Museum of the Moving Image. In Staten Island, it’s at Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.
62nd New York Film Festival 2024
The 62nd New York Film Festival 2024 brings international filmmakers, movie stars, and film lovers to red carpet premieres, screenings with Q&As, and talks at Lincoln Center and partner venues in each of NYC’s boroughs, from September 27 to October 14, 2024. 🇺🇸 🇦🇷 🇧🇯 🇧🇷 🇬🇧 🇩🇴 🇫🇷 🇵🇭 🇮🇹 🇲🇽 🇵🇸 🇵🇹 🇷🇴 🇪🇸 🇸🇳 🇿🇲
This season’s films are: African American, Argentine, Beninese, Brazilian, British, Dominican, French, Filipino, Italian, Mexican, Palestinian, Portuguese, Romanian, Senegalese, Spanish, Zambian.
The Opening Night film is “Nickel Boys” by RaMell Ross. It’s the story of two Black teens stuck in a violent Jim Crow-era Florida juvenile reformatory. It’s based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Ross’ filmmaking is beautifully surreal. The movie is considered a “New American Masterpiece.” Many American stories are really tragic, but the greatest tragedy is that this kind of thing still goes on. We need stories like this to break the wall of silence, get people to understand and accept what has been done, so we can work on a better future together.
The Centerpiece film is U.S. Premiere of “The Room Next Door,” Pedro Almodóvar’s highly anticipated first English-language feature. Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton star in this story of a best-selling author who reconnects with her long-lost war correspondent mother. It just won the Golden Lion at Venice, a first for a Spanish film. Like most Latins Almodóvar is strongly attached to his mother. He has a profound understanding of the lives of women and family dynamics. He also has a vibrant and retro visual style related to “La Movida Madrileña” cultural movement when Almodóvar came up in 1970s Spain. 🇪🇸
The Closing Night film is “Blitz” by African British director Sir Steve McQueen (“12 Years a Slave”). It stars Saoirse Ronan as a mother separated from her pre-teen son during the Blitz on London during World War II. The only people who want war are those who never fought or lived through one. 🇬🇧
Latin Highlights
Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door” is the most anticipated Latin film. Ironically, it’s in English. 🇪🇸
“Pepe” (2024) is the US Premiere of Dominican director Nelson Carlos De Los Santos Arias’ film about Colombian narco Pablo Escobar’s famous hippos, told from the point of view of a sentient hippo. 🇩🇴
“San Juan Hill: Manhattan’s Lost Neighborhood” (2024) is Stanley Nelson’s documentary about The Jungles, the African American, Caribbean, and Puerto Rican neighborhood that was redeveloped into Lincoln Center. “West Side Story” was set in The Jungles. It was a hard, but vibrant place. If you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. That’s still true of Lincoln Center. 🇺🇸
“You Burn Me” (2024) is the North American Premiere of Argentine director Matías Piñiero’s latest study of women. Piñiero is famous for doing Shakespeare in Spanish and making it sound like Shakespeare. Like Almodóvar, Piñiero has a profound understanding of women and is able to draw out great performances. 🇦🇷
Lincoln Center Venues
- Alice Tully Hall
- Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
- Walter Reade Theater
Partner Venues
- Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Staten Island
- Bronx Museum of the Arts in Concourse Village, The Bronx
- Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) in Fort Greene, Brooklyn
- Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens
New York Film Festival
The Festival is one of the longest-running and most respected film festivals in the United States. New York is a film city. The American film industry began here. New York is also closer to Europe than most of the US, so the festival leans European as well. But it also shows great Latin films, and is close to Spanish film legend Pedro Almodóvar, and the small, but vibrant Argentine film community.
There are Main Slate, Currents, Spotlight, Revivals sections and Talks.
Film at Lincoln Center produces film festivals all year long, but this is the big one with lots of filmmakers, movie stars, and industry people on the red carpet. Many filmmakers do Q&As at their screenings. Industry talks are free and open to the public.
Some of the films have already done well on the festival circuit. Many will be released this holiday season or in the coming year. The New York Film Festival is important because the media is here, and it comes just as studios are preparing to release their best films into the holiday season for Oscar consideration.
Social Media
X @TheNYFF
Facebook @NYFilmFest
Instagram @thenyff
Tickets
Buy early because many films sell out.