The 55th annual New York Film Festival has begun! One of New York’s most classic film showcases, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s NYFF is once again offering the newest and some of the freshest international films slates for the viewing public.
Here are some of the films Bold as Love feels you should definitely check out, but also look out for reviews from us on select films.
NYFF runs from September 28th to October 15th in New York City. See more about the entire festival and get tickets at FilmLinc.org
MUDBOUND
Directed by Dee Rees
2017/USA/ 134 minutes
Series: Main Slate
With Mary J. Blige, Jason Mitchell, Rob Morgan, Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Clarke, and Jonathan Banks
(NYC Premiere)
Thursday October 12 at 6:00 PM & Friday October 13 at 9:15 PM (Alice Tully Hall)
Q&A with Dee Rees on 10/12
From the director of Pariah and HBO’s Bessie, writer-director Dee Rees’s historical epic, based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, details the daily hardships and vicissitudes of farm life in Mississippi during the post–World War II era, focusing on two families, one white (the landlords) and one black (the sharecroppers), working the same miserable piece of farmland.
At an off-glance Mudbound may look seem a bit downtrodden, but we assure you that as one the most-anticipated films of 2017, with Black talent and otherwise, Mudbound is the film to see at NYFF. With breakthrough performances from Jason Mitchell and Rob Morgan, come awards season, you can tell your friends you were among the first to see it!
FÉLICITÉ
Directed by Alain Gomis
2017/ France,Senegal,Belgium,Germany,Lebanon/124 minutes
Series: Main Slate
(U.S. Premiere)
October 4 at 9:15 PM (Alice Tully Hall), October 5 at 6:00 PM (Walter Reade Theater)
Q&As with Alain Gomis on 10/4 and 10/5
Largely set in the roughest areas of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Félicité (Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu) who just scrapes together a living as a singer in a makeshift bar, goes in search of money for her son’s medical care after he is injured in an accident. But Félicité’s ordeal becomes a double journey, one through the punishing outer world of the city and the inner world of the soul. Félicité is tough, tender, lyrical, mysterious, funny, and terrifying, both responsive to the moment and fixed on its heroine’s spiritual progress.
Winner of the best film award at the 13th African Movie Academy Awards, Félicité is the fourth feature film directed by Alain Gomis, a French director of Guinea-Bissauan and Senegalese descent. His previous film Tey (Aujoud’hui), a dream-like and also lyrically mysterious drama starring the musician/actor Saul Williams, Aïssa Maïga (Bamako), and Anisia Uzeyman, was also a journey of the soul, so there’s little mistaking the power that Gomis’ new film can possess.
THE RAPE OF RECY TAYLOR
Directed by Nancy Buirski
2017/ USA/90 minutes
Series: Spotlight on Documentary
(North American Premiere)
Sunday, October 1st at 9pm, Walter Reade Theater
Tuesday, October 3rd at 6pm, Francesca Beale Theater
Q&A’s with Nancy Buiriski on 10/1 and 10/3
Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old black mother and sharecropper, was gang raped by six white boys in 1944 Alabama. Common in Jim Crow South, few women spoke up in fear for their lives. Not Recy Taylor, who bravely identified her rapists. The NAACP sent its chief rape investigator Rosa Parks, who rallied support and triggered an unprecedented outcry for justice.
Exposing a legacy of physical abuse of Black women by white men, which despite its harrowing history and still existing mindset is seldom spoken about, “Recy” hits on multiple notes, most of which is the ongoing fight for justice for countless women like Taylor and the revelation of Rosa Parks’ intimate role in Recy Taylor’s story and Parks’ ongoing place in history prior to (and after) the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
This story of this film will and should fuel outrage (I was yelling at the screen while watching it!). A full review will we posted here on BaL.
For now, see more about the film at their film’s website.
BOOM FOR REAL: THE LATE TEENAGE YEARS OF JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT
Directed by Sara Driver
2017/ USA/79 minutes
Series: Spotlight on Documentary
(U.S. Premiere)
Sunday, October 8, 1:00pm at Alice Tully Hall
Wednesday, October 11, 9:00pm at Francesca Beale Theater
Q&A’s with Sara Driver on 10/8 and 10/11
This look at Jean-Michel Basquiat’s life pre-fame, and how New York City, the times, the people and the movements around him formed the artist he became, BOOM FOR REAL weaves the story of Jean-Michel and the city with never before seen works, writings and photographs.
Even if you’re from New York City, this look back at this time and scene is fascinating. If you’re not, it may even be alarming.
Director Sara Driver worked closely and collaboratively with her friends and other artists who emerged from that scene: Fab Five Freddy, Lee Quinones, Nan Goldin, Jim Jarmusch, James Nares, Luc Sante and many others. Their thoughts, period film footage, music, images, and anecdotes of their young friend, help to visually tell the story of Jean-Michel’s Lower East Side and SOHO downtown NYC –pre AIDS, President Reagan, the real estate and art boom, and before anyone was motivated by money and ambition. The definition of fame, success and power were very different than today — to be a penniless but published poet was the height of success, until everything changed in the early 1980’s. This is both Basquiat’s and New York City’s story before that change.
A full review will we posted here on BaL.
ZAMA
Directed by Lucrecia Martel
2017/ Argentina-Brazil-Spain-/France-Mexico-USA-The Netherlands-Portugal/115 minutes
Series: Main Slate
(U.S. Premiere)
Saturday September 30 at 6:00 PM and Monday October 2 at 6:00 PM at Alice Tully Hall
Q&As with Lucrecia Martel on 9/30 and 10/2
The great Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel ventures into the realm of historical fiction and makes the genre entirely her own in this adaptation of Antonio di Benedetto’s 1956 classic Argentinean novel.
In the late 18th century, in a far-flung corner of what seems to be Paraguay, the title character, an officer of the Spanish crown (Daniel Giménez Cacho) born in the Americas, waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. Martel renders Zama’s world—his daily regimen of small humiliations and petty politicking—as both absurd and mysterious, and as he increasingly succumbs to lust and paranoia, subject to a creeping disorientation. Precise yet dreamlike, and thick with atmosphere (a Martel trademark), Zama is an intoxicatingly welcome return from one of contemporary cinema’s most brilliant minds.
CIELO
SECTION: Spotlight on Documentary
Directed by Alison McAlpine
2017/Canada/Chile/78 minutes
(World Premiere)
Friday October 6 at 6:00 PM and October 7 at 2:45 PM at the Walter Reade Theater
Q&As with Alison McAlpine on 10/6 and 10/7
The first feature from Alison McAlpine, director of the beautiful 2008 “nonfiction ghost story” short Second Sight, is a dialogue with the heavens—in this case, the heavens above the Andes and the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where the sky “is more urgent than the land.” McAlpine keeps the vast galaxies above and beyond in a delicate balance with the earthbound world of people, gently alighting on the desert- and mountain-dwelling astronomers, fishermen, miners, and cowboys who live their lives with reverence and awe for the skies. Cielo itself is an act of reverence and awe, and its sense of wonder ranges from the intimate and human to the vast and inhuman.
Also check out:
WONDERSTRUCK
Directed by Todd Haynes, written by Brian Selznick
with Julianne Moore, Oakes Fegley, Michelle Williams, Millicent Simmonds, Jaden Michael
Saturday October 7 at 6:00p & 6:15pm (Alice Tully Hall and Walter Reade Theater)
The story of a young boy in the Midwest is told simultaneously with a tale about a young girl in New York from fifty years ago as they both seek the same mysterious connection.
THE FLORIDA PROJECT
Directed by Sean Baker
2017/ USA/115 minutes
Sunday October 1 at 3pm, Tuesday October 3 at 6pm (Alice Tully Hall)
Q&As with Sean Baker and cast on 10/1 and 10/3
A six-year-old girl (the remarkable Brooklynn Prince) and her two best friends run wild on the grounds of a week-by-week motel complex on the edge of Orlando’s Disney World. Meanwhile, her mother (talented novice Bria Vinaite) desperately tries to cajole the motel manager (an ever-surprising Willem Dafoe) to turn a blind eye to the way she pays the rent. A film about but not for kids, Baker’s depiction of childhood on the margins has fierce energy, tenderness, and great beauty. After the ingenuity of his iPhone-shot 2015 breakout Tangerine, Baker reasserts his commitment to 35mm film with sun-blasted images that evoke a young girl’s vision of adventure and endurance beyond heartbreak.
HALL OF MIRRORS
Directed by Ines Talakic and Ena Talakic
2017/USA/87 minutes
World Premiere: Monday, Oct. 2 at 6pm (Walter Reade Theater), Wednesday, Oct. 4 at 9pm (Francesca Beale Theater)
In this documentary portrait, the great nonpartisan investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein, still going strong at 81, takes us through his most notable articles and books, including close looks at the findings of the Warren Commission, the structure of the diamond industry, the strange career of Armand Hammer, and the inner workings of big-time journalism itself. These are interwoven with an in-progress investigation into the circumstances around Edward Snowden’s 2013 leak of classified documents, resulting in Epstein’s recently published, controversial book How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft. One of the last of his generation of journalists, the energetic, articulate, and boyish Epstein is a truly fascinating character.
