New York Film Festival 2020 - what's going to happen?

[Chris Knipp]

NOMADLAND(Chloé Zhao 2020) Centerpiece

Big role for Frances McDormand as a widow forced off the grid who chooses to stay there, with a lot of real characters met on the road. Have to say I still much prefer Zhao's debut feature THE RIDER. This is already a festival darling and spoken of as Oscar material.

[Chris Knipp]

ISABELLA (Matías Piñeiro 2020)

Another graceful, many-layered and pretty opaque riff off Shakespeare (this time Measure for Measure) by the long-haired young Argentinian wunderkind, who now lives in New York but went back to Buenos Aires and Argentina's Córdoba Province for this one. The second time he has been included in the NYFF Main Slate.

[Chris Knipp]

HOPPER/WELLES (Orson Welles 2020)

Footage shot for Welles' last unfinished film OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND but never used, in which he questions and provokes Hopper, unseen. It's raw, jerky footage and hard to watch, but I admire Hopper for how well he keeps his cool.

[Chris Knipp]

THE SALT OF TEARS/LE SEL DES LARMES (Philippe Garrel 2020)

The distance between Philippe Garrel and his son Louis, now also a director, seems vaster than just one generation, but both have collaborated with the prolific screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, now 89, on their latest films. A tale of an attractive and irresponsible young cabinetmaking apprentice who flits from one woman to another. His one serious relationship is with his aging carpenter father.

[Chris Knipp]

THE DISCIPLE (Chaitanya Tamhane 2020)

Second film by the very talented, smart Indian director of Court is a fantastic, complex and unexpected film, full of sharp truths and ironies, about now threatened Indian classical music and the challenge of a severe tradition for a young acolyte. He seeks to be a Khayal singer of Hindustani music but is challenged all around, by his guru and the impossible standards of his guru's guru, and by the debasement of the music today, or lack of interest and appreciation. Is India collapsing and losing its age-old culture? Tamhane is a brilliant new figure on the world scene.

[Chris Knipp]

SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE/一直游到海水变蓝(Jia Zhangke 2020)

A rather draggy documentary by Jia Zhang-ke about four well known Chinese contemporary writers, one dead, and one woman, all of whom came from villages and lived through the Cultural Revolution or its aftermath. Mostly talking heads, and likely more interesting to locals, but with some touching moments.

[Chris Knipp]

I CARRY YOU WITH ME/TE LLEVO CONMIGO (Heidi Ewing 2020)

A gay immigration movie about a Mexican couple that makes its points forcefully. The timely themes and a radical modulation from actors to the real people at the end may explain inclusion in the NYFF Main Slate.