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  1. #1
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    Some of the hottest tickets for the NYFF and where to see the films later

    Thanks to the AARP for these recommendations. Their heading is "Movies for grownups." Okay. But we tend to call them "films." When they're serious and artistic.


    (Left to right) Benedict Cumberbatch stars in "The Power of the Dog" and Ruth Negga stars in "Passing."

    See all the NYFF 2021 films on the FLC website HERE

    The Lost Daughter
    When to catch it: In theaters Dec. 17 and on Netflix Dec. 31

    What it’s about: Based on a novel from My Brilliant Friend’s Elena Ferrante, now 78, this dark and intense drama follows divorced, middle-aged academic and empty nester Leda (Olivia Colman), who becomes obsessed with a young mother (Dakota Johnson) while on a solo beach holiday.

    Why it’s a director’s pick: At the Cannes Film Festival, the film won best screenplay for actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, who makes her directorial debut here. Hernandez notes that Gyllenhaal, a mother of two daughters, like Leda, “has reached a mature stage of her career. It’s going to resonate so deeply, such a complex exploration of a mother who is navigating big questions in her own life, has a past and a family, and is grappling with her life decisions. With The Lost Daughter, there’s the story of an ambivalent, intellectual mother on-screen. And, also, we recognize the behind-the-screen parallel: We’ve known Maggie as an actress, and while it’s her first film as a director, there’s such a maturity to her approach — and the career moment she’s in.”


    Jane by Charlotte
    When to catch it: In French theaters Oct. 27 and in U.S. theaters in 2022

    What it’s about: This star-driven documentary could be in conversation with The Lost Daughter because it unpacks mother-daughter relationships. Melancholia actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, 50, directs a documentary with and about her famous English singer-actress mother, Jane Birkin, 74, after whom the famed Hermčs bag is named.

    Why it’s a director’s pick: According to Screen Daily’s Cannes review, “the film offers a tender and quite illuminating portrait of a mother-daughter relationship seen both within, and far away from, the public sphere of celebrity.” Like Gyllenhaal’s debut, Hernandez says, “this is a movie by a maturing artist who we’ve known on the screen as an actress, grappling and examining her own life and family and very famous mother. In ways we didn’t force, movies about mothers, daughters, family and the wisdom that comes with age is a theme running through the festival.”


    Petite Maman

    When it’s coming: In theaters Nov. 19

    What it’s about: The thematic thread continues with Céline Sciamma’s vivid Petite Maman, or Little Mother. This engrossing story follows 8-year-old Nelly (Joséphine Sanz), who accompanies her parents to empty her late grandmother’s house. While playing in the nearby forest, she befriends a mysterious 8-year-old (Gabrielle Sanz). Their bond grows as Nelly realizes her new playmate’s true identity and how they can help each other through challenging times.

    Why it’s a director’s pick: From the director of the sensational Portrait of a Lady on Fire, this is “another strong female directorial voice, an evolved exploration of family, motherhood, kids and parents,” Hernandez says. “When I first watched it with a friend, the emotional experience that she and I both had in reaction to our own lives — how do you watch that movie and not think about parents, relationships, life — over 50. Wow, I took a lot from that movie. There’s power and gravitas to the filmmaking and story, and yet it’s so deceptively simple.”

    Passing
    When it’s coming: In theaters Oct. 27, streaming later on Netflix

    What it’s about: Based on Nella Larsen’s powerful novella about two high school friends who reunite as young women in New York, the movie is a “black and white portrait of late '20s Harlem Renaissance era, anchored by two really strong performances from Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga."

    Why it’s a director’s pick: Like Gyllenhaal and Gainsbourg, writer-director Rebecca Hall has been known as an exceptional actress (Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Hernandez, who first screened Passing at the Sundance festival, was “blown away” by the British actor’s shift to director. “The drama navigates identity, race, in New York in that era, and sexuality. And it’s all orchestrated, directed, managed and contained through the work Rebecca brings to the period drama because of her own experience,” Hernandez says. “It’s her first film as a director, but it’s not her first film. There’s a depth, nuance and texture; again, she’s lived a life and is transitioning to a new stage in her career. She’s a new filmmaking voice.”

    The Power of the Dog
    When it’s coming: In theaters Nov. 17, streaming later on Netflix

    What it’s about: Oscar winner Jane Campion, 67, won best director at Cannes this year for a movie that appears bound for the 2022 best picture short list. This period Western set in 1920s Montana stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a rancher whose life is disrupted by the arrival of his brother and his family.

    Why it’s a director’s pick: “Campion explores the roots of toxic masculinity woven through the genre of the Old West,” Hernandez says. “We’re scratching deeper into the stories of homosexuality and masculinity and the Old West and the conventions of cinema, of men on the prairie and out in the wilderness. Jane is peeling the onion of that story, creating a fully realized movie for the big screen, on a big canvas.”

    Need a nudge to book a (safe!) trip to New York for the festival? While seeing movies at home is “special, and it’s what got us through the pandemic,” Hernandez says, “the experience of walking into a movie theater and feeling that energy — this is what artists and audiences have been craving for 18 months.”

    ​The 59th annual New York Film Festival opens on Friday with The Tragedy of Macbeth and runs through Oct. 10 with Parallel Mothers.

    More NYFF standouts to look out for

    Want more expert recommendations? Here are five more New York Film Festival​ movies soon to be scheduled for a screen near you:

    The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington, 66, and Frances McDormand, 64 (in theaters late 2021)

    Bergman Island (in theaters and on demand Oct. 15)

    Parallel Mothers by Pedro Almodóvar, 71 (in limited theaters Dec. 24)

    The Velvet Underground, a documentary from Todd Haynes, 60 (in theaters and streaming on Apple TV+ Oct. 15)

    Hit the Road, an Iranian family road movie by Panah Panahi, the son and assistant director of legendary director Jafar Panahi (in theaters, streaming on Kino Lorber, and video on demand in 2022)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 09-25-2021 at 02:09 PM.

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    THE YOUNG VAN PEEBLES IN SWEET SWEETBACK (1971)

    SWEET SWEETBACK'S BADASSSSS SONG; AHED'S KNEE; THE TSUGUA DIARIES

    Melvin van Peebles' black indie classic SWEET SWEETBACK'S BADASSSSS SONG (which I've still never seen), a featured revival in a restored print at the NYFF, has a more plangent meaning because of Peebles' demise in his home in Manhattan last week. He was 89. He was the forerunner of Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, and the rest.
    A Renaissance man whose work spanned books, theater and music, Mr. Van Peebles is best known for his third feature film, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” which drew mixed reviews when it was released in 1971, ignited intense debate and became a national hit. The hero, Sweetback, starred in a sex show at a brothel, and the movie sizzled with explosive violence, explicit sex and righteous antagonism toward the white power structure. It was dedicated to “all the Black brothers and sisters who have had enough of The Man.” -NYTimes obituary.

    MELVIN VAN PEEBLES
    Born: August 21, 1932, Chicago, IL
    Died: September 21, 2021


    Van Peebles’s vision of the devastating police violence that Black Americans endure at home (indeed, even literally inside their homes), and of the resulting deformations of their ordinary lives into an extraordinary heroism of resistance (or merely of survival)—has an eruptive urgency.
    Brody says among the new NYFF films shown this week Israeli director Nadav Lapid''s AHED'S KNEE stands out "for its political outrage and bitter defiance":
    From the film’s very first scene, Lapid candidly displays and furiously denounces the militarization and oppressive nationalism of Israeli society. It’s the story of a fortysomething Israeli Jewish filmmaker, identified only as Y (and played by Avshalom Pollak), who flies alongside Israeli soldiers, in a small, shuttle-like plane, to a village in the Negev desert, near the Jordanian border, where he’s presenting one of his films at a local library. A cheerful young woman named Yahalom (Nur Fibak), a native of the village who works for the country’s Ministry of Culture, greets him there. She’s as affable and welcoming as he is grumpy and skeptical, and they quickly bond—dialectically, platonically, over art and politics. He discloses to her, in great detail, the horrors of a seemingly suicidal mission that he had participated in as an Army intelligence officer. She reveals to him her unease with the censorious regulations that her ministry imposes on cultural activities. He unleashes a torrential, seemingly inexhaustible rant about Israel’s government, its ethos, and what he considers the moral and intellectual numbing of the citizenry to the country’s criminal policies—and he plans to publish a damning report about this trip.-
    Richard Brody.

    AHED'S KNEE

    Brody's outstanding commentaries on movies appear in "The Front Row" on The New Yorker online every week. He goes on this week to comment on Maureen Fazendeiro and Miguel Gomes’s film “The Tsugua Diaries”, a film set in rural Portugal over 22 days in August, shown in reverse chronological order. ("Tsugua" is "August" spelled backward. ) This is a film about itself, making itself and about the people making it, and "love and filmmaking in the time of covid."
    Fazendeiro and Gomes film the carefully tended settings with a passionate but serene observational joy and the actors with a restrained, gentle affection: in art and life alike, these people and places all shiver with the promise of love and the spectre of death. -
    Brody, New Yorker.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-01-2021 at 06:57 PM.

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    [Press release]
    MUBI presents
    UNCLENCHING THE FISTS (dir. Kira Kovalenko 2021)


    NY Premiere at the 59th New York Film Festival

    **Just Added: Oct. 5 at 7:00pm**
    NYFF Talk with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Kira Kovalenko

    Un Certain Regard Grand Prize Winner: Cannes Film Festival
    North American Premiere: Telluride Film Festival
    Canadian Premiere: Toronto International Film Festival


    "Powerful coming-of-ager about a teenage girl breaking free...
    [Kira] Kovalenko finds hope in a hopeless world."
    – Indiewire

    "Intense, immersive."
    – Variety



    MUBI, the global distributor and curated film streaming service, is pleased to announce the New York premiere of Unclenching the Fists, at the 59th New York Film Festival. The film, directed by Kira Kovalenko, received its World Premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Grand Prize in Un Certain Regard. Unclenching the Fists received its North American Premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and also screened in the Toronto International Film Festival.


    SYNOPSIS


    Ada is stuck. Living in a dead-end industrial town in the North Ossetia section of Russia, she is a young woman caught in the grip of the men in her life. But when her older brother returns home and her domineering father suddenly falls ill, Ada finally sees a possible path to freedom. A defiant, bracing tale about the universal struggle to break free, Unclenching the Fists announces the arrival of major talents in star Milana Aguzarova and writer-director Kira Kovalenko, a former student of Alexander Sokurov (Russian Ark).

    2021 / 97 minutes / Color / English subtitles

    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 10-04-2021 at 08:34 PM.

  4. #4
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    NYFF 2021 FESTIVAL COVERAGE SECTION

    Though I wasn't there for NYFF 59 either in person of virtually, I've set up the usual Festival Coverage thread now with all the Main Slate films that I've reviewed so far. Click above for the links or go below.

    New York Film Festival 2021 (Sept. 24-Oct. 10).

    Links to Reviews:
    The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen 2021) Opening Night Film
    The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion 2021) Centerpiece Film
    Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar 2021) Closing Night Film
    A Chiara (Jonas Carpignano 2021)
    Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid 2021)
    Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude 2021)
    Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven)
    Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Lřve 2021)
    Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino 2021)
    Drive My Car (Ryűsuke Hamaguchi 2021)
    The First 54 Years (Avi Mograbi 2021)
    Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen 2021)
    France (runo Dumont 2021)
    Futura (Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher 2021)
    The Girl and the Spider (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher 2021)
    Hit the Road/Jadde Khaki (Panah Panahi 2021)
    In Front of Your Face (Hong Sangsoo 2021)
    Întregalde (Radu Muntean 2021)
    Introduction (Hong Sangsoo 2021)
    Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul 2021
    Neptune Frost (Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman 2021)
    Passing (Rebecca Hall 2021)
    Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma 2021)
    Prayers for the Stolen (Tatiana Huezo)
    The Souvenir Part II (Joanna Hogg 2021)
    Titane (Julia Ducournau 2021)
    Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko 2021)
    The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes 2021)
    Vortex (Gaspar Noé 2021)
    What Do We See When We Look at the Sky (Aleksandre Koberidze 2021)
    Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryűsuke Hamaguchi 2021)
    The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier 2021)
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 02-15-2022 at 02:57 PM.

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