NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS April 2-13, 2025

[Chris Knipp]

NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS 2025

FESTIVAL THREAD

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THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART AND FILM AT LINCOLN CENTER
ANNOUNCE THE LINEUP FOR THE 54th EDITION OF
NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS, APRIL 2–13

Opening Night—Sarah Friedland's Familiar Touch
Closing Night—Alex Russell's Lurker

Presented in MoMA and FLC theaters
New York, NY (March 5, 2025) – The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center announce the 54th edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), taking place from April 2 through April 13. Since 1972, New Directors/New Films has showcased new and emerging filmmakers whose distinctive visions and risk-taking works highlight the vitality and potential of cinema. This year’s ND/NF will present 24 features and nine short films, including 20 North American or U.S. premieres.

Opening ND/NF is the New York premiere of Familiar Touch, Sarah Friedland’s debut, which won three top prizes in the 2024 Venice Film Festival Orizzonti Competition and showcases an astonishing performance by Kathleen Chalfant. The festival will close with the New York premiere of Alex Russell’s feature debut Lurker, a tense thriller about the darker side of pop-star worship fresh from screenings at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals.

Films in the ND/NF program probe a diverse array of themes, including community and co-existence, family histories, the lives of artists, global political issues, and the complexities of youth and coming of age. A number of works experiment with hybrid forms, blurring the lines between fiction and documentary. In this geographically diverse lineup, works by emerging filmmakers from 22 countries are represented, many of which premiered at, and in many cases received awards and prizes from, prestigious international film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Locarno, CPH:DOX, Sundance, Rotterdam, and Berlin.​​

Festival highlights include reflections on family and family histories in Maxime Jean-Baptiste’s Listen to the Voices; Tato Kotetishvili’s Holy Electricity; Courtney Stephens’s Invention; and Drowning Dry by Laurynas Bareiša (ND/NF 2022), all Locarno Film Festival prize recipients. Political realities are observed through the lens of history and present-day events in Lorena Alvarado’s Lost Chapters; Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte! (winner of the top prize at Rotterdam); Bálint Szimler’s Lesson Learned; and Kateryna Gornostai’s (ND/NF 2021) documentary about life during wartime in Ukraine, Timestamp (Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award at CPH:DOX). Also of note are Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace (French Touch Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week), featuring the celebrated actor/director/screenwriter Lee Kang-sheng, and Suhel Banerjee’s CycleMahesh, an experimentation on the fiction/nonfiction hybrid form.

Dan Sullivan, 2025 ND/NF Co-Chair and FLC Programmer, says, “The lineup for this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films inevitably reflects the uncertainties and tragedies of our global situation in 2025, yet it also evinces the sheer resilience of cinema and the continued emergence of important new talents working within it. A number of films in this year’s lineup take up the challenge of recovering and reconceptualizing human connection as a cherished value, perhaps none more movingly than Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, a sophisticated and boundlessly sensitive subversion of the coming-of-age film that challenges our preconceptions about the subjectivity of the elderly. Likewise, Alex Russell’s stylish and gripping Lurker trains its gaze on Gen Z, posing hard questions about the nature of ambition, fame, and friendship amid a culture that prizes selfish striving to the detriment of the fundamental bonds that unite us and make life worth living.”

La Frances Hui, 2025 ND/NF Co-chair and Curator, Department of Film, MoMA, observes, “Cinema dazzles in the hands of this remarkable class of new directors, who bring astonishing creativity to exploring and interpreting the vast spectrum of human experience. Their films abound with surprising, magical touches, weaving stories of love, family, and anguish, while also delving into themes of identity, history, and conflict. These filmmakers reaffirm the boundless potential of the moving image to regenerate, create meaning, and expand our horizons. Prepare to be captivated by this exceptional collection of new films.”

Over 54 festivals, ND/NF has maintained a commitment to its founding mission to showcase distinctive new voices and share the gift of discovery with audiences. Directors showcased in past festivals include Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Almodóvar, Souleymane Cissé, Jia Zhangke, Spike Lee, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke, Wong Kar-wai, Agnieszka Holland, Denis Villeneuve, Luca Guadagnino, and many others.

[B][SIZE=5]THE NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS series at Lincoln Center April 2-13, 2025: LINKS TO REVIEWS THE NEW DIRECTORS/NEW FILMS series at Lincoln Center April 2-13, 2025: LINKS TO REVIEWS

THE ASSISTANT (Wilhelm Sasnal, Anka Sasnal 2025) Polish
BLUE SUN PALACE (Constance Tsang 2024) Chinese
CACTUS PEARS (Rohan Parashuram Kanawade 2025) Marathi
CYCLEMAHESH (Suhel Banerjee 2024) Odia, Marathi, and Hindi
DROWNING DRY (Laurynas Bareiša 2024) Lithuanian
FAMILIAR TOUCH (Sarah Friedland 2024) English
FIUME O MORTE! (Igor Bezinović 2025) Croatian and Italian
GRAND ME (Atiye Zare Arandi 2024) Farsi
THE HEIGHT OF THE COCONUT TREES/椰子の高さ (Du Jie 2024) Japanese
HOLY ELECTRICITY (Tato Kotetishvili 2024) Georgian
INVENTION (Courtney Stephens 2024) English
KYUKA. BEFORE SUMMER'S END (Kostis Charamountanis 2024) Greek
LESSON LEARNED/FEKETE PONT (Bálint Szimler 2024) Hungarian
LISTEN TO THE VOICES/KOUTÉ VWA (Maxime Jean-Baptiste 2024) French
LOST CHAPTERS (Lorena Alvarado 2024) Spanish
LURKER (Alex Russell 2024) English
MAD BILLS TO PAY - OR DESTINY, DIRE QUE NO SOY MALO (Joel Alfonso Vargas 2024) Spanish
NO SLEEP TILL (Alexandra Simpson 2024) English
SAD JOKES (Fabian Stumm 2024) German
STRANGER/JU WAI REN (Zhengfan Yang 2024) Chinese
TIMESTAMP (Kateryna Gornostai 2024)
TWO TIMES JOÃO LIBERADA (Paula Marques 2025) Portuguese
THE VILLAGE NEXT TO PARADISE (Mo Harawe 2024) Somali
THE VIRGIN OF THE QUARRY LAKE (Laura Casabé 2025) Spanish

Shorts Program I
Landscapes of Longing dir. Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez, Anoushka Mirchandani
You Can’t See It From Here dir. Enrique Pedráza-Botero

Shorts Program II
Life Story dir. Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
Crushed dir. Camille Vigny
Maidenhair dir. Julia Sipowicz

In Retrospect, dir. Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhlutenko
The Inhabitants dir. Maureen Fazendeiro

Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World dir. Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis
What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move dir. Daphné Hérétakis

New Directors/New Films is organized by La Frances Hui (Co-Chair, MoMA), Dan Sullivan (Co-Chair, Film at Lincoln Center), Sophie Cavoulacos (MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), Francisco Valente (MoMA), Madeline Whittle (Film at Lincoln Center), Tyler Wilson (Film at Lincoln Center), Katie Zwick (Film at Lincoln Center).

New Directors/New Films is presented by The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center.

Film at Lincoln Center funding for New Directors/New Films is provided in part by Anne-Victoire Auriault and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. American Airlines is the Official Airline of Film at Lincoln Center.