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

[Chris Knipp]

NYFF 2020 Closing Night Film:
Azazel Jacobs’s French Exit.


MICHELLE PFEIFFER AND LUCAS HEDGES AND A BLACK CAT IN FRENCH EXIT

Azazel Jacobs’s French Exit has been chosen to close the festival. It stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges.

Four of his five previous features have won festival awards, Terri, a lot of them. He is one of those New York directors who grew up with treasured viewings at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater . "NYFF is the film festival I grew up attending," Jacobs says. "I remember seeing Night On Earth for the first time, and waiting afterwards to hand Jim Jarmusch a fan letter. I remember that same year seeing Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho and having my aim to become a filmmaker only more solidified. I'm grateful to the NYFF for allowing French Exit to premiere in the city I was raised in, and love, and to all who are undoubtedly working tirelessly to make this event happen."

In French Exit Michelle Pfeiffer plays widowed, formerly uber-rich NYC socialite Frances Price. Now in diminished circumstances, she escapes to a friend's empty Paris flat via cruise ship with her dyspeptic son Malcolm (Hedges) and their temperamental black feline Small Frank (who speaks, voiced by Tracy Letts). In Paris Frances and Malcolm confront dubious pasts and uncertain futures while experiencing an enriched social life. Adapted from a novel by Patrick deWitt. To be released by Sony Pictures Classics.