![\"\"](\"https:\/\/hunterword.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/08\/nyfflogo-1000w.jpg\")
<\/a>The Girl and the Spider, Dir. Ramon and Silvan Z\u00fcrcher<\/strong>\nHit the Road (Jadde Khaki), Dir. Panah Panahi<\/strong>
\nIn Front of Your Face, Dir. Hong Sangsoo<\/strong>
\n\u00centregalde, Dir. Radu Muntean<\/strong>
\nIntroduction, Dir. Hong Sangsoo<\/strong>
\nMemoria, Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul<\/strong>
\nNeptune Frost, Dir. Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman<\/strong>
\nPassing, Dir. Rebecca Hall<\/strong>
\nPetite Maman, Dir. C\u00e9line Sciamma<\/strong>
\nPrayers for the Stolen, Dir. Tatiana Huezo<\/strong>
\nThe Souvenir Part II, Dir. Joanna Hogg<\/strong>
\nTitane, Dir. Julia Ducournau<\/strong>
\nUnclenching the Fists, Dir. Kira Kovalenko<\/strong>
\nThe Velvet Underground, Dir. Todd Haynes<\/strong>
\nVortex, Dir. Gaspar No\u00e9<\/strong>
\nWhat Do We See When We Look at the Sky, Dir. Alexandre Koberidze<\/strong>
\nWheel of Fortune and Fantasy, Dir. Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi<\/strong>
\nThe Worst Person in the World, Dir. Joachim Trier<\/strong><\/p>\n
Updated health and safety policies announced, including proof of vaccination requirement for<\/span><\/strong><\/span>
\nprimarily in-person festival<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\nThe 59th New York Film Festival Main Slate – Part 2<\/strong><\/h3>\nThe Girl and the Spider,<\/strong> Ramon and Silvan Z\u00fcrcher, 2021, Switzerland, 98m German with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Everything is in its right place, yet nothing is ever what or where it seems in this alternately droll and melancholy new film from the Z\u00fcrcher brothers, whose The Strange
\nLittle Cat was one of the most striking and original debut features of recent years. Their latest charts a few days in the lives of two young people on the verge of change: Lisa (Liliane Amuat), who is in the process of moving into a new apartment, and her current roommate, Mara (Henriette
\nConfurius), who\u2019s staying behind.<\/p>\nThough its setup is simple, the film\u2014and the ambiguous relationship between the women\u2014is anything but. The architectural precision of the filmmaking belies the inchoate longings and desires that appear to course through Lisa and Mara, as well as the various characters who come in and out of their homes. The Girl and the Spider is a minor-key symphony of inscrutable glances and irresolvable tensions. A Cinema Guild release.<\/p>\n
Hit the Road,<\/strong> Panah Panahi, 2021, Iran, 93m Persian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere The son ofacclaimed, embattled Iranian master filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and co-editor of his father\u2019s 3 Faces(NYFF56), makes a striking feature debut with this charming, sharp-witted, and ultimately deeply
\nmoving comic drama.<\/p>\nHit the Road takes the tradition of the Iranian road-trip movie and addsunexpected twists and turns. With a tone that\u2019s satisfyingly hard to pin down, Panahi follows afamily of four\u2014two middle-aged parents and their two sons, one a taciturn adult, the other agarrulous, hyperactive six-year-old\u2014as they drive across the Iranian countryside. Rather than relyon an episodic structure built around external encounters, Panahi keeps the focus on thepsychological dynamics inside the car and at various stops along the way. The result is a film thatgradually builds emotional momentum as it reveals the furtive purpose for their journey, and swingsfrom comedy to tragedy en route with dexterity and force.<\/p>\n
In Front of Your Face,<\/strong> Hong Sangsoo, 2021, South Korea, 85m Korean with English subtitles NorthAmerican Premiere After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress (Lee Hye-young) hasreturned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one
\nday in Seoul, via various encounters\u2014including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives inher converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like tomake a comeback\u2014we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the bigsecret that\u2019s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of thespiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sangsoo in aparticularly contemplative mood; it\u2019s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace
\nand a sick joke. A Cinema Guild release.<\/p>\n\u00centregalde,<\/strong> Radu Muntean, 2021, Romania, 104m Romanian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere In a gripping tale of best intentions gone wrong, leading Romanian filmmaker Radu Muntean (Tuesday, After Christmas, NYFF48) follows a trio of well-meaning aid workers from Bucharest on a food delivery
\nmission to the rural hinterlands of the \u00centregalde area of Transylvania.<\/p>\nGuided off the beaten path by an elderly villager looking for a local sawmill, they find themselves trapped in an unfamiliar, dangerous place and facing the outer limits of their goodwill for each other and for strangers. An inquiry into the contemporary humanitarian impulse that moves like a suspense thriller\u2014but which never quite goes where you expect it to\u2014Muntean\u2019s film knowingly plays off and subverts conventions of both horror films and social realist drama.<\/p>\n
Introduction,<\/strong> Hong Sangsoo, 2021, South Korea, 66m Korean with English subtitles North American Premiere In the steady yet playful hands of Hong Sangsoo, even the simplest premise can become a puzzle box of unpredictable, poignant human behavior.<\/p>\nThere could be no better example of his casual mastery than this breezy yet complexly structured study of a group of characters\u2014most crucially parents and their grown offspring\u2014trying to relate to one another via a series of thwarted orstunted meetings and introductions, centered around a young man (Shin Seok-ho) on the cusp ofadulthood, confused about his romantic relationships and professional goals. It\u2019s a film that keepsopening up to the viewer through digressions and reversals, leading to one of Hong\u2019s most amusinglyunsettling soju-soaked outbursts. A Cinema Guild release.<\/p>\n
Memoria,<\/strong> Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021, Colombia\/Thailand\/UK\/France\/Germany\/Mexico\/Qatar, 136mEnglish and Spanish with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Collective and personal ghosts hover overevery frame of Memoria, somehow the grandest yet most becalmed of Apichatpong Weerasethakul\u2019s works.<\/p>\nInspired by the Thai director\u2019s own memories and those of people he encountered while travelingacross Colombia, the film follows Jessica (a wholly immersed Tilda Swinton), an expat botanistvisiting her hospitalized sister in Bogot\u00e1; while there, she becomes ever more disturbed by anabyssal sound that haunts her sleepless nights and bleary-eyed days, compelling her to seek help inidentifying its origins.<\/p>\n
Thus begins a personal journey that\u2019s also historical excavation, in a filmof profound serenity that, like Jessica\u2019s sound, lodges itself in the viewer\u2019s brain as it traversescity and country, climaxing in an extraordinary extended encounter with a rural farmer that existson a precipice between life and death. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. ANEON release.<\/p>\n
Neptune Frost,<\/strong> Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, 2021, USA\/Rwanda, 105m U.S. PremiereMulti-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to thisAfrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that\u2019s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing.<\/p>\nCo-directed with his partner, the Rwandan-born artist Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place amidstthe hilltops of Burundi, where a collective of computer hackers emerges from within a coltan miningcommunity, a result of the romance between a miner and an intersex runaway. Set between states ofbeing\u2014past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory andprescience\u2014Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.<\/p>\n
Passing,<\/strong> Rebecca Hall, 2021, USA, 98m A cornerstone work of Harlem Renaissance literature, Nella Larsen\u2019s 1929 novel Passing is adapted to the screen with exquisite craft and skill by writer-director Rebecca Hall, who envelops the viewer in a bygone period that remains tragically present.<\/p>\nThe film\u2019s extraordinary anchors are Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, meticulous as middle-class Irene and Clare, reacquainted childhood friends whose lives have taken divergent paths. Clare has decided to \u201cpass\u201d as white to maintain her social standing, even hiding her identity from her racist white husband, John (Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd); Irene, on the other hand, is married to a prominent Black doctor, Brian (Andr\u00e9 Holland), who is initially horrified at Clare\u2019s choices.<\/p>\n
As the film progresses, and resentments and latent attractions bristle, Hall creates an increasingly claustrophobic world both constructed and destabilized by racism, identity performance, and sexual frustration, leading to a shocking conclusion. A Netflix release.<\/p>\n
Petite Maman,<\/strong> C\u00e9line Sciamma, 2021, France, 72m French with English subtitles Following such singular inquiries into gender as Tomboy, Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (NYFF57), C\u00e9line Sciamma proves again that she\u2019s among the most accomplished and unpredictable of all contemporary French filmmakers with the gentle yet richly emotional time-bender Petite Maman.<\/p>\nFollowing the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Jos\u00e9phine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother\u2019s childhood home to begin the difficult process of sorting and removing its cherished objects. While exploring the nearby woods, Nelly encounters a neighbor her own age, with whom she finds she has a remarkable amount in common. Sciamma\u2019s scrupulously constructed jewel uses the most delicate of touches to palpate profound ideas about grief, memory, and the past. A NEON release.<\/p>\n
Prayers for the Stolen,<\/strong> Tatiana Huezo, 2021, Mexico\/Germany\/Brazil\/Qatar, 110m Spanish with English subtitles In a mountainous town in rural Mexico, young Ana lives with her mother, who works in the poppy fields harvesting opium.<\/p>\nThe region offers natural splendor and small pleasures for Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, yet the area\u2019s inhabitants are gripped by a fear that is for now incomprehensible to the girls: drug cartels rule the countryside, and they regularly kidnap teenage girls for trafficking, leaving their families bereft of hope or closure.<\/p>\n
In her delicately wrought yet devastating first fiction feature, adapted from the 2014 novel by Jennifer Clement, Tatiana Huezo charts Ana\u2019s growth from childhood to adolescence, steeping viewers in both the lyrical beauty of youth and the creeping terror of adult reality. Huezo\u2019s film features an
\nextraordinary cast of young actors and intimate camerawork by Dariela Ludlow, breathing naturalism into a world of desperation and despair. A Netflix release.<\/p>\n
The Souvenir Part II,<\/strong> Joanna Hogg, 2021, UK, 108m North American Premiere Grieving and depleted from the tragic end of a relationship with a boyfriend who had suffered from drug addiction, young Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) summons the emotional and creative fortitude to forge ahead as a film student in 1980s London. Continuing the remarkable autobiographical saga she had begun in 2019\u2019s The Souvenir, British director Joanna Hogg (a filmmaker of unceasing visual ingenuity and sociological specificity) fashions a gently meta-cinematic mirror image of part one, cutting to the quick in one surprising, enthralling idea after another.<\/p>\nA film about finding one\u2019s artistic inspiration and individuality that avoids every possible clich\u00e9, The Souvenir Part II is a bold conclusion to this
\nstory of unsentimental education, told with the filmmaker\u2019s inimitable oblique poignancy, and featuring a mesmerizing supporting cast including Tilda Swinton, Harris Dickinson, Ariane Labed, Joe Alwyn, and a scene-stealing Richard Ayoade. An A24 release.<\/p>\n
Titane,<\/strong> Julia Ducournau, 2021, France, 148m French with English subtitles U.S. Premiere The winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival\u2019s prestigious Palme d\u2019Or, Titane is a thrillingly confident vision from Julia Ducournau that deposits the viewer directly into its director\u2019s headspace. Moving with
\nthe logic of a dream\u2014and often the force of a nightmare\u2014the film begins as a kind of horror movie, with a series of shocking events perpetrated by Alexia (Agathe Rouselle, in a dynamic and daring breakthrough), a dancer with a titanium plate in her skull following a childhood car accident.<\/p>\nHowever, once Alexia goes into hiding from the police, and is taken in by a grief-stricken firefighter (Vincent Lindon), Ducournau reveals her deployment of genre tropes to be as fluid and destabilizing as her mercurial main character. A feverish, violent, and frequently jaw-dropping ride, Titane nevertheless exposes the beating, fragile heart at its center as it questions our assumptions about gender, family, and love itself. A NEON release.<\/p>\n
Unclenching the Fists,<\/strong> Kira Kovalenko, 2021, Russia, 97m Ossetian with English subtitles In a former mining town in North Ossetia, located in the Caucasus region of Southern Russia, Ada (Milana Aguzarova), a young woman infantilized by her family, chafes at the bonds of her suffocating home
\nlife. Traumatized both physically and emotionally by past events, Ada is kept in a state of near-servitude by her controlling father, while her obsessive younger brother leaves her with little breathing room.<\/p>\nHer liberated older brother\u2019s return and their father\u2019s sudden illness point the way toward possible escape. A thrilling new talent, and a former student of the great filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, Kira Kovalenko won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes for this vivid, concentrated rendering of one woman\u2019s desperate, almost bestial need for survival. A MUBI release.<\/p>\n
The Velvet Underground,<\/strong> Todd Haynes, 2021, USA, 120m Given the ingeniously imagined musical worlds of Velvet Goldmine and I\u2019m Not There, it should come as no surprise that Todd Haynes\u2019s documentary about the seminal band The Velvet Underground mirrors its members\u2019 experimentation and formal
\ninnovation.<\/p>\nCombining contemporary interviews and archival documentation with newscasts, advertisements, and a trove of avant-garde film from the era, Haynes constructs a vibrant cinematic collage that is as much about New York of the \u201960s and \u201970s as it is about the rise and fall of the group that has been called as influential as the Beatles.<\/p>\n
Filmed with the cooperation of surviving band members, this multifaceted portrait folds in an array of participants in the creative scene\u2019s cultures and subcultures. Tracing influences and affinities both personal and artistic, Haynes unearths rich detail about Andy Warhol, The Factory, Nico, and others, adding vivid context and texture that never diminish the ultimate enigma of the band\u2019s power. An Apple release.<\/p>\n
Vortex,<\/strong> Gaspar No\u00e9, 2021, France, 142m French with English subtitles Those accustomed to the boundary-pushing cinema of Gaspar No\u00e9 may take his latest film as his biggest shocker of all. Finding new depths of tenderness without forgoing the uncompromising fatalism that defines his work,
\nNo\u00e9 guides us through a handful of dark days in the lives of an elderly couple in Paris: a retired psychiatrist (Fran\u00e7oise Lebrun) and a writer (Dario Argento) working on a book about the intersection of cinema and dreams.<\/p>\nUsing a split-screen effect, No\u00e9 follows them around their cramped apartment, piled high with a lifetime of books and mementos, with two cameras\u2014a bold
\naesthetic choice that both unites and isolates them. No\u00e9 leads the viewer into another downward spiral, but led by the astonishing performances of Lebrun, Argento, and Alex Lutz as their troubled grown son, he has created his most fragile and humane film yet.<\/p>\n
What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?,<\/strong> Alexandre Koberidze, 2021, Georgia\/Germany, 150m Georgian with English subtitles North American Premiere Among contemporary cinema\u2019s most exciting and distinctive new voices, Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze has created an intimate city symphony like no other with his latest film.<\/p>\nBeginning as an off-kilter romance in which footballer Giorgi and pharmacist Lisa are brought together on the streets of Kutaisi by chance, only to have their dreams complicated when they become victims of an age-old curse, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? continues to radically and pleasurably shape-shift. Ultimately it becomes a lovely portrait of an entire urban landscape and the preoccupations\u2014and World Cup obsessions\u2014of the people who live there. Koberidze has made an idiosyncratic epic out of passing glances that feels as free and fulsome as a fairy tale. A MUBI release.<\/p>\n
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,<\/strong> Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi, 2021, Japan, 121m Japanese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere In this altogether delightful triptych of stories, Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi (director of Asako I & II, NYFF56; and Drive My Car, playing in this year\u2019s festival) again proves he\u2019s one of contemporary cinema\u2019s most agile dramatists of modern love and obsession.<\/p>\nWhether charting the surprise revelation of a blossoming love triangle, a young couple\u2019s revenge plot against an older teacher gone awry, or a case of mistaken romantic identity, Hamaguchi details the sudden reversals, power shifts, and role-playing that define relationships new and old. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is both ironic and tender, a lively and intricately woven work of imagination that questions whether fate or our own vanities decide our destinies. A Film Movement release.<\/p>\n
The Worst Person in the World,<\/strong> Joachim Trier, 2021, Norway, 121m Norwegian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere. As proven in such exacting stories of lives on the edge as Reprise and Oslo, August 31, Norwegian director Joachim Trier is singularly adept at giving an invigorating modern twist to
\nspellbinding protagonist yet: Julie, played by Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve, who\u2019s the magnetic center of nearly every scene.<\/p>\nAfter dropping out of pre-med, Julie must find new professional and romantic avenues as she navigates her twenties, juggling emotionally heavy relationships with two very different men (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie and engaging newcomer Herbert Nordrum). Fluidly told in 12 discrete chapters, Trier\u2019s film elegantly depicts the precarity of identity and the mutability of happiness in our runaway contemporary world. A NEON release.<\/p>\n
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The Girl and the Spider,<\/strong> Ramon and Silvan Z\u00fcrcher, 2021, Switzerland, 98m German with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Everything is in its right place, yet nothing is ever what or where it seems in this alternately droll and melancholy new film from the Z\u00fcrcher brothers, whose The Strange Though its setup is simple, the film\u2014and the ambiguous relationship between the women\u2014is anything but. The architectural precision of the filmmaking belies the inchoate longings and desires that appear to course through Lisa and Mara, as well as the various characters who come in and out of their homes. The Girl and the Spider is a minor-key symphony of inscrutable glances and irresolvable tensions. A Cinema Guild release.<\/p>\n Hit the Road,<\/strong> Panah Panahi, 2021, Iran, 93m Persian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere The son ofacclaimed, embattled Iranian master filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and co-editor of his father\u2019s 3 Faces(NYFF56), makes a striking feature debut with this charming, sharp-witted, and ultimately deeply Hit the Road takes the tradition of the Iranian road-trip movie and addsunexpected twists and turns. With a tone that\u2019s satisfyingly hard to pin down, Panahi follows afamily of four\u2014two middle-aged parents and their two sons, one a taciturn adult, the other agarrulous, hyperactive six-year-old\u2014as they drive across the Iranian countryside. Rather than relyon an episodic structure built around external encounters, Panahi keeps the focus on thepsychological dynamics inside the car and at various stops along the way. The result is a film thatgradually builds emotional momentum as it reveals the furtive purpose for their journey, and swingsfrom comedy to tragedy en route with dexterity and force.<\/p>\n In Front of Your Face,<\/strong> Hong Sangsoo, 2021, South Korea, 85m Korean with English subtitles NorthAmerican Premiere After years of living abroad, a middle-aged former actress (Lee Hye-young) hasreturned to South Korea to reconnect with her past and perhaps make amends. Over the course of one \u00centregalde,<\/strong> Radu Muntean, 2021, Romania, 104m Romanian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere In a gripping tale of best intentions gone wrong, leading Romanian filmmaker Radu Muntean (Tuesday, After Christmas, NYFF48) follows a trio of well-meaning aid workers from Bucharest on a food delivery Guided off the beaten path by an elderly villager looking for a local sawmill, they find themselves trapped in an unfamiliar, dangerous place and facing the outer limits of their goodwill for each other and for strangers. An inquiry into the contemporary humanitarian impulse that moves like a suspense thriller\u2014but which never quite goes where you expect it to\u2014Muntean\u2019s film knowingly plays off and subverts conventions of both horror films and social realist drama.<\/p>\n Introduction,<\/strong> Hong Sangsoo, 2021, South Korea, 66m Korean with English subtitles North American Premiere In the steady yet playful hands of Hong Sangsoo, even the simplest premise can become a puzzle box of unpredictable, poignant human behavior.<\/p>\n There could be no better example of his casual mastery than this breezy yet complexly structured study of a group of characters\u2014most crucially parents and their grown offspring\u2014trying to relate to one another via a series of thwarted orstunted meetings and introductions, centered around a young man (Shin Seok-ho) on the cusp ofadulthood, confused about his romantic relationships and professional goals. It\u2019s a film that keepsopening up to the viewer through digressions and reversals, leading to one of Hong\u2019s most amusinglyunsettling soju-soaked outbursts. A Cinema Guild release.<\/p>\n Memoria,<\/strong> Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2021, Colombia\/Thailand\/UK\/France\/Germany\/Mexico\/Qatar, 136mEnglish and Spanish with English subtitles U.S. Premiere Collective and personal ghosts hover overevery frame of Memoria, somehow the grandest yet most becalmed of Apichatpong Weerasethakul\u2019s works.<\/p>\n Inspired by the Thai director\u2019s own memories and those of people he encountered while travelingacross Colombia, the film follows Jessica (a wholly immersed Tilda Swinton), an expat botanistvisiting her hospitalized sister in Bogot\u00e1; while there, she becomes ever more disturbed by anabyssal sound that haunts her sleepless nights and bleary-eyed days, compelling her to seek help inidentifying its origins.<\/p>\n Thus begins a personal journey that\u2019s also historical excavation, in a filmof profound serenity that, like Jessica\u2019s sound, lodges itself in the viewer\u2019s brain as it traversescity and country, climaxing in an extraordinary extended encounter with a rural farmer that existson a precipice between life and death. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. ANEON release.<\/p>\n Neptune Frost,<\/strong> Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, 2021, USA\/Rwanda, 105m U.S. PremiereMulti-hyphenate, multidisciplinary artist Saul Williams brings his unique dynamism to thisAfrofuturist vision, a sci-fi punk musical that\u2019s a visually wondrous amalgamation of themes, ideas, and songs that Williams has explored in his work, notably his 2016 album MartyrLoserKing.<\/p>\n Co-directed with his partner, the Rwandan-born artist Anisia Uzeyman, the film takes place amidstthe hilltops of Burundi, where a collective of computer hackers emerges from within a coltan miningcommunity, a result of the romance between a miner and an intersex runaway. Set between states ofbeing\u2014past and present, dream and waking life, colonized and free, male and female, memory andprescience\u2014Neptune Frost is an invigorating and empowering direct download to the cerebral cortex and a call to reclaim technology for progressive political ends.<\/p>\n Passing,<\/strong> Rebecca Hall, 2021, USA, 98m A cornerstone work of Harlem Renaissance literature, Nella Larsen\u2019s 1929 novel Passing is adapted to the screen with exquisite craft and skill by writer-director Rebecca Hall, who envelops the viewer in a bygone period that remains tragically present.<\/p>\n The film\u2019s extraordinary anchors are Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, meticulous as middle-class Irene and Clare, reacquainted childhood friends whose lives have taken divergent paths. Clare has decided to \u201cpass\u201d as white to maintain her social standing, even hiding her identity from her racist white husband, John (Alexander Skarsg\u00e5rd); Irene, on the other hand, is married to a prominent Black doctor, Brian (Andr\u00e9 Holland), who is initially horrified at Clare\u2019s choices.<\/p>\n As the film progresses, and resentments and latent attractions bristle, Hall creates an increasingly claustrophobic world both constructed and destabilized by racism, identity performance, and sexual frustration, leading to a shocking conclusion. A Netflix release.<\/p>\n Petite Maman,<\/strong> C\u00e9line Sciamma, 2021, France, 72m French with English subtitles Following such singular inquiries into gender as Tomboy, Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire (NYFF57), C\u00e9line Sciamma proves again that she\u2019s among the most accomplished and unpredictable of all contemporary French filmmakers with the gentle yet richly emotional time-bender Petite Maman.<\/p>\n Following the death of her grandmother, 8-year-old Nelly (Jos\u00e9phine Sanz) accompanies her parents to her mother\u2019s childhood home to begin the difficult process of sorting and removing its cherished objects. While exploring the nearby woods, Nelly encounters a neighbor her own age, with whom she finds she has a remarkable amount in common. Sciamma\u2019s scrupulously constructed jewel uses the most delicate of touches to palpate profound ideas about grief, memory, and the past. A NEON release.<\/p>\n Prayers for the Stolen,<\/strong> Tatiana Huezo, 2021, Mexico\/Germany\/Brazil\/Qatar, 110m Spanish with English subtitles In a mountainous town in rural Mexico, young Ana lives with her mother, who works in the poppy fields harvesting opium.<\/p>\n The region offers natural splendor and small pleasures for Ana and her two best friends, Maria and Paula, yet the area\u2019s inhabitants are gripped by a fear that is for now incomprehensible to the girls: drug cartels rule the countryside, and they regularly kidnap teenage girls for trafficking, leaving their families bereft of hope or closure.<\/p>\n In her delicately wrought yet devastating first fiction feature, adapted from the 2014 novel by Jennifer Clement, Tatiana Huezo charts Ana\u2019s growth from childhood to adolescence, steeping viewers in both the lyrical beauty of youth and the creeping terror of adult reality. Huezo\u2019s film features an The Souvenir Part II,<\/strong> Joanna Hogg, 2021, UK, 108m North American Premiere Grieving and depleted from the tragic end of a relationship with a boyfriend who had suffered from drug addiction, young Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) summons the emotional and creative fortitude to forge ahead as a film student in 1980s London. Continuing the remarkable autobiographical saga she had begun in 2019\u2019s The Souvenir, British director Joanna Hogg (a filmmaker of unceasing visual ingenuity and sociological specificity) fashions a gently meta-cinematic mirror image of part one, cutting to the quick in one surprising, enthralling idea after another.<\/p>\n A film about finding one\u2019s artistic inspiration and individuality that avoids every possible clich\u00e9, The Souvenir Part II is a bold conclusion to this Titane,<\/strong> Julia Ducournau, 2021, France, 148m French with English subtitles U.S. Premiere The winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival\u2019s prestigious Palme d\u2019Or, Titane is a thrillingly confident vision from Julia Ducournau that deposits the viewer directly into its director\u2019s headspace. Moving with However, once Alexia goes into hiding from the police, and is taken in by a grief-stricken firefighter (Vincent Lindon), Ducournau reveals her deployment of genre tropes to be as fluid and destabilizing as her mercurial main character. A feverish, violent, and frequently jaw-dropping ride, Titane nevertheless exposes the beating, fragile heart at its center as it questions our assumptions about gender, family, and love itself. A NEON release.<\/p>\n Unclenching the Fists,<\/strong> Kira Kovalenko, 2021, Russia, 97m Ossetian with English subtitles In a former mining town in North Ossetia, located in the Caucasus region of Southern Russia, Ada (Milana Aguzarova), a young woman infantilized by her family, chafes at the bonds of her suffocating home Her liberated older brother\u2019s return and their father\u2019s sudden illness point the way toward possible escape. A thrilling new talent, and a former student of the great filmmaker Alexander Sokurov, Kira Kovalenko won the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes for this vivid, concentrated rendering of one woman\u2019s desperate, almost bestial need for survival. A MUBI release.<\/p>\n The Velvet Underground,<\/strong> Todd Haynes, 2021, USA, 120m Given the ingeniously imagined musical worlds of Velvet Goldmine and I\u2019m Not There, it should come as no surprise that Todd Haynes\u2019s documentary about the seminal band The Velvet Underground mirrors its members\u2019 experimentation and formal Combining contemporary interviews and archival documentation with newscasts, advertisements, and a trove of avant-garde film from the era, Haynes constructs a vibrant cinematic collage that is as much about New York of the \u201960s and \u201970s as it is about the rise and fall of the group that has been called as influential as the Beatles.<\/p>\n Filmed with the cooperation of surviving band members, this multifaceted portrait folds in an array of participants in the creative scene\u2019s cultures and subcultures. Tracing influences and affinities both personal and artistic, Haynes unearths rich detail about Andy Warhol, The Factory, Nico, and others, adding vivid context and texture that never diminish the ultimate enigma of the band\u2019s power. An Apple release.<\/p>\n Vortex,<\/strong> Gaspar No\u00e9, 2021, France, 142m French with English subtitles Those accustomed to the boundary-pushing cinema of Gaspar No\u00e9 may take his latest film as his biggest shocker of all. Finding new depths of tenderness without forgoing the uncompromising fatalism that defines his work, Using a split-screen effect, No\u00e9 follows them around their cramped apartment, piled high with a lifetime of books and mementos, with two cameras\u2014a bold What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?,<\/strong> Alexandre Koberidze, 2021, Georgia\/Germany, 150m Georgian with English subtitles North American Premiere Among contemporary cinema\u2019s most exciting and distinctive new voices, Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze has created an intimate city symphony like no other with his latest film.<\/p>\n Beginning as an off-kilter romance in which footballer Giorgi and pharmacist Lisa are brought together on the streets of Kutaisi by chance, only to have their dreams complicated when they become victims of an age-old curse, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? continues to radically and pleasurably shape-shift. Ultimately it becomes a lovely portrait of an entire urban landscape and the preoccupations\u2014and World Cup obsessions\u2014of the people who live there. Koberidze has made an idiosyncratic epic out of passing glances that feels as free and fulsome as a fairy tale. A MUBI release.<\/p>\n Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy,<\/strong> Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi, 2021, Japan, 121m Japanese with English subtitles U.S. Premiere In this altogether delightful triptych of stories, Ry\u00fbsuke Hamaguchi (director of Asako I & II, NYFF56; and Drive My Car, playing in this year\u2019s festival) again proves he\u2019s one of contemporary cinema\u2019s most agile dramatists of modern love and obsession.<\/p>\n Whether charting the surprise revelation of a blossoming love triangle, a young couple\u2019s revenge plot against an older teacher gone awry, or a case of mistaken romantic identity, Hamaguchi details the sudden reversals, power shifts, and role-playing that define relationships new and old. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is both ironic and tender, a lively and intricately woven work of imagination that questions whether fate or our own vanities decide our destinies. A Film Movement release.<\/p>\n The Worst Person in the World,<\/strong> Joachim Trier, 2021, Norway, 121m Norwegian with English subtitles U.S. Premiere. As proven in such exacting stories of lives on the edge as Reprise and Oslo, August 31, Norwegian director Joachim Trier is singularly adept at giving an invigorating modern twist to After dropping out of pre-med, Julie must find new professional and romantic avenues as she navigates her twenties, juggling emotionally heavy relationships with two very different men (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie and engaging newcomer Herbert Nordrum). Fluidly told in 12 discrete chapters, Trier\u2019s film elegantly depicts the precarity of identity and the mutability of happiness in our runaway contemporary world. A NEON release.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nLittle Cat was one of the most striking and original debut features of recent years. Their latest charts a few days in the lives of two young people on the verge of change: Lisa (Liliane Amuat), who is in the process of moving into a new apartment, and her current roommate, Mara (Henriette
\nConfurius), who\u2019s staying behind.<\/p>\n
\nmoving comic drama.<\/p>\n
\nday in Seoul, via various encounters\u2014including with her younger sister; a shopkeeper who lives inher converted childhood home; and, finally, a well-known film director with whom she would like tomake a comeback\u2014we discover her resentments and regrets, her financial difficulties, and the bigsecret that\u2019s keeping her aloof from the world. Both beguiling and oddly cleansing in its mix of thespiritual and the cynical, In Front of Your Face finds the endlessly prolific Hong Sangsoo in aparticularly contemplative mood; it\u2019s a film that somehow finds that life is at once full of grace
\nand a sick joke. A Cinema Guild release.<\/p>\n
\nmission to the rural hinterlands of the \u00centregalde area of Transylvania.<\/p>\n
\nextraordinary cast of young actors and intimate camerawork by Dariela Ludlow, breathing naturalism into a world of desperation and despair. A Netflix release.<\/p>\n
\nstory of unsentimental education, told with the filmmaker\u2019s inimitable oblique poignancy, and featuring a mesmerizing supporting cast including Tilda Swinton, Harris Dickinson, Ariane Labed, Joe Alwyn, and a scene-stealing Richard Ayoade. An A24 release.<\/p>\n
\nthe logic of a dream\u2014and often the force of a nightmare\u2014the film begins as a kind of horror movie, with a series of shocking events perpetrated by Alexia (Agathe Rouselle, in a dynamic and daring breakthrough), a dancer with a titanium plate in her skull following a childhood car accident.<\/p>\n
\nlife. Traumatized both physically and emotionally by past events, Ada is kept in a state of near-servitude by her controlling father, while her obsessive younger brother leaves her with little breathing room.<\/p>\n
\ninnovation.<\/p>\n
\nNo\u00e9 guides us through a handful of dark days in the lives of an elderly couple in Paris: a retired psychiatrist (Fran\u00e7oise Lebrun) and a writer (Dario Argento) working on a book about the intersection of cinema and dreams.<\/p>\n
\naesthetic choice that both unites and isolates them. No\u00e9 leads the viewer into another downward spiral, but led by the astonishing performances of Lebrun, Argento, and Alex Lutz as their troubled grown son, he has created his most fragile and humane film yet.<\/p>\n
\nspellbinding protagonist yet: Julie, played by Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve, who\u2019s the magnetic center of nearly every scene.<\/p>\n
\n