Films by Sean Baker, Mike Leigh, David Cronenberg Among Main Slate Selections for 62nd New York Film Festival

They will be joined by works from Paul Schrader, Mati Diop, Payal Kapadia and many others

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Thirty-three films will make up the Main Slate of the 62nd New York Film Festival, including the latest from David Cronenberg, Sean Baker, Payal Kapadia, Mike Leigh, Mati Diop, Hong Sang-soo and Julia Loktev. The festival will take place Sept. 27 — Oct. 14, 2024.

“The festival’s ambition is to reflect the state of cinema in a given year, which often means also reflecting the state of the world,” the festival’s artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement. “The most notable thing about the films in the Main Slate — and in the other sections that we will announce in the coming weeks— is the degree to which they emphasize cinema’s relationship to reality. They are reminders that, in the hands of its most vital practitioners, film has the capacity to reckon with, intervene in, and reimagine the world.”

The movies in this year’s Main Slate come from 24 different countries. Several of them are prizewinners from the Cannes film festival, like Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning “Anora.” There is also Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light” (Grand Prize), Miguel Gomes’s “Grand Tour” (Best Director), Roberto Minervini’s “The Damned” (Best Director, Un Certain Regard, shared with Rungano Nyoni), Rungano Nyoni’s “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” (Best Director, Un Certain Regard, shared with Roberto Minervini) and Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” (Special Prize).

Berlinale Golden Bear winner “Dahomey” from Mati Diop is also on the lineup, alongside Hong Sang-soo’s “A Traveler’s Needs” (Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize), “No Other Land,” directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor (Panorama Audience Award and the Berlinale Documentary Award) and Philippe Lesage’s “Who by Fire” (Grand Prize of the Generation).

Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds,” Leigh’s “Hard Truths” and Schrader’s “Oh, Canada” are among the Main Slate films from NYFF veterans. Another returning filmmaker is Wang Bing, whose final chapters in his “Youth” trilogy — “Youth (Hard Times)” and “Youth (Homecoming)” — will both screen at the 62nd festival, following the U.S. premiere of “Youth (Spring)” at the 61st festival. Similarly, Sang-soo will show two films. In addition to “A Traveler’s Needs,” he will bring “By the Stream.”

On the nonfiction front, Robinson Devor’s “Suburban Fury,” about Sara Jane Moore, who tried to assassinate President Gerald Ford, and Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” about independent journalism in Putin’s Russia, will have their world premieres.

These films join the previously announced Opening Night selection, RaMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys“; Pedro Almodóvar’s Centerpiece, “The Room Next Door“; and Steve McQueen’s Closing Night selection, “Blitz.”

The full list of the 62nd New York Film Festival Main Slate:

Opening Night
“Nickel Boys”
Dir. RaMell Ross

Centerpiece
“The Room Next Door”
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar

Closing Night
“Blitz”
Dir. Steve McQueen

“All We Imagine as Light”
Dir. Payal Kapadia

“Anora”
Dir. Sean Baker

“April”
Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili

“The Brutalist”
Dir. Brady Corbet

“By the Stream”
Dir. Hong Sangsoo

“Caught by the Tides”
Dir. Jia Zhangke

“Dahomey”
Dir. Mati Diop

“The Damned”
Dir. Roberto Minervini

“Eephus”
Dir. Carson Lund

“Grand Tour”
Dir. Miguel Gomes

“Happyend”
Dir. Neo Sora

“Hard Truths”
Dir. Mike Leigh

“Harvest”
Dir. Athina Rachel Tsangari

“Misericordia”
Dir. Alain Guiraudie

“My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow”
Dir. Julia Loktev

“No Other Land”
Dir. Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor

“Oh, Canada”
Dir. Paul Schrader

“On Becoming a Guinea Fowl”
Dir. Rungano Nyoni

“Pepe”
Dir. Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias

“The Seed of the Sacred Fig”
Dir. Mohammad Rasoulof

“The Shrouds”
Dir. David Cronenberg

“Stranger Eyes”
Dir. Yeo Siew Hua

“Suburban Fury”
Dir. Robinson Devor

“Transamazonia”
Dir. Pia Marais

“A Traveler’s Needs”
Dir. Hong Sangsoo

“​​Việt and Nam”
Dir. Trương Minh Quý

“Who by Fire”
Dir. Philippe Lesage

“Youth (Hard Times)”
Dir. Wang Bing

“Youth (Homecoming)”
Dir. Wang Bing

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