The New York Film Festival announced its main slate Wednesday, unveiling 32 films for its 64th edition running Sept. 25 to Oct. 12. Film at Lincoln Center's selection includes works from James Gray, Ava DuVernay, and Tony Gilroy, signaling another ambitious fall season for one of America's premier cinema showcases.
James Gray's Paper Tiger, a Queens-set crime drama starring Adam Driver and Miles Teller, will open the festival. The selection marks a return to New York settings for Gray, whose gritty urban dramas have long anchored serious American filmmaking. Gilroy's Behemoth!, featuring Pedro Pascal as a cellist, will serve as the centerpiece gala and receive its world premiere in New York.
Documentary Bookends and International Heavyweights
DuVernay's 14th will close the festival with its world premiere. The documentary examines the 14th Amendment and functions as a sequel to her earlier work 13th. The choice reflects the festival's ongoing commitment to politically engaged nonfiction filmmaking.
The international lineup includes Pedro Almodovar's Bitter Christmas, Ryusuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden, Andrew Haigh's A Long Winter, Radu Jude's The Diary of a Chambermaid, Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love, Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care, Pawel Pawlikowski's Fatherland, and Ira Sachs' The Man I Love. These directors represent established voices in world cinema, suggesting a program built around proven auteurs rather than emerging unknowns.
American Voices and Russian Dissent
Other selections include Chris Rock's Misty Green, which will first premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival before arriving in New York. William and David Greaves' documentary Once Upon a Time in Harlem also made the cut, alongside Julia Loktev's My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile, the continuation of her documentary on modern-day dissent in Russia. Loktev's work addresses the ongoing crackdown on political opposition in Russia, a subject that's gained urgency as authoritarian governance tightens across multiple regions.
Dennis Lim, the festival's artistic director, framed the selections as a mirror to current global tensions. "It's hard to recall a prior main slate program in which the state of the world has been as urgently reflected in so many creative ways," he said in a statement. "You could take any cross section of this lineup and come away with a vivid picture of what our present looks, sounds, and feels like. I'm deeply encouraged to be able to introduce New York audiences to works by so many fearless, imaginative directors whose artistry has been inspired by the shared realities of our world."
Godzilla Returns
On Tuesday, the festival announced that Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero, his sequel to 2023's Godzilla Minus One, will make its world premiere at the NYFF on Sept. 26. The inclusion of a major franchise film alongside art-house fare reflects the festival's willingness to blur traditional programming boundaries. Godzilla Minus One, released 3 years ago, became a critical and commercial success, proving that genre filmmaking can carry thematic weight.
Why This Matters:
The New York Film Festival's lineup serves as an early indicator of which films will dominate year-end awards conversations and shape critical discourse heading into Oscar season. The festival's emphasis on established international auteurs alongside politically engaged documentaries reflects broader trends in prestige cinema — a turn toward explicitly topical work addressing democratic backsliding, constitutional questions, and geopolitical fractures. The inclusion of Godzilla Minus Zero demonstrates that even elite cultural institutions recognize the commercial and artistic vitality of genre filmmaking when executed with craft and ambition. For filmmakers, distributors, and audiences, the NYFF slate functions as a curated snapshot of what serious cinema looks like in 2026 — and what stories the industry believes deserve sustained attention as global instability reshapes cultural production.