With Cannes, Venice, and the Toronto Film Festival behind us, it’s time to focus our attention to The New York Film Festival (NYFF), North America’s second oldest film festival (after the Columbus International Film & Video Festival, also known as The Chris Awards (1953). Founded 10 years later NYFF marks its 51st edition, from Sept. 27th to Oct. 13th.

Last year some of the NYFF highlights included Amour, The Bay, Flight, Frances Ha, Holy Motors, Hyde Park on Hudson, Life of Pi, Not Fade Away, The Paperboy, and Passion, plus of course Lincoln as the Secret Screening. If you thought this was an amazing line up wait until you see what’s in this year’s line up, plus there are rumors about Martin Scorsese‘s The Wolf of Wall Street being this year’s secret screening. Oh, la, la!

NYFF’s main slate has 35 films with a strong contingent of head turners, international titles, comedies and one animation. Here is our list of 15 exciting films to see at NY Film Festival:

Captain Phillips (Opening Night Gala Selection)

World Premiere
Friday, September 27
6:00pm 9:00pm

Director: Paul Greengrass

Country: USA


Paul Greengrass has crafted an edge-of-your-seat thriller based on the true story of the seizure of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship in 2009 by four Somali pirates, with remarkable performances from Tom Hanks and four first-time actors, Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Barkhad Abdirahman and Maher M. Ali.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (Centerpiece Gala Selection)

World Premiere
Saturday, October 05
6:00pm 9:00pm

Director: Ben Stiller

Country: USA
Ben

Stiller stars in and directs this sweet, globe-trotting (but New York-based) comic fable about an up-to-the-minute every man, co-starring Kristen Wiig as the woman of his dreams, Sean Penn as a legendary photographer and Shirley MacLaine as Walter’s mother.

Her (Closing Night Gala Selection)

World Premiere
Saturday, October 12
6:00pm 9:00pm

Director: Spike Jonze

Country: USA


In Spike Jonze’s magical, melancholy comedy of the near future, lonely Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his new all-purpose operating system (the voice of Scarlett Johansson), leading to romantic and existential complications.

All Is Lost

Tuesday, October 08
6:00pm
Thursday, October 10
9:00pm

Director: J.C. Chandor

Country: USA


Robert Redford as you’ve never seen him before, gives a near-wordless all-action performance as a lone sailor trying to keep his yacht afloat after a collision with a discarded shipping container in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

Blue Is the Warmest Color (Cannes Award Winner)

Friday, October 11
8:30pm
Sunday, October 13
8:30pm

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche

Country: France


The sensation of this year’s Cannes Film Festival is an intimate – and sexually explicit – epic of emotional transformation, featuring two astonishing performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. Please be advised that this film has scenes of a sexually explicit nature.

For Full Review: https://myetvmedia.com/film-review/blue-is-the-warmest-colour-review/

Inside Llewyn Davis

Saturday, September 28
9:15pm
Saturday, October 05
3:15pm
Friday, October 11
9:00pm

Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Country: USA


Joel and Ethan Coen’s picaresque, panoramic and wryly funny story of a singer/songwriter is set in the New York folk scene of the early 60s and features a terrific array of larger-than-life characters and a glorious score of folk standards.

Nebraska

Tuesday, October 08
9:00pm
Saturday, October 12
12:00pm

Director: Alexander Payne

Country: USA


This masterful film from Alexander Payne, about a quiet old man (Bruce Dern) whose mild-mannered son (Will Forte) agrees to drive him from Montana to Nebraska to claim a non-existent prize, shades from the comic to multiple hues of melancholy and regret.

The Wind Rises

Saturday, September 28
12:30pm
Friday, October 04
6:00pm

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Country: Japan
T

The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s new film (and last) is based on the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man who designed the Zero fighter. An elliptical historical narrative, THE WIND RISES is also a visionary cinematic poem about the fragility of humanity.

For Full review: https://myetvmedia.com/film-review/kaze-tachinu-the-wind-rises-review/

The Invisible women

Director: Ralph Fiennes

Country: UK


Ralph Fiennes directs and stars as Charles Dickens in this adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s revelatory 1992 biography, which brought the upright Victorian author’s secret 13-year affair with a young actress to light.

For Full Review: https://myetvmedia.com/film-review/the-invisible-woman-review/

Child of God

Sunday, September 29
10:15pm
Tuesday, October 01
12:00pm

Director: James Franco

Country: USA

James Franco’s uncompromising excursion into American Gothic, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s 1973 novel, about an unstable sociopath in early 60s rural Tennessee who descends into an animal-like state – not for the faint-hearted.

For Full Review: https://myetvmedia.com/film-review/child-of-god-review/

The Immigrant

Sunday, October 06
3:15pm
Wednesday, October 09
12:00pm

Director: James Gray

Country: USA


In James Gray’s richly detailed period tragedy, set in a dusty, sepia-toned 1920s Manhattan, a young Polish immigrant (Marion Cotillard) is caught in a dangerous battle of wills with a shady burlesque manager (Joaquin Phoenix).

Bastards

Sunday, October 06
9:00pm
Wednesday, October 09
3:00pm
Sunday, October 13
3:00pm

Director: Claire Denis

Country: France
Claire

Denis’s jagged, daringly fragmented and deeply unsettling film inspired by recent French sex ring scandals is the rarest of cinematic narratives, a contemporary film noir, perfect in substance as well as style.

Stray Dogs

Thursday, October 03
8:30pm
Monday, October 07
1:00pm

Director: Tsai Ming-liang

Country: Taiwan


Tsai Ming-liang’s fable of a homeless family living the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world is bracingly pure in its anger and its compassion, and as visually powerful as it is emotionally overwhelming.

Only Lovers Left Alive

Thursday, October 10
6:00pm
Saturday, October 12
3:00pm

Director: Jim Jarmusch

Country: USA


Jim Jarmusch’s wry, tender and moving take on the vampire genre features Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as a centuries-old couple who watch time go by from separate continents as they reflect on the ever-changing world around them.

For Full Review: https://myetvmedia.com/film-review/only-lovers-left-alive-review/

Real

Monday, October 07
6:00pm

Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Country:Japan

Why you should see it: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s first feature since 2008’s Tokyo Sonata, his most romantic movie yet, is a truly romantic sci-fi fable about a man that must visit and navigate the dangers of his comatose wife’s subconscious mind in order to coax her back to consciousness.

Buy tickets at NYFF: http://www.filmlinc.com/nyff2013/pages/ticketinfo

Christophe Chanel