New York Film Festival Director on Curating the 2024 Slate and Why He Doesn’t Prioritize World Premieres

Like many of the fall film festivals, New York Film Festival had to mount its 2023 edition during the actors strike and without major stars like Emma Stone (“Poor Things”), Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore (“May December”) or Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal (“All of Us Strangers”) in attendance to promote their movies.

So, NYFF’s artistic director Dennis Lim is relieved the annual celebration of cinema is returning in 2024 with business as usual. This year’s fest runs from Sept. 27 through Oct. 14. “We are very happy to not have to work around those restrictions this year,” he says. “And we have many, many actors attending for some of the bigger films.”

He’s referring to movies like director Pedro Almodóvar‘s “The Room Next Door,” starring Moore and Tilda Swinton; filmmaker Sean Baker for Palme d’Or-winner “Anora”; Steve McQueen’s historical drama “Blitz,” featuring Saoirse Ronan; Pablo Larraín’s biopic of sorts “Maria” with Angelina Jolie; and Luca Guadagnino’s romance drama “Queer,” starring Daniel Craig. Also on this year’s slate is David Cronenberg’s sci-fi thriller “The Shrouds,” Alain Guiraudie’s dark comedy “Misericordia,” Mike Leigh’s slice-of-life “Hard Truths,” Paul Schrader’s elegiac drama “Oh, Canada” and Brady Corbet’s historical epic “The Brutalist.”

Lim’s ambition in curating the film festival lineup — his selection committee for the main slate includes Film at Lincoln Center’s programmer Florence Almozini, New Yorker critic Justin Chang, film critic K. Austin Collins and film programmer Rachel Rosen — is attempting to “sum up the year in cinema.” His team also strives for the films and filmmakers to represent a mix of geographic backgrounds, genders, and artistic styles.

“There’s no thematic agenda. We’re not trying to cover certain themes. But once the lineup comes together, we realize films that are in conversation with one another,” Lim says. “What was clear to us this year is that cinema reflects the state of the world. So, we’re indirectly putting together a picture of the state of the world, which is not terribly cheerful these days, given wars and conflicts and anxieties.”

Several of the movies slated for Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, where many of NYFF’s screenings take place, will have already played at other fall film festivals before making their way to New York. “Because we try to sum up the year, premieres are not the determining factor for us,” Lim says. “We take films from Cannes, Venice, Berlin and Sundance. In order to reflect what’s exciting, relevant or vital about film today, we have to survey the entire year.”

NYFF will, however, host two world premieres. One is director Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow,” a non-fiction portrait of independent journalists in Putin’s Russia during the lead up to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The other is Robinson Devor’s “Suburban Fury,” a documentary about Sara Jane Moore, who attempted to assassinate president Gerald Ford in 1975. The latter is unintentionally timely given that former president Donald Trump was recently the target of an assassination attempt while he was speaking at a rally this summer in Pennsylvania, as well as a separate incident at a Florida golf course — though that’s not why the film was added to this year’s schedule.

“It’s fascinating to see how ‘Suburban Fury’ handles this really tricky, complicated, difficult subject,” Lim says. “We saw the film before the recent assassination attempt on Trump, which has been in the news the last couple of months. We saw the film in spring or early summer and it already felt like the film resonated with the times, where political violence is very much a threat.”

“Nickle Boys,” a historical drama directed by RaMell Ross and adapted from Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about two Black teenagers who become wards of a barbaric juvenile reformatory in Jim Crow-era Florida, will open the festival on Friday. It’s a coveted slot that’s been filled in previous years by Todd Haynes’ “May December,” Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Steve McQueen’s “Lovers Rock,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite.”

“The opening night film sets the tone,” says Lim. “We could have gone with any number of films. But this was something we were blown away by. RaMell Ross is interested in how we see the world and expanding the possibilities of the visual of the language of cinema.”

During the festival, Lim can often be spotted in the balcony of Alice Tully Hall, which has roughly 1,000 seats. It’s a vantage point that allows him to get a sense of how the film is playing to crowds. There, he’s often reminded that cinema is a big screen, communal experience.

“There were a few moments last year, ‘Zone of Interest’ was one of them, where I was standing there and getting a sense of how absorbed the audience is in a film. It’s not visible or audible, but you can feel it,” he says. “For us, the programming is done but the work only comes alive when we’re actually in the rooms with the audience and filmmakers.”