Film at Lincoln Center (FLC) has unveiled the Main Slate for the 57th New York Film Festival (NYFF). Twenty-nine films will screen in the section, and six of them are directed by women, or about 21 percent. While that’s definitely not parity, it is a significant improvement on last year’s 13 percent.
Three of the women-helmed Main Slate films previously played at Cannes: Mati Diop’s “Atlantics,” Céline Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” and Justine Triet’s “Sibyl.”
“Atlantics,” which took home Cannes’ Grand Prix, is about a young woman who still feels the presence of her lover after he disappears. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” won Cannes’ inaugural Queer Palm as well as the Best Screenplay Award. The drama about the relationship between a female painter and the reluctant bride she’s commissioned to paint hits U.S. theaters December 6. “Sibyl” centers on a psychotherapist who decides to pursue her love of writing.
Berlinale award-winner “I Was at Home, But…” is also featured in NYFF 2019’s Main Slate. From Angela Schanelec, the existential drama traces the aftermath of a 13-year-old’s disappearance and sudden return.
Another Berlinale 2019 title, “Varda by Agnès,” will screen as well. For her final film, acclaimed director Agnès Varda turns the camera on herself and her work.
Finally, Kelly Reichardt’s latest, “First Cow,” will be part of the Main Slate. Set in the early 19th century, the pic sees a cook bonding, and going into business, with a Chinese immigrant in Oregon Territory.
“Cinema is the domain of freedom, and it’s an ongoing struggle to maintain that freedom,” said Kent Jones, NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair. “It’s getting harder and harder for anyone to make films of real ambition anywhere in this world. Each and every movie in this lineup, big or small, whether it’s made in Italy or Senegal or New York City, is the result of artists behind the camera fighting on multiple fronts to realize a vision and create something new in the world,” he declared.
NYFF 2019 will run September 27-October 13.
Synopses for the women-directed Main Slate films are below, courtesy of FLC.
Atlantics
Dir. Mati Diop, France/Senegal/Belgium, 105m
U.S. Premiere
Building on the promise—and then some—of her acclaimed shorts, Mati Diop has fashioned an extraordinary drama that skirts the line between realism and fantasy, romance and horror, and which, in its crystalline empathy, humanity, and political outrage, confirms the arrival of a major talent. Set in Senegal, the birth country of her legendary director uncle, Djibril Diop Mambéty, the film initially follows the blossoming love between young construction worker Souleiman (Ibrahima Traoré), who’s being exploited by his rich boss, and Ada (Mama Sané), about to enter into an unwanted arranged marriage with a wealthier man. Souleiman and his fed-up coworkers soon disappear during an attempt to migrate to Spain in a pirogue, yet somehow his presence is still quite literally felt in Dakar. Transmuting a global crisis into a ghostly tale of possession, the gripping, hallucinatory Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story was the winner of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A Netflix release.
First Cow
Dir. Kelly Reichardt, U.S., 121m
Kelly Reichardt once again trains her perceptive and patient eye on the Pacific Northwest, this time evoking an authentically hardscrabble early 19th-century way of life. A taciturn loner and skilled cook (John Magaro) has traveled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon Territory, though he only finds true connection with a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee) also seeking his fortune; soon the two collaborate on a successful business, although its longevity is reliant upon the clandestine participation of a nearby wealthy landowner’s prized milking cow. From this simple premise Reichardt constructs an interrogation of foundational Americana that recalls her earlier triumph Old Joy in its sensitive depiction of male friendship, yet is driven by a mounting suspense all its own. Reichardt shows her distinct talent for depicting the peculiar rhythms of daily living and ability to capture the immense, unsettling quietude of rural America. An A24 release.
I Was at Home, But…
Dir. Angela Schanelec, Germany, 105m
U.S. Premiere
Though she’s been an essential voice in contemporary German cinema since the ’90s, Angela Schanelec is poised to find wider international audiences with I Was at Home, But…, which won her the Best Director prize at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. An elliptical yet emotionally lucid variation on the domestic drama, her latest film intricately navigates the psychological contours of a Berlin family in crisis: Astrid—played with barely concealed fury by Maren Eggert—is trying to hold herself and her fragile teenage son and young daughter together following the death of their father two years earlier. Yet as in all her films, Schanelec develops her story and characters in highly unexpected ways, shooting in exquisite, fragmented tableaux and leaving much to the viewer’s imagination, hinting at a spiritual grace lurking beneath the unsettled surface of every scene. A Cinema Guild release.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Dir. Céline Sciamma, France, 121m
On the cusp of the 19th century, young painter Marianne travels to a rugged, rocky island off the coast of Brittany. Here, she has been commissioned to create a wedding portrait of the wealthy yet free-spirited Héloise, whose hand in marriage has been promised to a man she’s never met. Resentful of the forced union, Héloise at first refuses to be painted, yet a growing bond—at first emotional and then erotic—develops between the women, exquisitely etched by Noémie Merlant as the artist and Adèle Haenel as her initially reluctant muse. With a visual precision as delicate as that of Merlant’s Marianne—whose patient acts of creation are lovingly dwelt upon—Céline Sciamma classically builds her double portrait from tentative romance to melodramatic rapture to a quietly devastating ending, all while subverting the traditional story of an artist and “his” muse. Winner of the Best Screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. A NEON release.
Sibyl
Dir. Justine Triet, France/Belgium, 100m
U.S. Premiere
Past and present collide in an increasingly complicated and highly entertaining fashion in Justine Triet’s intricate study of the professional and personal masks we wear as we perform our daily lives. Psychotherapist Sybil (Virginie Efira) abruptly decides to leave her practice to restart her writing career—only to find herself increasingly embroiled in the life of a desperate new patient: Margot (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a movie star dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic affair with her costar, Igor (Gaspard Ulliel), while trying to finish a film shoot under the watchful eye of a demanding director (Toni Erdmann’s Sandra Hüller, splendidly high-strung), who happens to be Igor’s wife. Sybil, negotiating her own past demons, makes the fateful decision to use Margot’s experiences as inspiration for her book, as boundaries of propriety fall one after another. As she proved in her previous film In Bed with Victoria, which also starred the magnificently expressive Efira, Triet is a master at creating heroines of intense complexity, and of maintaining a tricky balance between volatile drama and sly comedy.
Varda by Agnès
Dir. Agnès Varda, France, 115m
When Agnès Varda died earlier this year at age 90, the world lost one of its most inspirational cinematic radicals. From her neorealist-tinged 1954 feature debut La Pointe Courte to her New Wave treasures Cléo from 5 to 7and Le Bonheur to her inquiries into those on society’s outskirts likeVagabond (NYFF23), The Gleaners and I (NYFF38), and the 2017 Oscar nominee Faces Places (NYFF55), she made enduring films that were both forthrightly political and gratifyingly mercurial, and which toggled between fiction and documentary decades before it was more commonplace in art cinema. In what would be her final work, partially constructed of onstage interviews and lectures, interspersed with a wealth of clips and archival footage, Varda guides us through her career, from her movies to her remarkable still photography to the delightful and creative installation work. It’s a fitting farewell to a filmmaker, told in her own words. A Janus Films release.
