The New York Film Festival has announced the Main Slate for its 54th edition. Only five of 25 films screening, or 20 percent, are helmed by women. Still, these numbers demonstrate that the fest is slowly but steadily increasing the number of women-directed features in its most prominent program. Last year, 12 percent of the Main Slate was women-directed, and in 2014, 10 percent. The fact that 80 percent of the program remains male-directed is disappointing, but it seems likely that next year the percentage of films helmed by women will increase yet again.
As previously announced, “The 13th,” Ava DuVernay’s doc about the American prison industry, will open the fest — the first non-fiction film to ever snag the coveted Opening Night slot. DuVernay is the fourth woman to open the fest, and the first to hold the honor in 12 years.
Other films screening in the Main Slate include Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,” a tale of intersecting stories in Montana starring Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Laura Dern, and Cannes favorite “Toni Erdmann,”
directed by Maren Ade.
Check out all of the women-directed features in the Main Slate below. Plot summaries courtesy of NYFF. The festival runs from September 30 to October 16. Tickets go on sale September 11, and passes and packages are available now.
“The 13th” (Opening Night, previously announced)
Directed by Ava DuVernay
USA, 2016
World Premiere
The title of Ava DuVernay’s extraordinary and galvanizing documentary refers to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The progression from that second qualifying clause to the horrors of mass criminalization and the sprawling American prison industry is laid out by DuVernay with bracing lucidity. With a potent mixture of archival footage and testimony from a dazzling array of activists, politicians, historians, and formerly incarcerated women and men, DuVernay creates a work of grand historical synthesis. A Netflix original documentary.
“Certain Women”
Directed by Kelly Reichardt
USA, 2016, 107m
The seventh feature by Kelly Reichardt (“Meek’s Cutoff”), a lean triptych of subtly intersecting lives in Montana, is a work of no-nonsense eloquence. Adapting short stories by Maile Meloy, “Certain Women” follows a lawyer (Laura Dern) navigating an increasingly volatile relationship with a disgruntled client; a couple (Michelle Williams and James Le Gros) in a marriage laden with micro-aggression and doubt, trying to persuade an old man (Rene Auberjonois) to sell his unused sandstone; and a young ranch hand (Lily Gladstone) fixated on a new-in-town night school teacher (Kristen Stewart). Shooting on 16mm, Reichardt creates understated, uncannily intimate dramas nestled within a clear-eyed depiction of the modern American West. An IFC Films release.
“The Rehearsal”
Directed by Alison Maclean
New Zealand, 2016, 75m
U.S. Premiere
Alison Maclean (“Jesus’ Son”) returns to her New Zealand filmmaking roots with a multilayered coming-of-age story about a young actor (James Rolleston) searching for the truth of a character he’s playing onstage and the resulting moral dilemma in his personal life. Set largely in a drama school, featuring Kerry Fox as a diva-like teacher who tries to shape her student’s raw talent, “The Rehearsal,” adapted from the novel by Eleanor Catton, demystifies actors and acting in order to reveal the moments where craft becomes art. The same happens with Maclean’s understated but penetrating filmmaking. Her concentration on the quotidian yields a finale that borders on the sublime.
“Things to Come” / “L’Avenir”
Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve
France/Germany, 2016, 100m
French with English subtitles
In the new film from Mia Hansen-Løve (“Eden”), Isabelle Huppert is Nathalie, a Parisian professor of philosophy who comes to realize that the tectonic plates of her existence are slowly but inexorably shifting: her husband (André Marcon) leaves her, her mother (Edith Scob) comes apart, her favorite former student decides to live off the grid, and her first grandchild is born. Hansen-Løve carefully builds “Things to Come” around her extraordinary star: her verve and energy, her beauty, her perpetual motion. Huppert’s remarkable performance is counterpointed by the quietly accumulating force of the action, and the result is an exquisite expression of time’s passing. A Sundance Selects release.
“Toni Erdmann”
Directed by Maren Ade
Germany, 2016, 162m
German with English subtitles
An audacious twist on the screwball comedy — here, the twosome is an aging-hippie prankster father and his corporate-ladder-climbing daughter — “Toni Erdmann” delivers art and entertainment in equal measure and charmed just about everyone who saw it at the Cannes Film Festival this year. Maren Ade’s dazzling script has just enough of a classical comedic structure to support 162 minutes of surprises big and small. Meanwhile, her direction is designed to liberate the actors as much as possible while the camera rolls, resulting in sublime performances by Sandra Hüller and Peter Simonischek, who leave the audience suspended between laughter and tears. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
