New York Film Festival (NYFF) has announced its 2020 lineup. Slated to take place September 17-October 11, the fest follows on the heels of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). While TIFF’s feature lineup is 46 percent women-directed, just six of the 25 titles that comprise NYFF’s Main Slate are helmed by women, amounting to 24 percent of the program. Last year, women directed 21 percent of the fest’s Main Slate.
“Nomadland,” which is screening simultaneously at TIFF and Venice, will serve as NYFF’s Centerpiece. Written and directed by Chloé Zhao, the drama tells the story of a woman who repurposes an old van and begins living as a modern-day nomad. Frances McDormand stars.
Other features in the Main Slate include Song Fang’s “The Calming” and Yulene Olaizola’s “Tragic Jungle.” The former is portrait of a young director who travels around Japan, China, and Hong Kong after she experiences a break up, and the latter is set in the 1920s in a Mayan tropical rainforest and tells the story of a woman trying to escape from the white British landowner she doesn’t want to marry.
“The disorientation and uncertainty of this tough year had the effect of returning us to core principles,” said Dennis Lim, Director of Programming for NYFF. “To put it simply, the Main Slate is our collective response to one central question: which films matter to us right now? Movies are neither made nor experienced in a vacuum, and while the works in our program predate the current moment of crisis, it’s striking to me just how many of them resonate with our unsettled present, or represent a means of transcending it. It has been a joy and a privilege to work with a brilliant, tireless programming team — the newly composed selection committee and our new team of advisors — and we are truly excited for audiences to discover and discuss these films.”
Check out all of the women-directed titles screening in NYFF’s Main Slate below.
Centerpiece
Nomadland
Chloé Zhao, 2020, U.S., 108m
Frances McDormand delivers a beautiful performance of understated grace and sensitivity in this richly textured third feature from director Chloé Zhao (The Rider, NYFF55), adapted from Jessica Bruder’s acclaimed 2017 nonfiction book about itinerant older Americans. Set against the grand backdrop of the American West, Nomadland recounts a year in the life of Fern (McDormand), a stoic, stubbornly independent widow who, having spent her adult life in a now-defunct company town, repurposes an old van and sets off in search of seasonal work. Alongside McDormand, the film features deeply affecting turns from David Strathairn and a supporting cast of nonactors, all real-life “nomads” playing versions of themselves. With this road movie for our precarious times, Zhao establishes herself as one of contemporary cinema’s most clear-eyed and humane chroniclers of lives on the American margins. A Searchlight Pictures release.
Beginning
Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2020, Georgia, 125m
In her striking feature debut, Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili uses rigorous, compositionally complex frames to tell the devastating story of a persecuted family of Jehovah’s Witness missionaries from the perspective of a wife and mother. Following a shocking act of arson on the place of worship she and her husband have established in a remote village outside of Tbilisi, Yana (Ia Sukhitashvili) finds herself descending into a spiral of confusion and doubt, her suffering only exacerbated by her debased treatment at the hands of the local police. An occasionally harrowing depiction of women’s roles in both religious and secular society, Beginning announces a major new arrival on the world cinema scene.
The Calming
Song Fang, 2020, China, 93m
A film of arresting beauty and tranquility, the second feature from Song Fang—whose Memories Look at Me (NYFF50) was a work of graceful autobiography—follows a young film director as she makes her way around Japan, China, and Hong Kong after a relationship breakup: presenting her work, engaging with friends and artists, and dealing with the realities of aging parents. Amidst all of this, Lin (an effortlessly inquisitive Qi Xi) takes in both lush nature and imposing cityscapes, a woman both alone and constantly engaged in the ever-shifting environment around her. Song’s film refuses to impose psychological motivation on Lin’s perambulations or her art, instead allowing the viewer to experience the world’s disappointments and felicities along with her, and perhaps bear witness to creative rejuvenation.
I Carry You With Me (Te llevo conmigo)
Heidi Ewing, 2020, U.S./Mexico, 111m
Among the most emotionally resonant and innovatively conceived cinematic love stories in years, I Carry You With Me (Te llevo conmigo) charts the burgeoning romance between Iván (Armando Espitia), a semi-closeted young father and restaurant worker, and Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), a high school teacher who has come to terms more fully with his sexuality. When Iván makes the decision to leave Mexico and find new life and work opportunities across the U.S. border, the two men must make difficult decisions about their future. In her narrative feature debut, Heidi Ewing (Oscar-nominated for Jesus Camp) unexpectedly and brilliantly incorporates documentary elements into a beguiling, humane tale in which everyday struggle is inextricable from transcendent romance. A Sony Pictures Classics release.
Time
Garrett Bradley, 2020, U.S., 81m
The tireless 21-year campaign of Louisiana woman Fox Rich to secure her husband’s release from prison after he received a 60-year sentence for robbery becomes a work of nonfiction cinematic alchemy in the hands of filmmaker Garrett Bradley. She has made a film composed of both newly shot material and archival footage from decades of home movies that Rich recorded to document her days, months, years of waiting. Delicate yet forceful, it’s an exquisitely stitched-together narrative of the strength and resilience of one mother of six that also functions as a personal perspective on the crisis of Black mass incarceration in America. Featuring evocative black-and-white cinematography that creates a sense of timelessness even as we feel time passing inexorably, Bradley’s film is a rarity: a work of both aesthetic nerve and social import. An Amazon Studios release.
Tragic Jungle
Yulene Olaizola, 2020, Mexico, 96m
In her accomplished fifth feature, Mexican filmmaker Yulene Olaizola immerses the viewer in a richly drawn, tactile experience that works as both a gripping adventure and a contemplative rumination on the brutality and splendor of nature. Set in the 1920s in the deep thickets of a Mayan tropical rainforest along the Rio Hondo—then the border between Mexico and British Honduras, now Belize—Tragic Jungle follows Agnes (Indira Andrewin), a young woman trying desperately to escape with her sister from the white British landowner she doesn’t want to marry. With the man armed and on her trail, she barely gets away, and is discovered by a troupe of chicleros—gum tree workers—who become both her rescuers and captors. Vibrantly shot by cinematographer Sofia Oggioni, Olaizola’s film becomes an entirely unexpected story of myth and superstition, in which the jungle itself seems like a living being, taking natural revenge on the men whose petty inhumanities bloody its trunks and vines.
