NYFF64: What the Slate Says About Film Right Now

The 64th New York Film Festival ran from Sept. 25 to Oct. 12, and its program is a useful map of where serious cinema stands in the fall of 2026. Film at Lincoln Center, which presents it, put 34 films in the Main Slate, drawn from 31 countries. Seventeen of the directors were making their Main Slate debut. The festival calls itself a celebration of the most significant international films of the year, and the list holds up as an argument for that claim.

The anchors

Opening night went to James Gray's Paper Tiger. The centerpiece was Behemoth!, from Tony Gilroy. Closing night was 14th, the new documentary from Ava DuVernay. Those three directors are American, and they hold the opening, the middle and the end of the run.

There were four world premieres: DuVernay's 14th, Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, Gilroy's Behemoth!, and Mani Haghighi's I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies. Variety also reported Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero as a world premiere in the lineup. The festival counted nine North American premieres and 12 U.S. premieres in addition.

A slate with a map in it

The list reads like an atlas. Pedro Almodóvar's Bitter Christmas is a U.S. premiere. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's All of a Sudden is a New York premiere. Hong Sangsoo has two films, The Day She Returns and Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, both North American premieres. Lee Chang-dong's Possible Love, Andrey Zvyagintsev's Minotaur, Radu Jude's The Diary of a Chambermaid, Lisandro Alonso's Double Freedom, Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland and Mike Leigh's Tender Loving Care are all there. So are Andrew Haigh's A Long Winter, Ira Sachs's The Man I Love, Alain Gomis's Dao and Chris Rock's Misty Green.

Notice the second tier of names too. Arie Esiri and Chuko Esiri's Clarissa is a New York premiere. Sompot Chidgasornpongse's 9 Temples to Heaven, Valeska Grisebach's The Dreamed Adventure, Sandra Wollner's Everytime, Nicolás Pereda's Everything Else Is Noise and Marine Atlan's La Gradiva sit beside the veterans. The programmers, led by a selection committee that Variety says was chaired by Lim and included Florence Almozini, Justin Chang and Rachel Rosen, chose by sensibility, not by marquee value.

One title stands out for its documentary weight. Once Upon a Time in Harlem, by William Greaves and David Greaves, is listed as a New York premiere. The festival's own page names it among the titles to catch now. A festival in this city that opens a slot for a Harlem film is making a small statement about where the city's film history lives.

Five boroughs, four venues

The festival did not stay at Lincoln Center. From Oct. 2 to 9 it ran screenings at BAM in Brooklyn, the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, Alamo Drafthouse in Staten Island and AMC Bay Plaza in the Bronx. A look at the schedule shows how the programmers matched film to room.

At BAM, the first Friday paired Angela Schanelec's My Wife Cries with Ted Fendt's Foreign Travel, which follows a circle of friends in Berlin who meet for a book club on the novelist Anna Maria Ortese, and with Jonathan Glazer's 38-minute documentary Joy of Joys. Saturday had Possible Love. Sunday brought Misty Green and Everything Else Is Noise, plus Bardi with a Q&A with the director Tala Hadid. On Monday What Can't Be Mentioned, preceded by Sounds From Home, came with a Q&A featuring the director Dan Sallitt and the cast members Sky Hirschkron and Kit Zauhar.

The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens took Once Upon a Time in Harlem and Rose on Oct. 4, and Tender Loving Care and Bitter Christmas on Oct. 8. On Oct. 9 it ran Behemoth! and The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Staten Island's Alamo Drafthouse had Behemoth! and Fjord on Oct. 7. The Bronx's AMC Bay Plaza showed Bucking Fastard on Oct. 6.

That distribution matters. A festival can say it belongs to the city or it can program for it. A centerpiece shown in Staten Island, a Lee Chang-dong film in Brooklyn, and a Harlem documentary in Queens are programming choices, not slogans.

What to see now

The festival is over, but the page for it keeps a running list of NYFF64 favorites opening soon at Film at Lincoln Center, with tickets on sale. The festival lists The Devils, Once Upon a Time in Harlem, Fatherland and Possible Love among its headline titles. Check the Film at Lincoln Center site for current dates before planning a trip.

For readers who missed the run, the slate still works as a reading list for the year ahead. The festival describes the slate as new work by renowned auteurs and returning NYFF filmmakers, with 17 directors making their Main Slate debut. A festival is judged by its ratio of discovery to confirmation, and 17 debutants in 34 films is a generous ratio.

The criticism is easy to state. A festival that opens with a Gray, centers a Gilroy and closes with a DuVernay is, in part, an American-studio-adjacent festival. The rest of the list answers it. Thirty-one countries is not a quota. It is the range of the world's actual output, and the programmers have trusted it.

FAQ

When did the 64th New York Film Festival take place?

Sept. 25 to Oct. 12, 2026, with additional screenings at venues in all five boroughs from Oct. 2 to 9.

What were the opening, centerpiece and closing films?

Paper Tiger by James Gray opened. Behemoth! by Tony Gilroy was the centerpiece. 14th by Ava DuVernay closed the festival.

How many films were in the Main Slate?

34, from 31 countries, according to Film at Lincoln Center. Variety's report described a 32-film slate at the time it ran.

Can I still see festival films in New York?

Film at Lincoln Center lists NYFF64 favorites opening soon. Check its site for dates.

Sources

*Cover photo: Bryan Berlin, Wikimedia Commons, *[*https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Gray_at_the_2026_New_York_Film_Festival-056.jpg*](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:James_Gray_at_the_2026_New_York_Film_Festival-056.jpg)* (CC BY-SA 4.0).*