New York Film Festival Slate Includes ‘Ballad of Buster Scruggs,’ ‘If Beale Street Could Talk’

By Brent Lang

LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – The New York Film Festival will screen new offerings from Oscar winners such as Joel & Ethan Coen, Barry Jenkins, and Paweł Pawlikowski.

On Tuesday, the fall gathering unveiled the 30 films that will screen as part of its main slate. They include “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” a western anthology from the ; “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel of the same name; and “Cold War,” a Soviet-era love story that earned rave reviews for Pawlikowski when it debuted at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Like “Cold War,” many of the movies highlighted at the have previously screened at other influential festivals, such as Venice or Toronto. The lack of world premieres is a sign of the competition that these taste-making events face in landing awards-season contenders. Instead, New York is contenting itself with a series of U.S. and North American premieres.

It’s still an impressive array of auteurs who will be hitting the Big Apple in the hopes of bolstering their Oscar chances. Other films include Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or–winner “Shoplifters”; Jean-Luc Godard’s meditation on art and death “The Image Book”; Claire Denis’ science-fiction drama “High Life”; and Tamara Jenkins’ pregnancy comedy “Private Life.” The New York Film Festival is an increasingly global affair. Its main slate showcases films from 22 different countries, including China, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Argentina, and Qatar. Four of the 30 films are from female directors.

The festival has already announced that the festival will kick off with Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” a historical drama with Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz set during the reign of Queen Anne. “Roma,” a family drama from Alfonso Cuaron, will be the centerpiece selection. The closing night film is “At Eternity’s Gate,” Julian Schnabel’s look at Vincent van Gogh’s final years.

“Francis Ford Coppola said that the cinema would become a real art form only when the tools of moviemaking became as inexpensive as paints, brushes, and canvases,” NYFF director and selection committee chair Kent Jones said in a statement. “That has come to pass, but at the same time, it’s become increasingly tough to do serious work that is beholden to nothing but the filmmaker’s need to express these emotions in this form in moving images and sound. So if I were pressed to choose one word to describe the films in this year’s main slate, it would be: bravery.”

The New York Film Festival is presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and will run from Sept. 28 to Oct. 14.

Here’s the 56th New York Film Festival main slate lineup:

3 Faces

Dir. Jafar Panahi

Asako I & II

Dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi

Ash Is Purest White

Dir. Jia Zhangke

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Dir. Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Burning

Dir. Lee Chang-dong

Cold War

Dir. Paweł Pawlikowski

A Faithful Man/L’Homme fidèle

Dir. Louis Garrel

A Family Tour

Dir. Ying Liang

La Flor

Dir. Mariano Llinás

Grass

Dir. Hong Sangsoo

Happy as Lazzaro/Lazzaro felice

Dir. Alice Rohrwacher

Her Smell

Dir. Alex Ross Perry

High Life

Dir. Claire Denis

Hotel by the River

Dir. Hong Sangsoo

If Beale Street Could Talk

Dir.

The Image Book/Le Livre d’image

Dir. Jean-Luc Godard

In My Room

Dir. Ulrich Köhler

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Dir. Bi Gan

Monrovia, Indiana

Dir. Frederick Wiseman

Non-Fiction

Dir. Olivier Assayas

Private Life

Dir. Tamara Jenkins

Ray & Liz

Dir. Richard Billingham

Shoplifters

Dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda

Sorry Angel

Dir. Christophe Honoré

Too Late to Die Young

Dir. Dominga Sotomayor

Transit

Dir. Christian Petzold

Wildlife

Dir. Paul Dano

Opening Night

The Favourite

Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos

Centerpiece

ROMA

Dir. Alfonso Cuarón

Closing Night

At Eternity’s Gate

Dir. Julian Schnabel