New York Film Festival: Kelly Reichardt, Agnes Varda Lead Slate With 20% Female Directors
New films from Kelly Reichardt, Agnes Varda, Olivier Assayas and Marco Bellochio will be coming to the 2019 New York Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center announced on Tuesday.
Among the 29 films, only six female directors are represented: Reichardt, Varda, Celine Sciamma, Mati Diop, Justine Triet and Angela Schanelec. That’s just over 20%, which is better than this year’s competition slates at Cannes (19%) and Venice (10%) — but well below other major festivals like Sundance (46%) and Berlin (40%).
After announcing last week that its opening-night film will be Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” its centerpiece booking will be Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” and its closing-night film will be Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn,” NYFF unveiled the rest of the 29 films that will make up its main slate, including work from 17 different countries.
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The films include Kelly Reichardt’s “First Cow,” a period piece set in the Pacific Northwest in the early 19th century; Olivier Assayas’ “Wasp Network,” a drama about Cuban defectors in Miami starring Edgar Ramirez; and Agnes Varda’s final work, “Varda by Agnes.”
The lineup is long on films that premiered in Cannes, including “Atlantics,” “Bacurau,” “Beanpole,” “Fire Will Come,” “Liberte,” “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” “Sibyl,” “The Whistlers,” “Young Ahmed,” the Palme d’Or winner “Parasite” and Pedro Almodovar’s “Pain and Glory.”
Almodovar also designed the poster for this year’s festival, which can be seen below.
“It’s getting harder and harder for anyone to make films of real ambition anywhere in this world,” NYFF Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said in a statement. “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.”
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The NYFF lineup:
Opening Night
The Irishman
Dir. Martin Scorsese
Centerpiece
Marriage Story
Dir. Noah Baumbach
Closing Night
Motherless Brooklyn
Dir. Edward Norton
Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story
Dir. Mati Diop
Bacurau
Dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles
Beanpole
Dir. Kantemir Balagov
Fire Will Come
Dir. Oliver Laxe
First Cow
Dir. Kelly Reichardt
A Girl Missing
Dir. Koji Fukada
I Was at Home, But…
Dir. Angela Schanelec
Liberté
Dir. Albert Serra
Martin Eden
Dir. Pietro Marcello
The Moneychanger
Dir. Federico Veiroj
Oh Mercy!
Dir. Arnaud Desplechin
Pain and Glory
Dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Parasite
Dir. Bong Joon-ho
Film Comment Presents
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Dir. Céline Sciamma
Saturday Fiction
Dir. Lou Ye
Sibyl
Dir. Justine Triet
Synonyms
Dir. Nadav Lapid
To the Ends of the Earth
Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa
The Traitor
Dir. Marco Bellocchio
Varda by Agnès
Dir. Agnès Varda
Vitalina Varela
Dir. Pedro Costa
Wasp Network
Dir. Olivier Assayas
The Whistlers
Dir. Corneliu Porumboiu
The Wild Goose Lake
Dir. Diao Yinan
Young Ahmed
Dir. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Zombi Child
Dir. Bertrand Bonello
The Almodovar poster:
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