Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces NYFF Main Slate Official Selections

The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today the 35 films that will comprise the main slate of official selections for the 51st New York Film Festival (September 27-October 13) including such notable directors as Catherine Breillat, J.C. Chandor, Joel & Ethan Coen, Richard Curtis, Claire Denis, Arnaud Desplechin, Ralph Fiennes, James Franco, James Gray, Jim Jarmusch, Claude Lanzmann, Alexander Payne, Hong Sang-soo, Frederick Wiseman and Jia Zhangke.

NYFF's Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair, Kent Jones said, "Cinema is a vast terrain with a complex ecology, encompassing a mindbending array of species and habitats - there are multiple approaches to the question 'What is a movie,' from the industrial to the hand-made, from the carefully written to the poetically assembled. I love the level of diversity in the main slate selections, which includes documentaries, biographies, comedies, adventures, epics, chamber pieces, elegies, explorations and affirmations. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did."

Award winners from past festivals presented for The First Time to New York audiences include; Abdellatif Kechiche's BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR, the winner of the 2013 Cannes Palme d'Or (which in a first, was awarded to both of its lead actresses, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux, as well as the director); Joel and Ethan Coen's INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, which won the festival's Grand Prix Award; Jia Zhangke's A TOUCH OF SIN, winner for Best Screenplay; Rithy Panh's THE MISSING PICTURE, winner of the Certain Regard Prize and Hany Abu-Assad's OMAR, which won the Certain Regard Jury Prize; and Alexander Payne's NEBRASKA, which features Cannes Best Actor winner Bruce Dern. Additional award winners were Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson's AMERICAN PROMISE, which won a U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, and Sebastián Lelio's GLORIA, whose star Pauline Garcia took home the Berlin Film Festival's Silver Bear for Best Actress.

American and British comedies are a significant presence in this year's lineup of of main slate official selections with Richard Curtis's ABOUT TIME, a romantic comedy about a family whose men have the ability to travel in time, starring Bill Nighy and Rachel McAdams; Declan Lowney's ALAN PARTRIDGE, which brings Steve Coogan's legendary television character to the big screen for the first time; Roger Michell's LE WEEK-END, featuring Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan as a couple visiting Paris with hopes of rekindling their relationship; and Alexander Payne's NEBRASKA, about a father and son (Bruce Dern and Will Forte) on a road trip to pick up a million dollar prize that may or may not await them; and the previously announced Centerpiece and Closing Night Gala selections, Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Spike Jonze's HER.

Documentary filmmaking legends Claude Lanzmann and Frederick Wiseman each make their third appearances in NYFF's main slate. Lanzmann returns with THE LAST OF THE UNJUST, a portrait of Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish elder of Theresienstadt, once despised by many of its surviving inhabitants. Wiseman turns his camera toward the University of California, Berkeley, with his latest film, AT BERKELEY.

Rose Kuo, the Executive Director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, said, "The Film Society's commitment to presenting the significant films of the year each fall at the New York Film Festival continues with our latest edition. This year we welcome a record number of over a dozen returning veterans along with a number of new voices. It has been an interesting year for cinema with spirited discussions already underway about some of the films in our curated main slate selections. I'm sure that New York audiences will be excited, maybe sometimes even provoked, but hopefully also inspired by this year's new work."

Filmmakers returning to the NYFF who have had multiple films selected in the main slate in past editions include:

Catherine Breillat (36 FILLETTE, NYFF 1988; FAT GIRL, NYFF 2000; THE LAST MISTRESS, NYFF 2007; and BLUEBEARD, NYFF 2009) with ABUSE IS WEAKNESS

Ethan and Joel Coen (BLOOD SIMPLE, NYFF 1984, MILLER'S CROSSING, NYFF 1990 and NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, NYFF 2007) with INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

Claire Denis (BEAU TRAVAIL, NYFF 1999; FRIDAY NIGHT, NYFF 2002; and WHITE MATERIAL, NYFF 2009) with BASTARDS

Arnaud Desplechin (LA SENTINELLE, NYFF 1992; MY SEX LIFE...OR HOW I GOT INTO AN ARGUMENT, NYFF 1996; KINGS AND QUEENS, NYFF 2004; and A CHRISTMAS TALE, NYFF 2008) with JIMMY P: PSYCHOTHERAPY OF A PLAINS INDIAN

Agnieszka Holland (ANGRY HARVEST, NYFF 1985; OLIVIER OLIVIER, NYFF 1992; and WASHINGTON SQUARE, NYFF 1997); with BURNING BUSH

Jim Jarmusch (STRANGER THAN PARADISE, NYFF 1984; DOWN BY LAW, NYFF 1986; MYSTERY TRAIN, NYFF 1989; and NIGHT ON EARTH, NYFF 1991) with ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE

Alexander Payne (ABOUT SCHMIDT, NYFF 2002; SIDEWAYS, NYFF 2004; and THE DESCENDANTS, NYFF 2011) with NEBRASKA

Hong Sang-soo (TURNING GATE, NYFF 2002; WOMAN IS THE FUTURE OF MAN, NYFF 2004; TALE OF CINEMA, NYFF 2005; WOMAN ON THE BEACH, NYFF 2006; NIGHT AND DAY, NYFF 2008; and OKI'S MOVIE, NYFF 2010) with NOBODY'S DAUGHTER HAEWON

Frederick Wiseman (NEAR DEATH, NYFF 1989, PUBLIC HOUSING, NYFF 1997, BOXING GYM, NYFF 2010 and CRAZY HORSE, NYFF 2011) with AT BERKELEY

Jia Zhangke (PLATFORM, NYFF 2000; Unknown PLEASURES, NYFF 2002; THE WORLD, NYFF 2004; USELESS, NYFF 2007; and 24 CITY, NYFF 2008) with A TOUCH OF SIN

Rounding out the list of returning NYFF main slate alumni are; Hany Abu-Assad (PARADISE NOW, NYFF 2005) with OMAR; French filmmakers Philippe Garrel (THE INNER SCAR, NYFF 1972 and REGULAR LOVERS, NYFF 2005) with JEALOUSY; and Alain Guiraudie (THAT OLD DREAM THAT MOVES, NYFF 2002) with STRANGER BY THE LAKE; the directors of the Opening Night and Closing Night Gala selections Paul Greengrass (BLOODY SUNDAY, NYFF 2002) with CAPTAIN PHILLIPS; and Spike Jonze (BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, NYFF 1999) with HER; and Cannes award winner Abdellatif Kechiche (BLACK VENUS, NYFF 2010) with BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR.

Other returnees include Hayao Miyazaki (PRINCESS MONONOKE, NYFF 1997) with THE WIND RISES; Tsai Ming-liang (WHAT TIME IS IT THERE?, NYFF 2001 and GOOD BYE, DRAGON INN, NYFF 2003) with STRAY DOGS; documentarian Claude Lanzmann (ISRAEL, WHY, NYFF 1973 and SOBIBOR, OCTOBER 14, 1943, 4PM, NYFF 2001) with THE LAST OF THE UNJUST; Romanian filmmaker Corneliu Porumboiu (POLICE, ADJECTIVE, NYFF 2009) with WHEN EVENING FALLS ON BUCHAREST OR METABOLISM; and Roger Michell, who returns to the New York Film Festival just one year after screening his film Hyde Park on Hudson (NYFF 2012) with LE WEEK-END.

Additional gala and special events, documentary sections, spotlights on emerging filmmakers, and panels will be announced in subsequent days and weeks as well as NYFF's Views From the Avant-Garde and Convergence programs.

The 51st New York Film Festival main-slate

Opening Night Gala Selection
CAPTAIN PHILLIPS
Director: Paul Greengrass

Centerpiece Gala Selection
THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY
Director: Ben Stiller

Closing Night Gala Selection
HER
Director: Spike Jonze

ABOUT TIME
Director: Richard Curtis

ABUSE OF WEAKNESS (Abus de faiblesse)
Director: Catherine Breillat

ALAN PARTRIDGE
Director: Declan Lowney

ALL IS LOST
Director: J.C. Chandor

AMERICAN PROMISE
Directors: Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson

AT BERKELEY
Director: Frederick Wiseman

BASTARDS (Les Salauds)
Director: Claire Denis

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (La vie d'Adèle)
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche

BURNING BUSH (Ho?icí Ke?)
Director: Agnieszka Holland

CHILD OF GOD
Director: James Franco

GLORIA
Director: Sebastián Lelio

THE IMMIGRANT
Director: James Gray

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN
Director: Ralph Fiennes

JEALOUSY (La Jalousie)
Director: Philippe Garrel

JIMMY P: PSYCHOTHERAPY OF A PLAINS INDIAN
Director: Arnaud Desplechin

THE LAST OF THE UNJUST (Le Dernier des injustes)
Director: Claude Lanzmann

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON (Sose Chichi ni Naru)
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda

THE MISSING PICTURE (L'image manquante)
Director: Rithy Panh

MY NAME IS HMMM... (Je m'appelle Hmmm...)
Director: agnès B

NEBRASKA
Director: Alexander Payne

NOBODY'S DAUGHTER HAEWON (Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon)
Director: Hong Sang-soo

NORTH, THE END OF HISTORY (Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan)
Director: Lav Diaz

OMAR
Director: Hany Abu-Assad

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE
Director: Jim Jarmusch

THE SQUARE
Director: Jehane Noujaim

STRANGER BY THE LAKE (L'Inconnu du lac)
Director: Alain Guiraudie

STRAY DOGS (Jiao You)
Director: Tsai Ming-liang

A TOUCH OF SIN (Tian Zhu Ding)
Director: Jia Zhangke

LE WEEK-END
Director: Roger Michell

WHEN EVENING FALLS ON BUCHAREST OR METABOLISM (Când se lasa seara peste Bucuresti sau metabolism)
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu

THE WIND RISES (Kaze Tachinu)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki

FilmLinc Daily Managing Editor Brian Brooks spoke with Kent Jones about the Main Slate official selections, the lead up to NYFF and looking ahead to his first NYFF as the festival's Director of Programming and Selection Committee Chair. That interview can be found at Filmlinc.com

The 17-day New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema, featuring top films from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. The selection committee, chaired by Jones, also includes: Dennis Lim, FSLC Director of Cinematheque Programming; Marian Masone, FSLC Associate Director of Programming; Gavin Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Film Comment; and Amy Taubin, Contributing Editor, Film Comment and Sight & Sound.

General Public tickets will be available on September 8th. Members of the Film Society of Lincoln Center have the opportunity to purchase single screening tickets in advance of the General Public. VIP Passes for the New York Film Festival are on sale now. For more information about becoming a Film Society Member visit Filmlinc.com/support/home. More ticket information for the New York Film Festival will be available on Filmlinc.com/NYFF.

51st NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Films & Descriptions

ABOUT TIME (2013) 123min
Director: Richard Curtis
Country: UK
Richard Curtis adds a touch of time-travel to this hilarious romantic comedy, a perfect vehicle for the comic talents of Bill Nighy, Rachel McAdams, Lindsay Duncan, and emerging star Domhnall Gleeson. A Universal Pictures release.

ABUSE OF WEAKNESS (Abus de Faiblesse) (2013) 105min
Director: Catherine Breillat
Country: France
Catherine Breillat's haunting film about her 2004 stroke and subsequent self-destructive relationship with star swindler Christophe Rocancourt, starring Isabelle Huppert.

ALAN PARTRIDGE (2013) 90min
Director: Declan Lowney
Country: UK/France
In the long-awaited big-screen debut of Steve Coogan's singular comic creation, the vain and obliviously tactless Alan Partridge must serve as an intermediary when North Norfolk Digital is seized at gunpoint by a down-sized DJ.

ALL IS LOST (2013) 107min
Director: J.C. Chandor
Country: USA
Robert Redford as you've never seen him before, gives a near-wordless all-action performance as a lone sailor trying to keep his yacht afloat after a collision with a discarded shipping container in the middle of the Indian Ocean. A Roadside Attractions release.

AMERICAN PROMISE (2013) 135min
Directors: Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson
Country: USA
Two Brooklyn filmmakers follow their son Idris and his friend Suen from their enrollment in the Dalton School as children through their High School graduations in this devastating, years-in-the-making documentary that takes a hard look at race and class in America.

AT BERKELEY (2013) 244min
Director: Frederick Wiseman
Country: USA
Another masterfully constructed documentary from Frederick Wiseman, examining the University of California, Berkeley from multiple angles - the administrators, the students, the surrounding community - to arrive at a portrait that is as rich in detail as it is epic in scope.

BASTARDS (Les Salauds) (2013) 100min
Director: Claire Denis
Country: France/Germany
Claire Denis's jagged, daringly fragmented and deeply unsettling film inspired by recent French sex ring scandals is the rarest of cinematic narratives-a contemporary film noir, perfect in substance as well as style.

BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR (La Vie d'Adèle) (2013) 179min
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Country: France
The sensation of this year's Cannes Film Festival is an intimate - and sexually explicit - epic of emotional transformation, featuring two astonishing performances from Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux. A Sundance Selects release.
Please be advised that this film has scenes of a sexually explicit nature.

BURNING BUSH (Ho?icí Ke?) (2013) 234min
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Country: Czech Republic
A passionately brilliant Czech mini-series from Agnieska Holland about the events that followed student Jan Palach's public self-immolation in protest against the Soviet invasion after Prague Spring.

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS (2013) 143min
Director: Paul Greengrass
Country: USA
Paul Greengrass has crafted an edge-of-your-seat thriller based on the true story of the seizure of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship in 2009 by four Somali pirates, with remarkable performances from Tom Hanks and four first-time actors, Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Barkhad Abdirahman and Mahet M. Ali. A Sony Pictures release.

CHILD OF GOD (2013) 104min
Director: James Franco
Country: USA
James Franco's uncompromising excursion into American Gothic, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's 1973 novel, about an unstable sociopath in early 60s rural Tennessee who descends into an animal-like state - not for the faint-hearted.

GLORIA (2013) 110min
Director: Sebastián Lelio
Countries: Chile/Spain
A wise, funny, liberating movie from Chile, about a middle-aged woman who finds romance but whose new partner finds it painfully difficult to abandon his old habits.

HER (2013)
Director: Spike Jonze
Country: USA
In Spike Jonze's magical, melancholy comedy of the near future, lonely Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with his new all-purpose operating system (the voice of Scarlett Johansson), leading to romantic and existential complications. A Warner Bros. Pictures release.

THE IMMIGRANT (2013) 120min
Director: James Gray
Country: USA
In James Gray's richly detailed period tragedy, set in a dusty, sepia-toned 1920s Manhattan, a young Polish immigrant (Marion Cotillard) is caught in a dangerous battle of wills with a shady burlesque manager (Joaquin Phoenix). A Radius-TWC release.

INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS (2013) 105min
Directors: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Country: USA/France
Joel and Ethan Coen's picaresque, panoramic and wryly funny story of a singer/songwriter is set in the New York folk scene of the early 60s and features a terrific array of larger-than-life characters and a glorious score of folk standards. A CBS Films release.

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (2013) 111min
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Country: UK
Ralph Fiennes directs and stars as Charles Dickens in this adaptation of Claire Tomalin's revelatory 1992 biography, which brought the upright Victorian author's secret 13-year affair with a young actress to light. A Sony Pictures Classics Release.

JEALOUSY (La Jalousie) (2013) 77min
Director: Philippe Garrel
Country: France
Another intimate, handcrafted work of poetic autobiographical cinema from French director Philippe Garrel, in which his son Louis and Anna Mouglalis star as actors and lovers trying to reconcile their professional and personal lives.

JIMMY P: PSYCHOTHERAPY OF A PLAINS INDIAN (2013) 114min
Director: Arnaud Desplechin
Country: France
In Arnaud Desplechin's intelligent and moving depiction of a successful "Talking Cure," the encounters between patient (Benicio del Toro) and therapist (Mathieu Amalric) are electric with discovery.

THE LAST OF THE UNJUST (Le Dernier des injustes) (2013) 218min
Director: Claude Lanzmann
Countries: France/Austria
This moral and cinematic tour de force from the creator of SHOAH will cause you to reconsider your understanding of Adolph Eichmann and of Benjamin Murmelstein, the last Jewish elder of Theresienstadt and the film's central figure.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON (Sose Chichi ni Naru) (2013) 120min
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Country: Japan
Hirokazu Kore-eda's sensitive drama takes a close look at two families' radically different approaches to the horribly painful realization that the sons they have raised as their own were switched at birth. A Sundance Selects release.

THE MISSING PICTURE (L'image manquante) (2013) 92min
Director: Rithy Panh
Country: Cambodia
Filmmaker Rithy Panh's Brave new film revisits his memories of four years spent under the Khmer Rouge and the destruction of his family and his culture; without a single memento left behind, he creates his "missing images" with narration and painstakingly executed dioramas. A Strand release.

MY NAME IS HMMM... (Je m'appelle Hmmm...) (2013) 121min
Director: agnès B
Country: France
In this deeply personal, incandescent first feature from designer agnès B, a young girl holding her family together and bearing the weight of sexual abuse runs away from home and enjoys a carefree idyll with a kindly Scottish trucker.

NEBRASKA (2013) 115min
Director: Alexander Payne
Country: USA
This masterful film from Alexander Payne, about a quiet old man (Bruce Dern) whose mild-mannered son (Will Forte) agrees to drive him from Montana to Nebraska to claim a non-existent prize, shades from the comic to multiple hues of melancholy and regret. A Paramount Pictures release.

NOBODY'S DAUGHTER HAEWON (Nugu-ui ttal-do anin Haewon) (2013) 90min
Director: Hong Sang-soo
Country: South Korea
A young student at loose ends after her mother moves to America tries to define herself one encounter and experience at a time, in reality and in dreams, in another deceptively simple chamber-piece from South Korean master Hong Sang-soo.

NORTH, THE END OF HISTORY (Norte, Hangganan ng Kasaysayan) (2013) 250min
Director: Lav Diaz
Country: Philippines
Filipino director Lav Diaz's twelfth feature - at four-plus hours, one of his shortest - is a careful rethinking of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, with a tortured anti-hero who is a haunting embodiment of the dead ends of ideology.

OMAR (2013) 96min
Director: Hany Abu-Assad
Country: Palestinian Territories
A tense, gripping, ticking clock thriller about betrayal, suspected and real, in the Occupied Territories, from Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now).

ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE (2013) 123min
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Country: USA
Jim Jarmusch's wry, tender and moving take on the vampire genre features Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston as a centuries-old couple who watch time go by from separate continents as they reflect on the ever-changing world around them. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY (2013)
Director: Ben Stiller
Country: USA
Ben Stiller stars in and directs this sweet, globe-trotting (but New York-based) comic fable about an up-to-the-minute everyman, co-starring Kristen Wiig as the woman of his dreams, Sean Penn as a legendary photographer and Shirley MacLaine as Walter's mother. A Twentieth Century Fox release.

THE SQUARE (2013) 104min
Director: Jehane Noujaim
Country: USA/Egypt
Jehane Noujaim's tense, vivid verité portrait of events as they unfolded in Tahrir Square through Arab Spring and beyond, in a newly revised, up-to-the-minute version.

STRANGER BY THE LAKE (L'Inconnu du lac) (2013) 97min
Director: Alain Guiraudie
Country: France
Alain Guiraudie's lethally precise, sexually explicit film, which unfolds entirely in the vicinity of a gay cruising ground, is both a no-holds-barred depiction of a hedonistic subculture and a perverse and unnerving tale of Amour fou. A Strand release.
Please be advised that this film has scenes of a sexually explicit nature.

STRAY DOGS (Jiao You) (2013) 138min
Director: Tsai Ming-liang
Country: Taiwan/France
Tsai Ming-liang's fable of a homeless family living the cruelest of existences on the ragged edges of the modern world is bracingly pure in its anger and its compassion, and as visually powerful as it is emotionally overwhelming.

A TOUCH OF SIN (Tian Zhu Ding) (2013) 133min
Director: Jia Zhangke
Country: China
Jia Zhangke's bloody, bitter new film builds a portrait of modern-day China in the midst of rapid and convulsive change through four overlapping stories of marginalized and oppressed citizens pushed to murderous rage. A Kino Lorber release.

LE WEEK-END (2013) 93min
Director: Roger Michell
Country: UK
A magically buoyant, bittersweet comedy drama about a middle-aged and middle class English couple who go to Paris for a weekend holiday, starring two of Britain's national treasures, Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan. A Music Box Films release.

WHEN EVENING FALLS ON BUCHAREST OR METABOLISM (2013) 89min
Director: Corneliu Porumboiu
Countries: Romania/France
A rigorously structured and fascinatingly oblique new film from Corneliu Porumboiu that examines the life of a film director during the moments on a shoot when the camera isn't rolling.

THE WIND RISES (Kaze Tachinu) (2013) 126min
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Country: Japan
The great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's new film is based on the life of Jiro Hirokoshi, the man who designed the Zero fighter. An elliptical historical narrative, THE WIND RISES is also a visionary cinematic poem about the fragility of humanity.

Film Society of Lincoln Center
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility and understanding of the moving image. Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, LatinBeat, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, Rendez-vous With French Cinema, and Spanish Cinema Now. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious "Chaplin Award." The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stonehenge Partners, Stella Artois, illy café, the Kobal Collection, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Support for the New York Film Festival is also generously provided by Hearst Corporation, HBO, Dolby, Christie, WABC-7, and WNET Public Media.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

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