SPOTLIGHT FILMS & DESCRIPTIONS

Spotlight Gala

Queer
Luca Guadagnino, 2024, U.S./Italy, 135m
Written in the early 1950s yet not published until 1985, William S. Burroughs’s Queer has come to be considered a canonical work in the career of the Beat Generation author and a cornerstone of transgressive gay literature. In his wildly ambitious adaptation, Luca Guadagnino (Call Me by Your Name, NYFF55) expertly evokes the book’s post–World War II time period and cinematically translates Burroughs’s iconoclasm with panache. In a transformative role, Daniel Craig immerses himself into Burroughs’s alter ego William Lee, a habitual heroin user luxuriating in freedom and desiccation among a disconnected group of gay American expatriates in Mexico City in the late 1940s. When enigmatic, preppy ex-military kid Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) catches Lee’s eye, he swoons into a headlong love affair, commencing an odyssey that will take them all the way to the Ecuadorian jungle in pursuit of the ultimate high. Buoyed by go-for-broke performances from Craig and Starkey, and rollicking, unexpected supporting turns from Lesley Manville and Jason Schwartzman, Queer is a dazzling showcase for many in Guadagnino’s stable of collaborators, including Challengers screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, and music composers Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s a film that finds Guadagnino in his most formidable, gutsiest mode yet, featuring explicit eroticism, expressionistic flights of fancy, and gratifying moments of psychedelic surrealism.

Apocalypse in the Tropics
Petra Costa, 2024, Brazil/U.S./Denmark, 110m
Portuguese with English subtitles
In the follow-up to her Oscar-nominated documentary The Edge of Democracy, which examined Brazil’s increasingly polarized politics, Petra Costa dramatizes the chilling rise of the far right in her country. Apocalypse in the Tropics focuses on how the evangelical movement paved the way for the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro and continues to pose the threat of a national theocracy. Gaining remarkable access to major figures on both sides of the extreme political divide, including fire-and-brimstone televangelist Silas Malafaia, who was Bolsonaro’s right-hand man, and Bolsonaro’s liberal predecessor and successor President Lulu da Silva, Costa provides a gripping and urgent précis on the recent tumultuous events that have put Brazil in the international spotlight while painting an unsettling portrait of democracy’s fragility.

Elton John: Never Too Late
R.J. Cutler, David Furnish, 2024, U.S., 102m
U.S. Premiere
Co-directed by R.J. Cutler (Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry, Belushi, The September Issue) and David Furnish, this rousing, intensely personal documentary finds a legendary musician in a richly reflective mood during his final concert tour, the multiyear, globe-spanning Farewell Yellow Brick Road. Filled with revealing interviews and rare archival material, Elton John: Never Too Late offers keen insight into a life and career marked by soaring highs and crushing lows, and contemplates a legacy defined equally by advocacy and artistry. A Disney+ release. Featuring a special appearance by Elton John and directors R.J. Cutler and David Furnish.

Emilia Pérez
Jacques Audiard, 2024, France, 132m
English and Spanish with English subtitles
From the moment it introduces its titular antiheroine, a Mexican drug-cartel boss seeking gender-affirming surgery, this boldly genre-dissolving tour de force is predicated on the power of astonishing transformations. The most ambitious and exuberant film to date by Jacques Audiard, one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile filmmakers, Emilia Pérez is at once a darkly funny crime drama and a jaw-dropping musical, powered by a quartet of superb actors—Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz—whose fearless performances defy every expectation. Winner of the Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where its four leads also shared the Best Actress prize. A Netflix release.

The Friend
Scott McGehee, David Siegel, 2024, U.S., 120m
Novelist and creative writing teacher Iris (Naomi Watts) finds her comfortable, solitary New York life thrown into disarray after her closest friend and mentor (Bill Murray) commits suicide and bequeaths his beloved Great Dane to her. The regal yet intractable beast, named Apollo, immediately creates problems for Iris, from furniture destruction to eviction notices, as well as more existential ones, his looming presence constantly reminding her of her friend’s choice to take his own life. Yet as Iris finds herself unexpectedly bonding to the animal, she begins to come to terms with her past, her lost friend, and her own creative inner life. Featuring a warm, emotionally present central performance from Watts, Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s (The Deep End) deeply fulfilling adaptation of Sigrid Nunez’s beloved, slyly shape-shifting National Book Award winner is a rare kind of contemporary American film—humane, philosophical, curious, yet never diagnostic about loss, grief, and anger.

I’m Still Here
Walter Salles, 2024, Brazil/Spain, 135m
Portuguese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
One afternoon in 1970, Rubens Paiva, a former congressman and outspoken critic of Brazil’s newly instituted military dictatorship, was taken from his home in Rio de Janeiro by government officials, told nothing more than that he must give a “deposition” to authorities, and disappeared. Adapted from his son Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s memoir, this overwhelming, richly realized political drama from Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries) stays tightly wedded to the perspective of Rubens’s wife, Eunice (a shattering Fernanda Torres), whose indefatigable search for the truth about her husband would stretch out for decades. A devastating true story, I’m Still Here is exhilarating in its portrayal of human tenacity in the face of injustice. Featuring a deeply affecting appearance from Fernanda Montenegro, Oscar nominee for Salles’s Central Station. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

It’s Not Me
Leos Carax, 2024, France, 41m
French with English subtitles
North American Premiere
French cinema firebrand Leos Carax has spent 40 years making galvanizing movies that float in the beautifully perplexing nether space between reality and artifice, from Boy Meets Girl (NYFF23) and Lovers on the Bridge (NYFF30) to Holy Motors (NYFF50) and the recent musical Annette. In his new film, he lovingly evokes the aesthetics of Jean-Luc Godard, paying aptly cheeky respect to the late New Wave master, his own career, and cinema itself, rummaging through a century of movies to situate his work within a continuum of the medium. Rather than self-aggrandize, he uses this diaristic format for an iconoclastic and impudent inquiry into power, politics, and image-making that is at once wry and playful, oblique and deeply personal. A Sideshow/Janus Films release. Premiere screening followed by a conversation with Leos Carax.

Maria
Pablo Larraín, 2024, Italy/Germany/U.S., 122m
Following his acclaimed historical biopics Jackie and Spencer, about Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Princess Diana, respectively, Chilean director Pablo Larraín has made his third entry in an unofficial trilogy about world-famous women dealing with the blinding glare of celebrity while at emotional crossroads. In an all-consuming performance at once poignant and imperious, Angelina Jolie becomes Maria Callas, the American-born, Greek opera singer whose voice and intensely dramatic life captivated millions before her death from a heart attack at the age of 53. Set in Paris, September 1977, during the final week of her life, Maria follows the legendary soprano as she negotiates her public image and private self and reckons with the increasingly blurred boundaries between the venerated “La Divina” and the vulnerable human being Maria. Punctuated by grand operatic interludes, Maria is exquisitely shot by Ed Lachman and features a vivid supporting cast that includes Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alba Rohrwacher, Pierfrancesco Favino, and Valeria Golino.

Pavements
Alex Ross Perry, U.S., 2024, 128m
North American Premiere
How best to commemorate the career of Pavement, one of the defining indie rock bands of the 1990s? Legendary frontman Stephen Malkmus would likely be opposed to the usual encomiums. A museum exhibition? How about a jukebox Broadway musical? Or perhaps a prestige movie biopic? Alex Ross Perry (Listen Up Philip, NYFF52; Her Smell, NYFF56) gives us all of the above and more in his pleasurably rule-flouting sorta-documentary. Fueled by a sardonic, tricky sense of humor reminiscent of Pavement’s caustic, idiosyncratic music, Perry’s film shows little patience for hagiography—or any other orthodoxy—in its nonlinear, absurdist approach. Pavements integrates archival footage of the band at the height of their cult popularity, newly shot material following them during their recent comeback tour in 2022, and a kaleidoscope of semi-scripted contemporary scenes about the shooting of a movie within the movie starring Jason Schwartzman, Fred Hechinger, Nat Wolff, Tim Heidecker, Logan Miller, and a hilarious Joe Keery as an actor seeking awards glory. Above all, Pavements’ irreverent inquiry into mythmaking evinces a deep love for its subject and for a now lost alternative culture.

A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg, 2024, U.S./Poland, 90m
Born weeks apart, cousins David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) were as close as brothers growing up, yet have drifted apart due to the responsibilities and disappointments of adult life. After the death of their beloved grandmother, a Holocaust survivor, David accompanies Benji on a trip to Poland, as a pilgrimage to both her hometown and to sites haunted by the genocide of World War II. Initially following a tour group (featuring elegantly scripted characters played with effortless nuance by such actors as Jennifer Grey, Kurt Egyiawan, and Will Sharpe), the tightly wound David and the manic-neurotic Benji confront their own raw resentments and personal demons, which are further laid bare by the backdrop of an insuperable history. Anchored by spirited performances by its dynamic stars, writer-director Eisenberg’s A Real Pain is a work of compassion and maturity that alternates nimbly between anxious comedy and meditative drama. A Searchlight Pictures release.

Rumours
Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson, 2024, Canada, 104m
U.S. Premiere
The world’s wealthy democratic world leaders have come together for the annual G7 summit, trading quips and nervous smiles as they do their best to diplomatically discuss vague matters of international emergency and draft statements of import between sips of wine. Yet a major, unforeseen crisis looms on the horizon for the presidents, prime ministers, and chancellors—nothing less than potential human apocalypse, hastened by the arrival of unearthed “bog men” from the Iron Age and a giant pulsating brain perched ominously in the woods. This sci-fi pulp satire finds Canadian trickster extraordinaire Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg) and fellow Manitoban co-directors Evan Johnson and Galen Johnson in a particularly wacky mood, corralling an outstanding, starry cast—including Cate Blanchett, Alicia Vikander, Denis Ménochet, Charles Dance, and Nikki Amuka-Bird—for a merciless, midnight-movie skewering of the bureaucratic processes that govern our precarious reality. A Bleecker Street release.

Scénarios + Exposé du Film annonce du film “Scénario”
Jean-Luc Godard, 2024, France, 53m
French with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
The release of Jean-Luc Godard’s summative, elegiac 2018 feature, The Image Book (NYFF56), a film about the end of things, would seem to be the final testament from one of the most important artists the medium has ever known. But now, two years after his death, the world has been gifted two more “last films” from Godard. An extraordinary epilogue to an uncompromised career, Scénarios assembles and layers paintings, collages, film clips, stills, and narration, including text from Sartre, read on screen—in an overwhelmingly poignant appearance—by Godard the day before his assisted death. Scénarios (17m) will be followed by Exposé du film annonce du film “Scenario” (36m), a documentary shot in 2021 by longtime collaborator Fabrice Aragno that affords a remarkable glimpse into the maestro’s agile mind at work: here Godard outlines a previous version of the project, a feature film never to be made.

TWST / Things We Said Today
Andrei Ujică, 2024, France/Romania, 87m
English, French, and German with English subtitles
North American Premiere
It’s August 1965, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo have descended upon New York for a sold-out concert at Queens’ massive Shea Stadium. Throngs of young superfans stricken with Beatlemania tear through the streets of Manhattan for a glimpse of the Liverpudlians from their hotel room window. But this tells only one part of the story of that hot summer weekend in the metropolis. More than a decade in the making, Romanian filmmaker Andrei Ujică’s first feature since the monumental The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu (NYFF48) finds the found-footage maestro fabricating a fresh kind of city symphony. This variegated rendering of New York and its people, from Harlem to Jones Beach, from the mundane to the magical, is made up entirely of archival material, from news station broadcasts to personal 8mm film diaries to the climactic concert scenes shot on 35mm. Ujică’s fanciful documentary is also a work of imagination, using superimposed animated drawings (by French artist Yann Kebbi) and descriptive voice-over (from personal writings by Geoffrey O’Brien and Judith Kristen, and Ujică’s own poetry) to memorialize this vanished moment in history with poignant, distinctive flair.

Union
Brett Story, Stephen Maing, 2024, U.S., 104m
In 2022, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, sick and tired of the lack of job stability from a company notorious for constant worker turnover, made national headlines after the newly formed Amazon Labor Union voted to unionize. For their absorbing documentary, Brett Story (The Hottest August) and Stephen Maing (Crime + Punishment) follow the day-to-day struggles of the ALU, made up of current and former employees, including charismatic and indefatigable leader Chris Smalls, and capture the events that led to this remarkable—but by no means conclusive—historical moment. The result is an immersive portrait that celebrates solidarity while acknowledging the difficult decisions and internal conflicts that make any collective action possible—especially when up against a corporate goliath in a post-Reagan era when worker organizations have become political anathema.

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