Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere”
Preview by Brad Balfour
63rd Edition of The New York Film Festival
September 26 – October 13, 2025
Lincoln Center and Other Venues in NYC
Lincoln Center’s massive cinema showcase, the New York Film Festival, returns for its 63d installment September 26 to October 13, 2025. Held annually, this renowned celebration of films, showcases significant productions from around the globe. It was first established in 1963, presenting a curated selection of bold and exceptional works by both by established and emerging filmmakers.
The festival was initiated by then Lincoln Center’s President William Schuman as part of a broader effort to integrate film into the center’s artistic programming. The first NYFF took place in September ’63, opening with Luis Buñuel’s “The Exterminating Angel.” It was an experiment to gauge the interest in European-style, artistically focused film festivals in the United States. The festival’s early programmers included Richard Roud, a London-based film critic, and Amos Vogel, known for his work with Cinema 16. The NYFF quickly established itself as a significant platform to introduce new and important films to American audiences, influencing national film culture and becoming a source of many ward winners.
By highlighting challenging and artistically ambitious works over the years, the festival has evolved its programming to include various sections like “Main Slate,” “Spotlight,” “Currents,” and “Revivals,” alongside special events and retrospectives.
This year’s edition spans Cannes winners, Venice’s most anticipated, and Sundance highlights including films by such notable directors as Luca Guadagnino, Jim Jarmusch, Kathryn Bigelow, Noah Baumbach, Kelly Reichardt, Park Chan-wook, Ira Sachs, and Joachim Trier.
The opening night film, “After the Hunt,” is by a festival favorite, director Luca Guadagnino (“Queer” from last year was a much considered film). With a star-studded cast of Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield, it will provoke much commentary for its contemporary subject matter — a college professor comes under scrutiny when a colleague is accused of bad behavior.
“Mr. Scorsese” from Rebecca Miller is a five-part chronicle of the life of master director Martin Scorsese told through interviews and archival footage. From Ben Stiller comes a film about the lives of his comedian parents, “Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost.”
The Spotlight Gala selection features “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” Scott Cooper’s biographical drama that captures the early-’80s period when the legendary Bruce Springsteen created the raw, acoustic songs that became his landmark album “Nebraska.”
With a focus on new and adventurous voices in international filmmaking, the Currents slate includes 16 feature films and 24 short films in five programs, representing 28 countries. The Currents Centerpiece selection is the U.S. premiere of “Mare’s Nest” by Ben Rivers (“Two Years at Sea” which screened at NYFF49), an enigmatic road movie set in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by children.
Said New York Film Festival Artistic Director Dennis Lim, “In a film landscape that is so often homogeneous by design, this year’s Currents lineup is energizing for being a showcase of the boundless possibilities of cinematic language,” “Resurrecting old technologies and subverting new ones, the filmmakers and artists here use an ingenious array of styles and forms to investigate the past and illuminate the present, in the process reminding us of all that cinema can do.”
The Spotlight portion of the festival showcases films about great creative minds from great directors which includes Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” about a night in the life of lyricist Lorenz Hart and “Nouvelle Vague,” a film set during the production of Jean-Luc Godard’s “Breathless.”
Also part of the festival is Jim Jarmusch’s “Father Mother Sister Brother” which is the Centerpiece Selection. Bradley Cooper’s “Is This Thing On?”will have it’s world premiere as the closing night film. And in “Anemone, ”Daniel Day-Lewis makes his first on-screen performance in eight years.
To learn more, go to: https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff/