Thursday, August 18, 2011

The Main Slate for the NY Film Festival is Set

The Main Slate for the 49th New York Film Festival is set. Twenty-seven films are in the main section of the festival, including Roman Polanski's Carnage, Simon Curtis' My Week With Marilyn, David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method and Pedro Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In. The festival will close with Alexander Payne's The Descendants, starring George Clooney.

Here are the rest of the films of the 49th New York Film Festival:

4:44: Last Day On Earth, directed by Abel Ferrara (USA)
A Separation, directed by Asghar Farhadi (Iran)
Corpo Celeste, directed by Alice Rohrwacher (Italy/Switzerland/France)
Footnote, directed by Joseph Cedar (Israel)
George Harrison: Living In The Material World, directed by Martin Scorsese (USA)
Goodbye First Love, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve (France/Germany)
Le Havre, directed by Aki Kaurismäki (Finland/France/Germany)
Martha Marcy May Marlene, directed by Sean Durkin (USA)
Melancholia, directed by Lars von Trier (Denmark/Sweden/France/Germany/Italy)
Miss Bala, directed by Gerardo Naranjo (Mexico)
Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey)
Pina, directed by Wim Wenders (Germany/France/UK)
Play, directed by Ruben Östlund (Sweden/France/Denmark)
Policeman, directed by Nadav Lapid (Israel/France)
Shame, directed by Steve McQueen (UK)
Sleeping Sickness, directed by Ulrich Köhler (Germany/France/Netherlands)
The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius (France)
The Loneliest Planet, directed by Julia Loktev (USA/Germany)
The Kid With A Bike, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Belgium/France)
The Student, directed by Santiago Mitre (Argentina)
The Turin Horse, directed by Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky (Hungary/France/Germany/Switzerland/USA)
This Is Not A Film, directed by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Iran)

This year's festival promises to be an exciting one with the return of Abel Ferrara, Steve McQueen, Aki Kaurismäki, Martin Scorsese, and Wim Wenders. It has been a long while since Mr. Wenders has been represented at the festival, and any new film he makes is always eagerly awaited. Lars von Trier's Melancholia will certainly be one of the hot tickets in lieu of the fact that the director scandalized the Cannes Film Festival this year by confessing to the press that he was a Nazi. If he makes an appearance here to present his film, both the Q&A and the audience's reception promises to be very interesting.