New York Film Festival

The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center. Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, NYFF is one of the longest-running and most prestigious film festivals in the United States. It is a non-competitive festival centered on a "Main Slate" of typically 20–30 feature films, with additional sections for experimental cinema and new restorations.

New York Film Festival

Location	New York City, United States
Founded	1963; 63 years ago (1963)
Most recent	September 27–October 14, 2024
Hosted by	Film at Lincoln Center
Website	www.filmlinc.org/nyff
Current: 2025
2026 2024

Dennis Lim is the Artistic Director for NYFF. Kent Jones was the festival director from 2013 to 2019.

Sections

As of 2024,^[update] the festival program is divided into the following sections:

Main Slate

The Main Slate is the Festival's primary section, a program typically featuring 25–30 feature-length films, intending to reflect the current state of cinema. The program is a mix of major international art house films from the festival circuit, new discoveries, and studio releases targeting awards season. The studio films are often selected as Opening Night, Centerpiece, and Closing Night presentations.

Currents

Currents complements the Main Slate, tracing a more complete picture of contemporary cinema with an emphasis on new and innovative forms and voices. This section is the only one at the festival which presents short films.

The selection team of Currents section consists of Dennis Lim (Chair), Aily Nash (is also Head of shorts programming), Rachael Rakes, and Tyler Wilson (is also Head of shorts programming).

Spotlight

Spotlight is showcase of the season's most anticipated and significant films.

Revivals

The Revivals section showcases important works from renowned filmmakers that have been digitally remastered, restored, and preserved with the assistance of generous partners.

Talks

Talks features in-depth conversations with filmmakers, critics, curators, and more.

History

Founding the Festival

The NYFF's first programmer, Richard Roud, was recruited by Lincoln Center President William Schuman in 1962. Boston-born Roud was 33 years old at the time and based in London where he worked as a film critic for The Guardian and programmed the London Film Festival. Though Roud maintained his home base in London, he recruited Amos Vogel of the legendary Cinema 16 film club as his New York–based co-programmer. The first edition of the festival opened on September 10, 1963, with Luis Buñuel's The Exterminating Angel and closed on September 19. It was a success and almost all screenings nearly sold out. The festival also included films screened at the Museum of Modern Art that had not been shown in the United States previously, including Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear and Point of Order. In 1966, Roud and Vogel formed the festival's first selection committee, consisting of Arthur Knight and Andrew Sarris; Susan Sontag was added the next year. Vogel resigned from his position as Festival Director in 1968. Though Roud was previously designated Program Director, he presided over the festival from 1969 to 1987.

Roud's 25 years at the festival were characterized by a focus on the European art cinema of the postwar years and the rise of auteurism.

The Richard Peña era

Richard Peña, then 34, took over as lead programmer in 1988. The Queens native was already an accomplished film historian, academic, and programmer. Prior to his work with NYFF, he worked at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Peña came to NYFF as a seasoned festival-goer who held Roud in high esteem. During his stint as programmer (which also lasted 25 years), Peña honored the festival's traditions and unique character – retaining the selection committee process, the non-competitive format, the post-screening director Q&As, and the festival's strict selectivity – while also working to expand NYFF's somewhat Eurocentric focus. Filmmakers like Hou Hsiao-hsien, Manoel de Oliveira, Leos Carax, Raúl Ruiz, and Krzysztof Kieślowski were introduced to NYFF audiences during the Roud era, and became regulars under Peña. After 25 years as Program Director and head of the NYFF selection committee, Peña led his final year at NYFF in 2012, during the festival's 50th presentation.

NYFF today

After Richard Peña's departure, Robert Koehler briefly took over year-round programming duties, while Kent Jones, who left The Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2009 to serve as Executive Director of the World Cinema Foundation, returned to lead NYFF. Jones began his programming career at Film Forum and the Rotterdam Film Festival, before joining The Film Society of Lincoln Center in 1998 as Associate Director of Programming and a member of the NYFF programming committee.

As of 2022, Dennis Lim is the Artistic Director of NYFF.

Opening Night films

Year	Title	Director(s)	Production Country
1963	The Exterminating Angel	Luis Buñuel	Mexico
1964	Hamlet	Grigori Kozintsev	Soviet Union
1965	Alphaville	Jean-Luc Goddard	France
1966	Loves of a Blonde	Milos Forman	Czechoslovakia
1967	The Battle of Algiers	Gillo Pontecorvo	Italy, Algeria
1968	Capricious Summer	Jiří Menzel	Czechoslovakia
1969	Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice	Paul Mazursky	United States
1970	The Wild Child	François Truffaut	France
1971	The Beginning	Gleb Panfilov	Soviet Union
1972	Chloe in the Afternoon	Éric Rohmer	France
1973	Day for Night	François Truffaut
1974	Don't Cry With Your Mouth Full	Pascal Thomas
1975	Conversation Piece	Luchino Visconti	Italy
1976	Small Change	François Truffaut	France
1977	One Sings, the Other Doesn't	Agnès Varda
1978	A Wedding	Robert Altman	United States
1979	Luna	Bernardo Bertolucci	Italy, United States
1980	Melvin and Howard	Jonathan Demme	United States
1981	Chariots of Fire	Hugh Hudson	United Kingdom
1982	Veronika Voss	Rainer Werner Fassbinder	West Germany
1983	The Big Chill	Lawrence Kasdan	United States
1984	Country	Richard Pearce
1985	Ran	Akira Kurosawa	Japan
1986	Down by Law	Jim Jarmusch	United States
1987	Dark Eyes	Nikita Mikhalkov	Italy
1988	Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown	Pedro Almodóvar	Spain
1989	Too Beautiful for You	Bertrand Blier	France
1990	Miller's Crossing	Joel Coen	United States
1991	The Double Life of Veronique	Krzysztof Kieślowski	France
1992	Olivier, Olivier	Agnieszka Holland
1993	Short Cuts	Robert Altman	United States
1994	Pulp Fiction	Quentin Tarantino
1995	Shanghai Triad	Zhang Yimou	China
1996	Secrets & Lies	Mike Leigh	United Kingdom
1997	The Ice Storm	Ang Lee	United States
1998	Celebrity	Woody Allen
1999	All About My Mother	Pedro Almodóvar	Spain
2000	Dancer in the Dark	Lars von Trier	Denmark, Sweden, France
2001	Va savoir	Jacques Rivette	France
2002	About Schmidt	Alexander Payne	United States
2003	Mystic River	Clint Eastwood
2004	Look at Me	Agnès Jaoui	France
2005	Good Night, and Good Luck	George Clooney	United States
2006	The Queen	Stephen Frears	United Kingdom
2007	The Darjeeling Limited	Wes Anderson	United States
2008	The Class	Laurent Cantet	France
2009	Wild Grass	Alain Resnais
2010	The Social Network	David Fincher	United States
2011	Carnage	Roman Polanski	France, Poland
2012	Life of Pi	Ang Lee	United States
2013	Captain Phillips	Paul Greengrass
2014	Gone Girl	David Fincher
2015	The Walk	Robert Zemeckis
2016	13th	Ava DuVernay
2017	Last Flag Flying	Richard Linklater
2018	The Favourite	Yorgos Lanthimos	Ireland, United Kingdom, United States
2019	The Irishman	Martin Scorsese	United States
2020	Lovers Rock	Steve McQueen	United Kingdom
2021	The Tragedy of Macbeth	Joel Coen	United States
2022	White Noise	Noah Baumbach
2023	May December	Todd Haynes
2024	Nickel Boys	RaMell Ross
2025	After the Hunt	Luca Guadagnino	Italy, United States

See also

• New York International Children's Film Festival