Festivals

"We are the ones between dos mundos, time suspended on the shelves, where home is always somewhere else. " – José Eduardo Aguilar “El Deportee” The Guadalajara Film Festival in Los Angeles – an HFPA grantee – is intent on focusing on issues that especially beset the Latinx population.

From the moment it had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, Argentina, 1985, the new film by Santiago Mitre starring Ricardo Darín and Peter Lanzani, has been a crowd pleaser, regardless of where it has been screened. It was not a surprise that it won the Audience Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival, or that it has become an instant hit in its own country, where lines form regularly around the block to enter the cinemas, a rarity in these days of watching content on platforms at home.

Hanging Gardens is Iraqi filmmaker Ahmed Yassin Al Daradji's first feature film. It follows twelve-year-old As’ad (Hussain Muhammad Jalil), who is trying to make ends meet in post-war Baghdad in Iraq.

Eugene Hernandez joined Film at Lincoln Center in 2010 and is its current Senior Vice President. He has overseen the New York Film Festival (NYFF) for the past three years, and this will be his last as in early September he was named director of the Sundance Film Festival.

Don’t let the title fool you. This rom-com starring Lily James and Shazad Latif is not a reference to the Tina Turner classic hit, nor her 1993 biopic of the same name, which garnered a Golden Globe win for Angela Bassett.

Award-winning Cinematographer, Luc Montpellier, talks about his latest work, the highly acclaimed film, Women Talking, which marks his third collaboration with director Sarah Polley and stars Frances McDormand, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, Rooney Mara and Ben Whishaw.   Montpellier hails from Canada, and his impressive litany of work has been seen over the last twenty years and includes such movies as Take This Waltz, Away From Her, Ruba Nadda’s Sabah, and Cairo Time.

The Woman King is directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood, and stars Viola Davis and South African Thuso Mbedu, along with Sheila Atim, Lashana Lynch and John Boyega. To describe it as an action film might be true, but it leaves out the social significance that might not be immediately obvious to people who are accustomed to seeing themselves represented on all levels of society.

Merging fact with fiction, French-Caribbean musician Joseph Bologne, who adopted the name Chevalier de Saint-Georges, is the subject of the biopic Chevalier, and is portrayed by Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the titular role.

In the 2021 fourth season finale of The Handmaid’s Tale, June Osborne (Elisabeth Moss), with the help of her fellow handmaids and the Canadian government, finally took revenge on Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and brutally murdered her Gilead commander and rapist. It was a long time coming for audiences searching for redemption for their favorite handmaid, now taking refuge in Canada.

The 60th New York Film Festival runs from September 30 to October 16. Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of then Lincoln Center president William Schuman, the NYFF it is one of the longest-running and most prestigious film festivals in the United States.