The New York Film Festival on Tuesday unveiled the main slate for its 62nd edition, with selections including Sean Baker's Palme d'Or-winning “Anora,” Pedro Almodóvar's “The Room Next Door” and Mati Diop's “Dahomey.” Thirty-three features will make up the central lineup of the annual festival presented by Film at Lincoln Center. The main slate is particularly international this year, with films hailing from 24 countries, and including 19 directors making their debut in the festival's most prestigious section.
The festival, as previously announced, will kick off Sept. 27 with RaMell Ross' “Nickel Boys,” an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2019 novel. Almodóvar, making his 15th appearance in New York's main slate, will present “The Room Next Door,” starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, as the festival centerpiece.
Steve McQueen's “Blitz," about the bombing of London in World War II, will be the closing night film. A number of prize-winners from May's Cannes Film Festival will be making their U.S.
or North American premieres. Along with “Anora,” that includes “Grand Tour,” by Miguel Gomes, winner of Cannes' best director; Payal Kapadia's “All We Imagine as Light,” winner of the Grand Prix; Rungano Nyoni's “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl,” a standout from Un Certain Regard; and “The Seed of the Sacred Fig,” from the dissident Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof who fled his home country to unveil his film. “.