Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2025: 30 Years of French Cinema in NYC

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 04 March 2025 02:14

Written by Brad Balfour

 Suspended Time

Now in its 30th edition the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema film festival brings French cinema by new and classic directors alike. Running March 6 to 16 at Film at Lincoln Center the festival features 23 films, some making their US premiere. This year’s festival includes newcomers to the fest as well as returning directors, including the U.S. premiere of In His Own Image by Thierry de Peretti, in which a photographer’s love affair with an activist intersects with Corsica’s fight for independence; When Fall Is Coming, François Ozon’s darkly emotional thriller about a retiree whose country life masks her more complicated past; Visiting Hours by Patricia Mazuy and starring Isabelle Huppert, the story of the unlikely friendship between two women; and Suspended Time, a disarmingly personal work of autofiction from the great Olivier Assayas, capturing two brothers and their romantic partners trying to maintain their sanity amid the extended isolation of the 2020 pandemic lockdown while cohabiting in their provincial family house.

Many of the films also include introductions and Q&As from special guests. Guests include: Elizabeth Becker, Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma, Gilles Bourdos, Claire Burger, Delphine and Muriel Coulin, Louise Courvoisier, Matt Dillon, Judith Godrèche, Vincent Lindon, Thibaut de Longeville, Patricia Mazuy, Jonathan Millet, Rithy Panh, Thierry de Peretti, Camille Perton, Michel Petrossian, Agathe Riedinger, and Anamaria Vartolomei.

Two free talks addressing current issues in filmmaking will be offered: “Producers Shaping the Future of Film” brings together four adventurous film producers from France and the U.S. to discuss storytelling and filmmaking in the current business environment; and “Frames of Change: Judith Godrèche and Moi Aussi,” a conversation with Judith Godrèche, features the filmmaker discussing how speaking up about sexual abuse in the film industry has impacted her career and made her a pivotal figure of the MeToo movement in France.

The festival is conducted with the help of Unifrance, an organization formed in 1949 with the intent of promoting French cinema and television around the world. “Unifrance is honored to be celebrating 30 years of French cinema with our partner, Film at Lincoln Center,” said Daniela Elstner, Executive Director of Unifrance. “Rendez-Vous with French Cinema is one of our biggest highlights of the year and we are grateful to our partner for providing a home to French filmmakers in New York for the past three decades.”

To learn more, got to: https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/rendez-vous-with-french-cinema/

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2025
March 6 - 16, 2025

Film at Lincoln Center
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

Winter Film Festival Is Back With Cinema From Around the World

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 18 February 2025 21:32

Written by Brad Balfour

Now in its auspicious 13th year, The Winter Film Festival returns to NYC. Running February 19 - 23, the Winter Film Festival screens at multiple NYC venues including the LOOK Dine-In Cinemas, 230 Fifth, and Mirabella Lounge. The Winter Film Festival features 87 films from around the world - from animated films, documentaries, dramas, horror films and music videos, 14 student films, 29 first-time directors and more than half of the films made by women and half by BIPOC directors. The festival also includes six educational workshops, discussions with directors, and networking/mixer events.

Educational sessions include:

• The Secret Bloody Truths – Get Your Indie Horror Film Made! (Feb 20, 12:45-2:00pm)

• Surviving as a Freelancer in the Film Industry with the Freelancer's Union (Feb 20, 2:15-3:30pm)

• Harnessing Flexibility in your Acting & Filmmaking – with IMPROV! (Feb 20, 3:45pm-5:00pm)

• Festival Formula: Here To Tell You Some Festival Truths (and be honest) (Feb 21, 12:45pm-2:00pm)

• All About Distribution with Dan Gurlitz (Feb 21, 2:15pm-3:30pm)

• Navigating Film Fundraising with NYWIFT (Feb 21, 3:45pm-5:00pm)

To learn more, go to: https://winterfilmawards.com/wff2025/

Winter Film Festival
February 19 - 23, 2025

Various venues in NYC

New York Jewish Film Festival: Cinema & The Jewish Experience at Lincoln Center

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 13 January 2025 19:55

Written by Brad Balfour

 Jacob Fortune-Lloyd in Midas Man

This January, the Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center collaborate once again for the annual New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF).  Running January 15th through the 29th at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street), the festival features  documentary, narrative, and short films from around the world that explore the Jewish experience. 

Along with its slate of almost two dozen features, documentaries, and shorts, the NYJFF also has special classic screenings. The 1975 period drama, Hester Street, directed by Joan Micklin Silver, will have a 50th anniversary screening of a new restoration. The film recreates Jewish immigrant life on New York’s Lower East Side at the turn of the century, and features Carol Kane in an Oscar-nominated performance. The 1922 silent feature Breaking Home Ties, a film once believed lost, will be shown with a new digital restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film, and is now presented with a newly recorded score performed by Grammy Award-winning musicians.

The Opening Film of the festival, Midas Man, is an empathetic biopic on Brian Epstein, the Jewish and gay music lover and visionary man who discovered and then managed the Beatles in the 1960s before his tragic death at age 32. The seismic impact of the Beatles on popular culture continues to reverberate 60 years after they took The Ed Sullivan Show by storm in February 1964. Yet that revelatory TV appearance never would have taken place—and the band may never have been discovered—if not for Epstein. Directed by Joe Stephenson and written by Brigit Grant, the film features a deeply moving Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (The Queen’s Gambit) as Epstein, with a cast that includes Jonah Lees as John Lennon, Blake Richardson as Paul McCartney, Emily Watson and Eddie Marsan as Epstein’s parents, and Jay Leno as Ed Sullivan. 

In the Centerpiece Film, Of Dogs and Men, filmmaker Dani Rosenberg dives headfirst into the psychological horrors of our contemporary world with this experiential account of a teenager named Dar (Ori Avinoam), who returns home to her kibbutz searching for her missing dog in the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 attacks in Israel, filmed in late October 2023. Of Dogs and Men takes a humanist approach to the ongoing conflict, reckoning with both the horrifying losses within her Jewish community and the imminent tragic violence of retribution in Gaza.

The Closing Film, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round, is a timely and uplifting evocation of cooperative political protest. Ilana Trachtman’s documentary recalls a crucial 1960 chapter in the Civil Rights Movement when protesting Black students were joined by Jewish locals as they perched defiantly on a merry-go-round in Maryland’s segregated Glen Echo Amusement Park. Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round reminds viewers of the importance of collaboration and humility in the face of injustice and features a voice-over cast that includes Mandy Patinkin, Jeffrey Wright, and Dominique Thorne, among others.

To learn more, go to: https://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/new-york-jewish-film-festival/

New York Jewish Film Festival
January 15 - 29, 2025

Film at Lincoln Center - Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023