Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

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#357 - Julia Ducournau, Vincent Lindon, and Agathe Rousselle on Titane Sep 29, 2021

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On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez is joined by director Julia Ducournau and lead actors Vincent Lindon and Agathe Rousselle to discuss Titane, a Main Slate selection at NYFF59. Titane plays at the 59th New York Film Festival Wednesday, September 29 at 3:45pm. Standby only tickets may be available. The winner of the 2021 Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or, Titane is a thrillingly confident vision from Julia Ducournau that deposits the viewer directly into its director’s headspace. Moving with the logic of a dream—and often the force of a nightmare—the film begins as a kind of horror movie, with a series of shocking events perpetrated by Alexia (Agathe Rouselle, in a dynamic and daring breakthrough), a dancer with a titanium plate in her skull following a childhood car accident. However, once Alexia goes into hiding from the police, and is taken in by a grief-stricken firefighter (Vincent Lindon), Ducournau reveals her deployment of genre tropes to be as fluid and destabilizing as her mercurial main character. A feverish, violent, and frequently jaw-dropping ride, Titane nevertheless exposes the beating, fragile heart at its center as it questions our assumptions about gender, family, and love itself. Explore what's playing at NYFF59 and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff.

#356 - Mira Nair, Sarita Choudhury, and Ed Lachman on Mississippi Masala Sep 28, 2021

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On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, we’re joined by the creative team behind Mississippi Masala, a Revivals selection in this year’s New York Film Festival. In this talk sponsored by Turner Classic Movies, writer Jhumpa Lahiri speaks with director Mira Nair, lead actress Sarita Choudhury, and Director of Photography Ed Lachman about this seminal screen romance of the 1990s. In Mississippi Masala, Sarita Choudhury plays Mina, a Ugandan Indian from Kampala whose family leaves Uganda after the implementation of Idi Amin’s policy of forcefully expelling all Asians from the country. They wind up in Greenwood, Mississippi, living with relatives and trying to reconcile the trauma of their involuntary exile with assimilating to American culture. Some 17 years pass before Mina falls for a self-employed carpet cleaner, Demetrius (played by Denzel Washington), and their romance puts them in conflict with the local Black and Indian-American communities—not to mention Mina’s family. At once a powerful parable and a deeply personal work, Mississippi Masala remains an incisive examination of race relations and the tension between passion and tradition. To learn more and get tickets for this year's NYFF, taking place through October 10 indoors and outdoors throughout NYC, visit filmlinc.org/nyff.

#355 - Mia Hansen-Løve, Vicky Krieps & Anders Danielson Lie on Bergman Island Sep 27, 2021

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On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by Bergman Island director Mia Hansen-Løve and two of her lead actors, Vicky Krieps and Anders Danielson Lie, to discuss their Main Slate selection of this year’s festival. Bergman Island opens at Film at Lincoln Center on October 15th. A masterful blend of the personal and the meta-cinematic, Mia Hansen-Løve’s meditation on the reconciliation of love and the creative process is also delightful cinephile catnip. Vicky Krieps and Tim Roth star as Chris and Tony, married filmmakers who venture to the remote Swedish island of Fårö—where director Ingmar Bergman lived and made many of his masterpieces—as a writing retreat for their new projects. Both inspired and troubled by the isolation and history of the place, Chris gets lost in the lives of her new fictional creations (realized on screen by Mia Wasikowska and Anders Danielsen Lie) while also reckoning with the lines between reality and fantasy. A tribute to a film artist that never crosses over into idolatry, and a sneakily emotional portrait of an artist finding her individual voice, Bergman Island is one of Hansen-Løve’s most gently profound films. Explore what's playing at NYFF59 and get tickets at filmlinc.org/tix

#354 - Joachim Trier, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Renate Reinsve on The Worst Person in the World Sep 26, 2021

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On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by Joachim Trier, Anders Danielsen Lie, and Renate Reinsve. Trier's latest film, The Worst Person in the World, is a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival. As proven in such exacting stories of lives on the edge as Reprise and Oslo, August 31, Norwegian director Joachim Trier is singularly adept at giving an invigorating modern twist to classically constructed character portraits. Trier catapults the viewer into the world of his most spellbinding protagonist yet: Julie, played by Cannes Best Actress winner Renate Reinsve, who’s the magnetic center of nearly every scene. After dropping out of pre-med, Julie must find new professional and romantic avenues as she navigates her twenties, juggling emotionally heavy relationships with two very different men (Trier regular Anders Danielsen Lie and engaging newcomer Herbert Nordrum). Fluidly told in 12 discrete chapters, Trier’s film elegantly depicts the precarity of identity and the mutability of happiness in our runaway contemporary world. Explore what's playing at NYFF and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff.

#353 - Paul Verhoeven on Benedetta Sep 25, 2021

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On today’s episode of our daily NYFF59 podcasts, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim is joined by Paul Verhoeven, whose latest film, Benedetta, is a Main Slate selection of this year’s festival and will be opening at the Film at Lincoln Center on December 3rd. Based on true events, Benedetta unearths the story of Benedetta Carlini, a 17th-century nun in Tuscany who believed she saw visions of Christ and engaged in a sexual relationship with a fellow sister at her abbey. Because this is a film by genre auteur par excellence Paul Verhoeven (whose movies include Robocop, Basic Instinct, and NYFF54 selection Elle), the result is anything but a reverent treatment of an odd footnote in Catholic European history. Forgoing the hallmarks of prestige cinema, this delirious, erotic, and violent melodrama is told with a boundless spirit for scandal, and unabashedly courts blasphemy as it unfolds its tale of religious hypocrisy. Wildly entertaining, and featuring standout performances from Virginie Efira as the title character and Charlotte Rampling as the stoic, conflicted Mother Abbess, Benedetta maintains both a feverish pitch and a fascinating ambiguity in its depiction of the miraculous and the mundane, the sacred and the profane. To learn more and get tickets for this year's NYFF, taking place through October 10 indoors and outdoors throughout NYC, visit filmlinc.org/nyff.

#352 - 59th New York Film Festival Preview Sep 22, 2021

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This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special preview in anticipation of the 59th New York Film Festival, taking place September 24 – October 10, 2021. An annual bellwether of the state of cinema that has shaped film culture since 1963, the festival continues a long-standing tradition of introducing audiences to bold and remarkable works from celebrated filmmakers as well as fresh new talent. Join NYFF Director Eugene Hernandez, NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim, and the programmers of NYFF59 as they discuss their top picks from this year’s festival. Explore the full lineup, see the festival schedule, and get tickets at filmlinc.org/nyff. This talk was first available to FLC members, who play such a vital role in all we do. If you're interested in supporting FLC by becoming a member and exploring member benefits, visit filmlinc.org/members for more information.

#351 - Andreas Fontana on the Suspense and Critique of Aristocracy in Azor Sep 10, 2021

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This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we're featuring a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with Andreas Fontana on his feature debut, Azor. Swiss director Andreas Fontana brings an astonishingly assured eye to this gripping debut feature set in the cloistered world of high finance in Argentina in the 1970s. With a finely tuned sense of impassive anxiety, Fabrizio Rongione plays a banker who has traveled from Geneva to Buenos Aires with his wife to disentangle the complicated threads left behind by a colleague who has mysteriously disappeared. Once there, he finds himself descending ever deeper into a sinister inner circle, connecting the country’s upper classes to the military junta’s ongoing “Dirty War.” Azor is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/azor.

#350 - Jessica Beshir on the Importance of Myth, Circularity, and Nostalgia in Faya Dayi Sep 03, 2021

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This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 50th New Directors/New Films with Jessica Beshir on her hypnotic documentary feature, Faya Dayi. In Faya Dayi, Beshir returns to her hometown of Harar and explores the coexistence of everyday life and its mythical undercurrents in the city, its rural Oromo community of farmers, and the harvesting of the country’s most sought-after export (the euphoria-inducing khat plant). Faya Dayi is neither a straightforward work of nostalgia nor an issue-oriented doc about a particular drug culture. Rather, she has constructed something dreamlike: a film that uses light, texture, and sound to illuminate the spiritual lives of people whose experiences often become fodder for ripped-from-the-headlines tales of migration. Faya Dayi is now playing daily in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/faya.

#349 - Screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson on Respect Aug 26, 2021

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This week on the Film at Lincoln Center Podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A on Liesl Tommy’s Respect with screenwriter Tracey Scott Wilson, moderated by Emil Wilbekin, former editor of Vibe, Essence and founder of Native Son, a platform created to inspire and empower Black Gay Men. Following the rise of Aretha Franklin’s career from a child singing in her father’s church’s choir to her international superstardom, Respect is the remarkable true story of the music icon’s journey to find her voice, starring Jennifer Hudson, Forest Whitaker, Mary J Blige, and more. This talk was first available to FLC patrons and members, who play such a vital role in all we do. If you're interested in supporting FLC by becoming a member and exploring member benefits, visit filmlinc.org/members for more information. Respect is now playing in theaters.

#348 - Matías Piñeiro on Isabella and Nicolás Pereda on Fauna Aug 20, 2021

Show notes

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a conversation from the 58th New York Film Festival with filmmakers Matías Piñeiro and Nicolás Pereda. In Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella and Nicolás Pereda’s Fauna, one never knows where performance ends and life begins. The two films meditate in poignant ways on storytelling as both an artistic and an everyday act: Isabella continues Piñeiro’s wryly quotidian takes on Shakespearean dramas, while Fauna unearths the violence haunting a Mexican village beneath a veneer of fabrications and arch comedy. In a sprawling conversation moderated by NYFF program advisor Gina Telaroli, the two filmmakers chatted about their shared affinities, inimitable idiosyncrasies, and respective approaches to collaboration, color, structure, and more. Matías Piñeiro’s Isabella opens in our theaters on August 27. For showtimes and tickets visit filmlinc.org/isabella.

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