Every year in early autumn, movie lovers converge on the Upper West Side for the New York Film Festival, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Here you’ll find the film fan who has been champing at the bit to see the most-anticipated new releases of the fall; the older patron of the arts curious to discover something new in the festival’s retrospective section; the Tisch student prepared to have her mind blown by some deliriously inventive movie imported from halfway around the world; the Manhattan socialite who only bought a ticket on a lark; the writer who isn’t as impressed by his favorite director’s latest effort—one suspects he’s never impressed; the grizzled festival veteran who remembers when the lines weren’t as long and the security wasn’t as tight; and me, the bright-eyed cinephile who finally found the time and funds to come from out of town to experience the East Coast’s premier film festival for the first time.
New York is considered the last of the major film festivals of the calendar year. Consequently, there’s an absence here of that legendary buzz of discovery associated with other festivals. All the movies that end up here have already been discovered somewhere else—Cannes, Berlin, Sundance, Locarno, Venice, Toronto—and everyone who comes to this festival does so with the foreknowledge (or at least access to it) of which movies are worth seeing and why.
