New Directors/New Films 2014

Now in its 43rd year, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art’s New Directors/New Films festival continues its commitment to bringing exciting new discoveries from around the world to New York City filmgoers. Twenty-nine countries represent the 27 features and 13 shorts that make up this year’s program, which kicks off on March 19 with a screening of Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, a carryover from this year’s Sundance Film Festival that has been described as the first Iranian vampire film, and closes on March 30 with Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard’s 20,000 Days on Earth, which follows a fictitious day in the life of musician Nick Cave during the writing of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album Push the Sky Away.

This prestigious series spotlights “new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent,” and this year’s U.S. premieres include Robert Minervini’s Stop the Pounding Heart, a documentary-style portrait of a goat farmer’s 14-year-old daughter; Albert Serra’s Story of My Death, an eccentric riff on the historical costume drama that pits Casanova against Dracula; Tom Shoval’s Youth, a depiction of a foolhardy kidnapping scheme by two Israeli brothers; and Abdellah Taïa’s Salvation Army, based on the director’s own 2006 novel about a young gay man’s awakening. This year’s lineup also welcomes back Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears), whose Amer screened during the festival’s 2010 edition, and Hubert Sauper, whose We Come As Friends, an exploration of modern colonialism, is the second film in a planned trilogy that began with his Oscar-nominated Darwin’s Nightmare (ND/NF ’05).

This renowned festival has always understood and indulged its audience’s diffuse, cross-genre tastes, and among this year’s selections are two psychological thrillers (Alejandro Fernández Almendras’s To Kill a Man and Benjamín Naishtat’s History of Fear), a moody scare flick (Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook), a satire about race relations (Justin Simien’s Dear White People), a darkly comic modern take on a Dostoevsky classic (Richard Ayoade’s The Double), a seriocomic romance about reproductive rights (Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child, the festival’s centerpiece), and documentaries that run the gamut from the lucidly enraged (Talal Derki’s Return to Homs) to the reflexively heady (Gilles Deroo and Marianne Pistone’s Mouton). Ed Gonzalez

New Directors/New Films runs from March 19—30. For tickets click here.

20,000 Days on Earth by John Semley
The Babadook by Abhimanyu Das
Buzzard by Elise Nakhnikian
Dear White People by R. Kurt Osenlund
The Double by Chris Cabin
Fish & Cat by Steve Macfarlane
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night by Ed Gonzalez
History of Fear by Steve Macfarlane
The Japanese Dog by Kenji Fujishima
Mouton by Wes Greene
Obvious Child by Steve Macfarlane
Of Horses and Men by R. Kurt Osenlund
Quod Erat Demonstrandum by Drew Hunt
Return of Homs by Elise Nakhnikian
Salvation Army by Diego Costa
Salvo by Wes Greene
She’s Lost Control by Kenji Fujishima
A Spell to Ward Off the Darkness by John Semley
Stop the Pounding Heart by Chris Cabin
Story of My Death by Jesse Cataldo
The Strange Little Cat by John Semley
The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears by Ed Gonzalez
To Kill a Man by R. Kurt Osenlund
Trap Street by Kenji Fujishima
The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga by Ela Bittencourt
We Come As Friends by Chuck Bowen
Youth by Alan Jones