Scuttlebutt has it that this year’s edition of the New York Film Festival is one of the richest in the festival’s 44-year history. This is impossible to dispute given the variety of the program, which includes seven Cannes holdovers, among them Pedro Almodóvar’s Volver, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Climates, Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, and Johnnie To’s Triad Election.
As always, there were some surprising omissions: The Wind that Shakes the Barley and the two most volatile cherry bombs lobbed inside the Cannes Palais earlier this year, Southland Tales and Flandres. Their absence, though it may be felt, is easy to forgive given the platter of high-profile U.S. premieres from masters old and new: Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Go Master, Manoel de Oliveira’s Belle Toujours, Hong Sang-soo’s Woman on the Beach, Jafar Panahi’s Offside, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century.
The selection committee also ensures that fanboys won’t go hungry this year: Closing the festival will be Guillermo del Toro’s Franco-era fairy tale Pan’s Labyrinth, and filling three of the program’s slots will be two already-acclaimed productions, Satoshi Kon’s latest animation Paprika and Bong Joon-ho’s wild genre hybrid The Host, and what is bound to be the hottest ticket in this year’s festival, David Lynch’s latest self-reflexive ode to the dream factory, Inland Empire. The film, which rides into town on a wave of baffled critical discourse from its premiere screening at Venice, clocks in at three hours, and for some that will not be a minute too long.
Beginning September 20, please check back daily as a synopsis and full review of each festival film will be added to Slant Magazine’s ongoing coverage. (All films are reviewed except for Gardens in Autumn.) The 44th New York Film Festival will run from September 29 to October 15, 2006. For more information please check the festival’s main program. Ed Gonzalez
• 49 Up (Michael Apted)
• August Days (Marc Recha)
• Bamako (Abderrahmane Sissako)
• Belle Toujours (Manoel de Oliveira)
• Climates (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
• Falling (Barbara Albert)
• The Go Master (Tian Zhuangzhuang)
• The Host (Bong Joon-ho)
• Inland Empire (David Lynch)
• Insiang (Lino Brocka)
• The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn)
• Little Children (Todd Field)
• Mafioso (Alberto Sordi)
• Marie Antoinette (Sophia Coppola)
• Offside (Jafar Panahi)
• Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)
• Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro)
• Paprika (Satoshi Kon)
• Poison Friends (Emmanuel Bourieu)
• Private Lives in Public Places (Alain Resnais)
• The Queen (Stephen Frears)
• Reds (Warren Beatty)
• Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
• These Girls (Tahani Rached)
• Triad Election (Johnnie To)
• Volver (Pedro Almodóvar)
• Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo)
• Views from the Avant-Garde
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