The month of October is full of pumpkins, ghosts, and all-things Halloween! However, if scary surprises aren’t your idea of fun, then you have come to the right place. The New York Film Festival is a great alternative, running from September 27th to October 13th every year. The festival was founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of the Lincoln Center. It is non-competitive, instead promoting a “main slate” of 20-30 feature films. The festival is celebrating its 62nd year with a fantastic line up of award-winning independent films!
After the pandemic, movie theaters experienced a severe decrease in box office sales. Many film festivals, including the New York film Festival, were worried that they would no longer have an audience when they resumed their activities. However, in 2022 and 2023, young students and professionals were the festival’s main source of ticket sales. These twentysomething moviegoers have helped the festival grow and surpass pre-pandemic attendance and sale levels. The tickets are discounted for students and can be purchased for the reasonable price of $15. The movie screenings are primarily at the Lincoln Center on the corner of 65th and Columbus Avenue. This means that Columbia and Barnard students can take the 1 train 7 stops and be there in under 20 minutes! All of this is to say that the New York Film Festival makes for an affordable and fun date-night or night-out with friends that is super convenient and includes snacks!
Another reason to check out these movies is because the festival has a rich history of featuring work by Columbia alumni. In 2022, the festival showed a short film entitled Same Old. This film was produced by Columbia alumnus Tony Yang who earned a Master’s Degree in Creative Producing from the university in 2020. The short follows a Chinese immigrant who works as a food delivery driver in New York City. He spends the night searching for his stolen bicycle in order to secure his means of transportation and livelihood. Same Old also premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Another Columbia alumni featured at the New York Film Festival was Sonia Oleniak. She earned a Master’s Degree in Film from the university in 2021. Coral is a short film about a cohort of sleepless people who wander through the night of a lunar eclipse. The short also features the singing of Czech musician Iva Bittová. Coral was awarded the Grand Prix at the Warsaw International Film Festival which qualified it for the Academy Awards.
Unfortunately no Columbia University or Barnard College alumni are being highlighted at the 2024 New York Film Festival, but the main slate still contains several must-see films! The acclaimed Emilia Pérez will be playing, and the cast (including everyone’s favorite, Selena Gomez) will be holding Q&As after select screenings. Emilia Pérez is a Spanish-language French musical crime comedy featuring Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Mark Ivanir, and Édgar Ramírez. The film follows a fearsome cartel leader, Emilia, who enlists Rita, an unappreciated lawyer stuck in a dead-end job, to help fake her death so that Emilia can live authentically as her true self. The movie premiered at the 77th Cannes Film Festival and the Jury Prize and its female ensemble won the Best Actress award. Several lesser-known films are also playing at the festival and have already received raving reviews. For example, Eephus directed by Carson Lund, premiered on October 1st. The film is set in a small town in New Hampshire. The local baseball field is about to become a construction site for the new middle school and the players who belong to the adult club league gather for one last game. The players’ level of skill is questionable, but their devotion to and love of the game is undeniable. Richard Brody from The New Yorker writes, “Lund composes its action with a cinematic eye—a spectrum of angles and distances and points of view that suggest an overwhelming and ironic intricacy that defies the smoothly packaged unities of televised sports”. The festival offers a wide array of movies, and so even if you attend a film you are not familiar with, you may be in for the screening of a lifetime! The New York Film Festival is the perfect opportunity to get an intimate look at the international film industry and enjoy your free time. What better way to distract yourself from the countless essays you have to write and midterms you must study for than sitting in the dark for an hour eating popcorn?