Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk from the 59th New York Film Festival with Memoria director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. For over two decades, Apichatpong Weerasethakul has been celebrated as one of world cinema’s most original auteurs, with films that constantly refract and reinscribe the contours of narrative, reality, and temporality. His new feature—which comes six years after 2015’s Cemetery of Splendour (NYFF53)—reaffirms his peerless status even as it takes the Thai auteur into uncharted territory: Memoria is Apichatpong’s first film set outside of Thailand, in Colombia; his first English- and Spanish-language venture; and his first outing with a bona fide international star, Tilda Swinton. We were thrilled to welcome the filmmaker for a deep-dive conversation about his extraordinary oeuvre and the elliptical novelties and familiar mysteries of his latest masterwork. Moderated by novelist Katie Kitamura. NYFF Talks were presented by HBO.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring an incredibly special talk from the 59th New York Film Festival with Pedro Almodóvar, Penélope Cruz, and Milena Smit on Parallel Mothers, moderated by NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. In this contemporary melodrama, two women, a generation apart, find themselves inextricably linked by their brief time together in a maternity ward. The circumstances that brought them to the Madrid hospital are quite different—one accidental, the other traumatic—and a secret, hiding the truth of the bond that connects these two, is a powerful story that tackles a deep trauma in Spanish history. Penélope Cruz’s Janis is a uniquely complex, flawed, but ultimately alluring lead character, who finds herself in a morally and emotionally treacherous situation. She’s viewed in contrast with Ana, radiantly portrayed by newcomer Milena Smit, a discovery who brings a palpable innocence, pain, and longing to this interwoven portrait of women and motherhood. These charismatic stars inhabit characters who are singular among those drawn by Almodóvar in a career defined by striking portraits of women. Parallel Mothers opens in our theaters on December 24, with a sneak preview the night of December 23. For tickets and showtimes, go to filmlinc.org/parallel.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk with The Rescue co-directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, moderated by Film at Lincoln Center Executive Director Lesli Klainberg. The Rescue chronicles the enthralling, against-all-odds story that transfixed the world in 2018: the daring rescue of twelve boys and their coach from deep inside a flooded cave in Northern Thailand. Academy Award-winning directors and producers E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin keep viewers on the edge of their seats as they use a wealth of never-before-seen material and exclusive interviews to piece together the high stakes mission, highlighting the efforts of the Royal Thai Navy SEALs and US Special Forces and details the expert cave divers' audacious venture to dive the boys to safety. The Rescue brings alive one of the most perilous and extraordinary rescues in modern times, shining a light on the high-risk world of cave diving, the astounding courage and compassion of the rescuers, and the shared humanity of the international community that united to save the boys. 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, go to filmlinc.org/members.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk with filmmakers Jane Campion and Sofia Coppola from the 59th New York Film Festival. Following her Best Director win at this year’s Venice Film Festival, Jane Campion returned to NYFF with her first feature since 2009’s Bright Star: The Power of the Dog, the Centerpiece selection of NYFF59. Known for her incisive portraits of womanhood, Campion turns her lens to masculinity in this new film, which adapts Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name. The results are thrilling: The Power of the Dog is a mesmerizing, psychologically rich variation on the American western, and a compassionate examination of repressed sexuality and the fragility of patriarchy. We were thrilled to welcome the legendary New Zealand director for an extended conversation with filmmaker Sofia Coppola about this latest entry in Campion’s masterful, decades-spanning career. The Power of the Dog is now playing on Netflix. NYFF Talks were presented by HBO.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A with Louverture Films co-producers Danny Glover and Joslyn Barnes, moderated by FLC’s Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Following a screening of Abderrahmane Sissako’s Bamako, the opening night film of our week-long Danny Glover and Louverture Films series, the co-producers discussed the history of the production company, collaborating with directors, and how the landscape of international cinema has changed over the years. Danny Glover and Louverture Films features 14 films from around the world and celebrates the work of the actor, activist, and groundbreaking production company. Now playing through December 7. For tickets, showtimes, and the full lineup, go to filmlinc.org/glover.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special talk from the 59th New York Film Festival with Drive My Car director, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, moderated by filmmaker Matías Piñeiro. Making his return to NYFF with not one but two Main Slate selections, Japanese filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi affirms his stature as a true rising star of world cinema, and one of the foremost chroniclers of the ebbs and flows of human relationships. With Drive My Car and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy—a pair of vividly realized and ceaselessly surprising emotional epics—Hamaguchi demonstrates his singular talent for tracing the intricate workings of the heart amid the perennial paradoxes of modern life. Inspired by a Haruki Murakami short story, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi spins an engrossing, expansive epic about love and betrayal, grief and acceptance, charting the unexpected, complex relationships that a theater actor-director forges with a trio of people out of professional, physical, or psychological necessity. Drive My Car is now playing in theaters. For showtimes and tickets go to filmlinc.org/drive. NYFF Talks were presented by HBO.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a remote live Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn director Radu Jude, moderated by NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn opens Friday, November 19. Get tickets: https://www.filmlinc.org/banging The targets are wide, the satire is broad, and every hit lands and stings in Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s angry, gleefully graceless Golden Bear winner from this year’s Berlin Film Festival. Evoking the unsanitized provocations of the great Dušan Makavejev in his prime, Jude crafts an invigorating, infuriating film in three movements that grows in both power and absurdity, centering around the trials of a teacher (Katia Pascariu) at a prestigious Bucharest school whose life and job are upended when her husband accidentally uploads their private sex tape to the internet for all to see. Jude has no compunction about shocking and skewering in his quest to toy with contemporary society’s religious and political hypocrisy, connecting conservative puritanical outrage to an entire history of violence.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? director Alexandre Koberidze, moderated by NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Among contemporary cinema’s most exciting and distinctive new voices, Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze has created an intimate city symphony like no other with his latest film. Beginning as an off-kilter romance in which footballer Giorgi and pharmacist Lisa are brought together on the streets of Kutaisi by chance, only to have their dreams complicated when they become victims of an age-old curse, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? continues to radically and pleasurably shape-shift. Ultimately it becomes a lovely portrait of an entire urban landscape and the preoccupations—and World Cup obsessions—of the people who live there. Koberidze has made an idiosyncratic epic out of passing glances that feels as free and fulsome as a fairy tale. What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? is now playing in our theaters. For tickets and showtimes go to filmlinc.org/sky

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with filmmaker Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, the director of two NYFF59 selections, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy and Drive My Car. Hamaguchi sat down with Film Comment's Co-Deputy Editor Devika Girish following the premiere of Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy. In this altogether delightful triptych of stories, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi again proves he’s one of contemporary cinema’s most agile dramatists of modern love and obsession. Whether charting the surprise revelation of a blossoming love triangle, a young couple’s revenge plot against an older teacher gone awry, or a case of mistaken romantic identity, Hamaguchi details the sudden reversals, power shifts, and role-playing that define relationships new and old. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is both ironic and tender, a lively and intricately woven work of imagination that questions whether fate or our own vanities decide our destinies. Hamaguchi’s second 2021 release, Drive My Car, opens at Film at Lincoln Center on November 24th.

This week on the Film at Lincoln Center podcast, we’re featuring a special  Q&A from the 59th New York Film Festival with filmmaker Joanna Hogg and NYFF Director of Programming Dennis Lim. Grieving and depleted from the tragic end of a relationship with a boyfriend who had suffered from drug addiction, young Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) summons the emotional and creative fortitude to forge ahead as a film student in 1980s London. Continuing the remarkable autobiographical saga she had begun in 2019’s The Souvenir, British director Joanna Hogg (a filmmaker of unceasing visual ingenuity and sociological specificity) fashions a gently meta-cinematic mirror image of part one, cutting to the quick in one surprising, enthralling idea after another. A film about finding one’s artistic inspiration and individuality that avoids every possible cliché, The Souvenir Part II is a bold conclusion to this story of unsentimental education, told with the filmmaker’s inimitable oblique poignancy, and featuring a mesmerizing supporting cast including Tilda Swinton, Harris Dickinson, Ariane Labed, Joe Alwyn, and a scene-stealing Richard Ayoade. The Souvenir Part II is now playing in our theaters, go to filmlinc.org/souvenirII for showtimes and tickets.