The Best of the Fests: Talking Diverse Excellence at the New York Film Festival

If the Venice, Telluride and Toronto film festivals are where most of the fall premieres are (and, thus, the risk of seeing some absolute flops), the New York Film Festival is where you’ll find the year’s best works. Sure, most movies that play at Film at Lincoln Center’s annual festival have already premiered at other festivals. But, what the festival lacks in world premieres, it makes up for in excellent curation.

It’s extremely difficult to find a bad movie on NYFF’s lineup, because the slate is so refined, tailored perfectly for the elevated audiences that frequent its four main auditoriums.

Like other festivals, most audiences flock in droves for the festival’s Main Slate and Spotlight lineups, which feature many New York and American premieres of other festivals’ most acclaimed titles. While that was my approach as well, I consistently find that some of my favorite titles lie in the festival’s two smaller sections. “Currents” spotlights smaller-scale, arthouse and experimental works; “Revivals” delivers incredible restorations of sometimes classic, and other times unknown, works.

Perhaps the biggest name on the Currents lineup this year, Back Home is the newest film from Malaysian-Taiwanese legend Tsai Ming-liang, known for his acclaimed works of slow cinema. The 65-minute nonfiction portrait depicts a community in Laos through different environments. Dialogue is sparse (and not even subtitled), and Tsai consistently holds on shots, allowing audiences to consider each frame as its own tableau. While not for everyone, the filmmaker’s dedication to capturing the harmony between people, architecture and nature is striking, a concept especially communicated through a jaw-dropping final shot.

Another location-based documentary, Vietnamese filmmaker Trương Minh Quý’s Hair, Paper, Water… (directed in partnership with documentarian Nicolas Graux) is an intimate yet expansive look at an elderly figure in rural Vietnam trying to keep her native Ruc language alive. Trương achieved notoriety last year with his exquisitely shot Viet and Nam, and his thoughtful shot blocking and filmmaking sensibilities especially shine here. The way he captures the luscious, green Vietnamese landscape in 16mm is stunning, and the film is a thoughtful rumination on the importance of passing language down, so that we don’t lose yet another way of seeing the world. This is another film on the shorter side, clocking in at just 71 minutes.

Japanese filmmaker Masao Adachi’s newest feature, Escape, could not be more different than the two films above. Through archival material and restagings, the film traces the life of terrorist Satoshi Kirishima, who assumed a new identity and managed to evade capture for decades before eventually revealing his secret to the police on his deathbed. This might be one of the most intriguing plots of the festival, and Adachi’s film is kinetic, oscillating between timelines, genres and styles with remarkable ease. The film is slightly too long for its own good, and its back half begins to feel repetitive and directionless. Regardless, its ideas on the boundary between freedom and captivity, and what it means to live a false life, are thoughtful and engaging.

Lucio Castro’s Drunken Noodles is a charming, if not fully developed, story of love and desire. The film follows Adnan (Laith Khalifeh), a graduate student who spends his summer working at an art gallery in New York. Through four vignettes, we learn more about Adnan’s past relationships and situationships, all of which have shaped his outlook on life and art in one form or another. As is the case with most episodic films, some of the stories work better than others. Two stories – one following a budding relationship with a delivery driver, another exploring how Adnan’s partner deals with the loss of his twin sister – are very compelling. Otherwise, it often feels like the director sacrifices depth and resonance for quick pacing and a breezy story (the film clocks in at just 83 minutes).

If Drunken Noodles is short and to the point, Alexandre Koberidze’s Dry Leaf is anything but either of those things. The Georgian filmmaker’s follow-up to his vastly underrated 2021 film, What Do We See When We Look At the Sky?, is a 186-minute meditation on our relationship to land, nature and sports. The film follows Irakli (David Koberidze), a father searching for his 29-year-old missing journalist daughter. He believes she’s on an assignment, visiting soccer fields around the country. Traveling with his daughter’s friend, Levan (who’s literally invisible, making their conversations quite amusing and charming), the two immerse themselves in the hypnotic world of nature and rural life. The film is shot on a Sony Ericsson phone and is presented in 480p quality; the unique cinematography is still top-notch, with its warm-hued and softly lit shots among some of the year’s finest.

This year’s Revivals section featured a stunning new restoration of an underseen Satyajit Ray film, Days and Nights in the Forest. The film may not be as complex and timeless as the director’s iconic Pather Panchali trilogy, but this small-scale story, following four men who retreat in the Indian countryside, packs quite a punch. The film’s plot may be straightforward, but through subtle dialogue and slow-building tension, Ray presents some incredibly polished ideas on social class distinctions, the fragility of the male ego and the danger of desire. The 4K restoration is jaw-dropping, and above all, it’s nice to see a lesser film from such a renowned director get its opportunity to shine.