New York’s Main Slate and Toronto’s Centerpiece

First, the four. When Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig premiered in Cannes, where it won a Special Jury Prize, the Telegraph’s Robbie Collin called it “a mesmerizingly gripping and controlled parable-thriller in which the paranoia, misogyny, and rage of the Iranian state are mapped seamlessly onto an ordinary family unit.”

Dea Kulumbegashvili’s April, the story of an obstetrician in rural Georgia who helps women seeking illegal abortions, will premiere in competition in Venice, and Happyend, the first fictional feature from Neo Sora (Ryuichi Sakamoto | Opus), will compete in Venice’s Orizzonti program. The NYFF is once again doubling up on Hong Sangsoo, screening A Traveler’s Needs—Isabelle Huppert stars in this winner of the Grand Jury Prize in Berlin—and By the Stream, which will premiere in Locarno next week before rolling on to Toronto.

Two NYFF selections will screen in Toronto as Gala Presentations. Both premiered in Cannes and neither took home any prizes. With Oh, Canada, an adaptation of Russell Banks’s 2021 novel Foregone, Paul Schrader “presents a portrait of a dying man who feels that his inner self has failed to live up to his public one,” writes Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri, and “while Oh, Canada is narratively bleak, it’s stylistically quite light on its feet, almost airy.”

David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds “was misjudged by some according to genre benchmarks it’s unconcerned with, while actually confronting primal human emotions that concern us all,” writes Nicolas Rapold for Sight and Sound. “The macabre starting point—a widower has invented camera-equipped graves for observing the corpse of a loved one—leads into the morass of grief, and how one can nearly go mad reorienting oneself in a world newly without.”

Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides left Cannes empty-handed as well, but it’s one of seven of Toronto’s Special Presentations that will also screen in New York, including Sean Baker’s Anora, the winner of the Palme d’Or; Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine as Light, which won the Grand Prix; and Rungano Nyoni’s On Becoming a Guinea Fowl. Nyoni shared the Un Certain Regard’s directing award with Roberto Minervini, whose The Damned will screen in New York but not Toronto.

Alain Guiraudie’s Misericordia screened in the noncompetitive Cannes Premiere program, and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Harvest will premiere in competition in Venice. The seventh title in this cluster is one of the most anticipated films of the season, and for many, it’s been eagerly awaited ever since Mike Leigh made his last film, Peterloo, six years ago. Hard Truths will see its world premiere in Toronto before it heads to New York.

One world premiere in Toronto’s Centerpiece program left out of the NYFF’s Main Slate is Sofia Bohdanowicz’s Measures for a Funeral, in which Deragh Campbell once again plays the ever-curious Audrey Benac. Here, Audrey seeks to restore the legacy of the forgotten Canadian violinist Kathleen Parlow.

New York will host the world premieres of two intriguing documentaries. Robinson Devor’s Suburban Fury is a portrait of Sara Jane Moore, who tried and failed to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975. And Julia Loktev (The Loneliest Planet) was in Moscow profiling independent journalists when Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine. The NYFF calls My Undesirable Friends: Part I — Last Air in Moscow “an extraordinary vérité document of a moment of immense change and anxiety, as well as a vital depiction of the eternal hope that so many in Russia hold for living in a democratic state.”

Toronto (September 5 through 15) will open with David Gordon Green’s Nutcrackers, starring Ben Stiller, and close with Rebel Wilson’s directorial debut, The Deb. The opening night film in New York (September 27 through October 14) will be RaMell Ross’s Nickel Boys, the closing night film will be Steve McQueen’s Blitz, and the Centerpiece presentation will be Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door, starring Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton.