The lineup for Shorts and Talks during the 56th New York Film Festival will feature films from nine countries as well as from burgeoning talent here in New York, the shorts section presents 21 films in four different programs. NYFF Talks will bring wide-ranging conversations with directors featured in NYFF56 to the public.
HBO® is the presenting sponsor of NYFF Talks, which includes Directors Dialogues and On Cinema. This year’s Directors Dialogues feature conversations with Centerpiece filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, Main Slate filmmakers Jia Zhangke and Alice Rohrwacher (NYFF54 Filmmaker in Residence), and Spotlight on Documentary director Errol Morris. High Life director Claire Denis is this year’s On Cinema talk, an in-depth discussion with NYFF Director Kent Jones. HBO® also sponsors NYFF Live, which will be announced in September.
The Shorts selection includes two International Programs, featuring a mix of narrative, animation, and documentary work by established and emerging directors; annual thriller program Genre Stories; and New York Stories, featuring some of the most exciting filmmakers living and working in New York today.
Highlights include the world premieres of To the Unknown and The North Wind’s Gift, directed by Michael Almereyda (Experimenter, NYFF53); The Chore, directed by Ashley Connor and Joe Stankus (The Layover, NYFF55); Quarterbacks, directed by Jason Giampietro (Unpresidented, NYFF55), and Eleanore Pienta’s Ada.
SHORT FILM
International Shorts I
Anteu
João Vladimiro, Portugal/France, 29m
Portuguese with English subtitles
North American Premiere
This vividly stylized and formally audacious work from Portuguese director João Vladimiro follows the life of a young man as he gradually becomes the last living person of his village.
Here There Is No Earth
Martin Diccico, USA/Turkey, 2018, 6m
Turkish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A testimony about a shepherd’s fatal encounter at the Turkish-Armenian border provides a haunting perspective on the countries’ physical and invisible lines of separation.
jeny303
Laura Huertas Millán, Colombia/France, 2018, 7m
Spanish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
Footage of an abandoned Bauhaus-style building accompanies confessionals from Jeny, a self-described living work of art, in this fleeting meditation on architecture and biography.
Man in the Well / Jing li of ren
Hu Bo, China, 2017, 16m
Mandarin with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Desperation and ruin pervade this unsettling short from the late novelist-turned-filmmaker Hu Bo (An Elephant Sitting Still), in which two starving children encounter a dead body.
Tourneur
Yalda Afsah, Germany, 2018, 15m
U.S. Premiere
Yalda Afsah’s nonverbal documentary beholds the strange, subtly tense proceedings of a bullfight in the south of France, in which young men confront the animal inside the arena.
International Shorts II
Black Dog
Joshua Tuthill, USA, 2017, 15m
New York Premiere
Through its uncanny blend of archival footage and stop-motion animation, Black Dog evokes a nightmarish conception of an American family during the 1960s Space Race.
Down There
Zhengfan Yang, China, 2018, 11m
U.S. Premiere
A single long take observes the collective psychology of an apartment building after a quiet night is interrupted by an off-screen sound.
Glorious Acceptance of Nicolas Chauvin / Le Discours d’acceptation glorieux de Nicolas Chauvin
Benjamin Crotty, France, 2018, 27m
North American Premiere
Benjamin Crotty’s latest is this hilarious and unpredictable portrait of Nicolas Chauvin—a possibly apocryphal Napoleonic soldier whose name is the basis for the word chauvinism—as he recounts his travails via a lifetime achievement award speech.
Let Us Now Praise Movies / Y ahora elogiemos las películas
Nicolás Zukerfeld, Argentina, 2017, 15m
Spanish with English subtitles
North American Premiere
A young critic balances his time between a day job at a stationary store and managing a film magazine in this amusingly intelligent homage to the small yet boundless moments so many films leave out.
Veslemøy’s Song
Sofia Bohdanowicz, Canada, 2018, 9m
U.S. Premiere
Shot on hand-processed black-and-white film, Sofia Bohdanowicz’s wry, wistful narrative-doc follows a young woman (Deragh Campbell) as she investigates the legacy of the once celebrated Canadian musician Kathleen Parlow.
Genre Stories
Acid
Just Philippot, France, 2017, 18m
NY Premiere
As contaminated rain threatens to wipe out humanity, a married couple desperately battle to keep their young son safe.
Child of the Sky
Phillip Montgomery, USA, 2018, 15m
NY Premiere
Lost in the desert, a woman gets lured into a nightmarish world of cult violence in this deeply chilling Mesopotamian myth–infused tale told through ferocious dance movements.
Helsinki Mansplaining Massacre
Ilja Rautsi, Finland, 2018, 15m
NY Premiere
A female car-crash survivor offers a very definitive response to the incessant “educating” by the infantile male chauvinists of the household that’s taken her in.
The Slows
Nicole Perlman, USA, 2018, 20m
NY Premiere
In a regenerating post-apocalyptic world, the only remaining traces of naturally reproduced life face extinction.
Toto
Danny Lee, USA, 2018, 17m
NY Premiere
The career of an embittered former horror star (M. Emmet Walsh) who longs for his glory days comes gruesomely full circle.
New York Stories
TRT: 63m
Ada
Eleanore Pienta, USA, 2018, 11m
World Premiere
In her funny, expressive, and dialogue-free directorial debut, actress Eleanore Pienta plays an eccentric woman trying to get from point A to point B and, in the process, finding New York City an obstacle course of casual hostility and bizarre behaviors.
The Chore
Ashley Connor & Joe Stankus, USA, 2018, 8m
World Premiere
Ashley Connor and Joe Stankus’s latest quotidian miniature follows two brothers going grocery shopping together, musing on the products they come across, reminiscing about the past, and, finally, comparing notes on snickerdoodle recipes.
God Never Dies / Dios Nunca Muere
Barbara Cigarroa, USA/Ireland, 2018, 14m
Spanish with English subtitles
Filmed in New York’s Hudson Valley, Barbara Cigarroa’s captivating work of docu-fiction offers a rare, real glimpse into the secluded life of a migrant farmworker as she struggles to raise two children on her own.
The North Wind’s Gift
Michael Almereyda, USA, 2018, 19m
World Premiere
Michael Almereyda’s contemporary riff on an Italian folktale (shot in black-and-white 16mm by Sean Price Williams), in which a magic microwave ensnares a starving family and their landlord, is a delightfully peculiar moral tale of greed, trickery, and the elemental forces of nature.
Quarterbacks
Jason Giampietro, USA, 2018, 6m
World Premiere
In Giampietro’s comic latest, some friends’ dinner conversation about the impending NFL Draft becomes a frank discussion of the state of race relations within the league and amongst its fans.
To the Unknown
Michael Almereyda, USA, 2018, 6m
World Premiere
Almereyda’s reading of Kenneth Koch’s “To the Unknown” transforms footage of the everyday into a moving tribute to one of the New York School’s most treasured and inventive poets.
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