Noah Baumbach’s White Noise will make its North American premiere as the Opening Night film of the 60th New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall on September 30.

In one of the year’s most gratifyingly ambitious American films, Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story) has adapted Don DeLillo’s epochal postmodern 1985 novel White Noise, long perceived as unfilmable, into a richly layered, entirely unexpected work of contemporary satire. Adam Driver heartily embodies Jack Gladney, an ostentatious “Hitler Studies” professor and father-of-four whose comfortable suburban college town life and marriage to the secretive Babette (Greta Gerwig, perfectly donning a blonde mop of “important hair”) are upended after a horrifying nearby accident creates an airborne toxic event of frightening and unknowable proportions. In a tightrope walk of comedy and horror, Baumbach captures the essence of DeLillo’s cacophonous pop-philosophical nightmare on unbounded consumerism, ecological catastrophe, and the American obsession with death. Impeccably matching DeLillo’s and Baumbach’s similarly percussive form of stylized dialogue, White Noise is wonderfully abrasive and awe-inspiring, a precisely mounted period piece entirely befitting our modern, through-the-looking-glass pandemic reality. A Netflix release.

“In 1985 my father and I drove from Brooklyn to see Kurosawa’s Ran open the 23rd NYFF, the same year that he brought home the hardback of Don DeLillo’s White Noise,” said Baumbach. “Opening the 60th NYFF with White Noise is truly special for me. This festival was part of my film education and has been a home for me and many of my movies over the years. I couldn’t be more excited and honored to return.”

“Opening the 60th edition of the New York Film Festival with Noah Baumbach’s ambitious, funny, and resonant White Noise underscores this festival’s history of introducing new filmmakers to New York audiences. A regular attendee of the festival as a kid, Noah Baumbach saw his indie filmmaking career take off after debuting Kicking and Screaming at NYFF in 1995,” said Eugene Hernandez, Executive Director of the New York Film Festival. “White Noise will usher in a 60th NYFF selection of films by established directors and vibrant new voices; we’re looking forward to sharing the communal experience of cinema with audiences at Lincoln Center and in other parts of the city this fall! Stay tuned!”

“Noah Baumbach’s adaptation of White Noise is an unequivocal triumph: a wildly entertaining and morbidly funny meditation on the way we live now that is also the director’s most ambitious and expansive film,” said Dennis Lim, Artistic Director, New York Film Festival. “Aided by a brilliant cast led by Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, Baumbach has not only captured the essence of Don DeLillo’s beloved, era-defining book—he has turned it into a movie that speaks profoundly to our moment.”

Baumbach’s previous NYFF Main Slate selections include Kicking and Screaming (NYFF33), The Squid and the Whale (NYFF43), Margot at the Wedding (NYFF45), Frances Ha (NYFF50), The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) (NYFF55), and Marriage Story (NYFF57 Centerpiece). While We’re Young was a secret screening at NYFF52. De Palma, co-directed with Jake Paltrow, was a special event at NYFF53.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center, the New York Film Festival highlights the best in world cinema and takes place September 30–October 16, 2022.

New York Film Festival Opening Night Films

2021 The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen, US)
2020 Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen, UK)
2019 The Irishman (Martin Scorsese, US)
2018 The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/US)
2017 Last Flag Flying (Richard Linklater, US)
2016 13TH (Ava DuVernay, US)
2015 The Walk (Robert Zemeckis, US)
2014 Gone Girl (David Fincher, US)
2013 Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, US)
2012 Life of Pi (Ang Lee, US)
2011 Carnage (Roman Polanski, France/Poland)
2010 The Social Network (David Fincher, US)
2009 Wild Grass (Alain Resnais, France)
2008 The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
2007 The Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson, US)
2006 The Queen (Stephen Frears, UK)
2005 Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, US)
2004 Look at Me (Agnès Jaoui, France)
2003 Mystic River (Clint Eastwood, US)
2002 About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, US)
2001 Va savoir (Jacques Rivette, France)
2000 Dancer in the Dark (Lars von Trier, Denmark)
1999 All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
1998 Celebrity (Woody Allen, US)
1997 The Ice Storm (Ang Lee, US)
1996 Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, UK)
1995 Shanghai Triad (Zhang Yimou, China)
1994 Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, US)
1993 Short Cuts (Robert Altman, US)
1992 Olivier Olivier (Agnieszka Holland, France)
1991 The Double Life of Véronique (Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland/France)
1990 Miller’s Crossing (Joel Coen, US)
1989 Too Beautiful for You (Bertrand Blier, France)
1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain)
1987 Dark Eyes (Nikita Mikhalkov, Soviet Union)
1986 Down by Law (Jim Jarmusch, US)
1985 Ran (Akira Kurosawa, Japan)
1984 Country (Richard Pearce, US)
1983 The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, US)
1982 Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany)
1981 Chariots of Fire (Hugh Hudson, UK)
1980 Melvin and Howard (Jonathan Demme, US)
1979 Luna (Bernardo Bertolucci, Italy/US)
1978 A Wedding (Robert Altman, US)
1977 One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (Agnès Varda, France)
1976 Small Change (François Truffaut, France)
1975 Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, Italy)
1974 Don’t Cry with Your Mouth Full (Pascal Thomas, France)
1973 Day for Night (François Truffaut, France)
1972 Chloe in the Afternoon (Eric Rohmer, France)
1971 The Debut (Gleb Panfilov, Soviet Union)
1970 The Wild Child (François Truffaut, France)
1969 Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, US)
1968 Capricious Summer (Jiri Menzel, Czechoslovakia)
1967 The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy/Algeria)
1966 Loves of a Blonde (Milos Forman, Czechoslovakia)
1965 Alphaville (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
1964 Hamlet (Grigori Kozintsev, Soviet Union)
1963 The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, Mexico)