Film Lineup for the 40th Annual New Directors/New Films Announced

By Melissa Howland | February 17, 2011

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Announce Feature Film Lineup for the 40th Annual New Directors/New Films March 23 – April 3

J.C. Chandor’s “MARGIN CALL” is the Opening Night presentation with Maryam Keshavarz’s Award-winning “CIRCUMSTANCE” the Closing Night selection

The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center announced the full lineup today for the 40^th edition of New Directors/New Films (March 23 – April 3). Dedicated to the discovery of new works by emerging and dynamic filmmaking talent, the film festival will screen 28 feature films (24 narrative, 4 documentary) representing 22 countries.

The opening night feature is J.C. Chandor’s MARGIN CALL. Screening on Wednesday, March 23, at 7:00PM at MoMA, Chandor’s feature film directing debut is a timely and terrifying dramatic expose that tackles twenty-four hours on an investment bank trading floor; a day that brings layer upon layer of human and professional wrongdoing that jeopardizes the entire fabric of the banking system. The film features an all-star ensemble cast, led by Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons.

Maryam Keshavarz’s Audience Award winner from the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, CIRCUMSTANCE will be the closing night feature. Screening Sunday, April 3 at 7:00PM at MoMA, Keshavarz’s searing feature debut follows two young Iranian women as they live life in the shadow of the regime, going to parties and listening to forbidden music while starting to explore their true feelings for each other.

Film Society of Lincoln Center Program Director Richard Pena said, “We are thrilled to have MARGIN CALL and CIRCUMSTANCE as our Opening and Closing Night films. Both are dynamic and riveting dramas from first time feature film directors that give a unique view into the human lives at the core of two vastly different, but very immediate worlds.”

Among the film festival’s highlights are additional recent film festival award winners including; Anne Sewitsky’s comedy HAPPY, HAPPY (Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival) about a young couple dealing with a newly acquainted, sophisticated couple that has jarred their world; Daniel Vega’s and Diego Vega’s OCTUBRE (Jury Prize of the “Un Certain Regard” section of Cannes 2010) about a small time money-lender in the barrio who must learn to care for a baby left on his doorstep; and Athina Rachel Tsangari’s drama ATTENBERG (featuring a performance by Ariane Labed, that earned her the Best Actress award at the 2010 Venice Film Festival) about the changing dynamics in the lives of a father and daughter.

Two selections were previously honored at last year’s Locarno Film Festival, with Denis Côté garnering a Silver Leopard for Best Director and Emmanuel Bilodeau receiving the Best Actor Award for CURLING, his tale of a father in Quebec trying to shield his daughter from the outside world, and WINTER VACATION, Li Hongqi’s comedy about four teenagers facing the end of their holiday, taking the Golden Leopard for Best Film.

In addition, Denis Villeneuve’s INCENDIES, which follows two twins as they deal with the surprises delivered to them via their recently deceased mother’s will, received an Academy Award nomination this year for Best Foreign Film as Canada’s official entry.

As a socio-political sea-change unfolds in Egypt, two films will represent that country: Amhad Abdalla’s MICROPHONE, about a young man who becomes enmeshed in the alternative music and arts scene he encounters on the streets of Alexandria; and Mohamed Diab’s “6, 7, 8,” which explores the issue of sexual harassment via the intertwined stories of three women of various economic means living in Cairo.

Commenting on the feature film lineup as a whole, Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator, Department of Film, The Museum of Modern Art, added, “There is great variety both within the makeup of our filmmakers as well as the subject matter and styles of the films themselves. From very intense drama to clever comedy to some truly fascinating documentaries, New Directors/New Films continues to be a major New York venue for new voices in film.”

MoMA Department of Film Senior Curator Laurence Kardish (the only member that has been on the selection committee since the very beginning) summed up New Directors/New Films’ 40^th Anniversary, saying, “New Directors’ discoveries over these past 40 years include a mind-boggling roster of talent. By any measure, this film festival has enriched film culture in New York and beyond by introducing audiences to a host of great filmmakers.”

Tickets will be available for purchase directly through the New Directors/New Films website beginning March 13. In celebration of the 40^th anniversary, the website will also feature videos and testimonials from New Directors/New Films filmmakers from past years, who talk about the impact the festival had on their careers. Patrons are encouraged to visit http://www.newdirectors.org for latest film information and festival updates.

New Directors/New Films tickets can also be purchased at the box offices at The Film Society of Lincoln Center (Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St., near Amsterdam Avenue) and The Museum of Modern Art (11 W. 53rd Street).

There are two advance ticketing opportunities:

Film Society Patrons and MoMA FilmPlus Members may purchase tickets starting Wednesday, February 16.

Film Society and MoMA Members may purchase tickets starting Tuesday, March 2.

To become a Member of the Film Society and MoMA please visit: www.filmlinc.com and www.moma.org

The 40^th New Directors/New Films selections include:

6,7,8 (2010, 100min)

Director: Mohamed Diab

Country: Egypt

Diab’s “6,7,8” intersects the stories of three women of very different social and economic status in Cairo as they converge in their collective desire to combat sexual harassment. A wealthy, secular young woman who is molested at football match is revealed to be just as vulnerable as the devout Muslim wife of limited means who must ride the bus with marauding men. Given the cultural and religious implications of family life and gender division, the women look to collective action, the media and even violence as routes to freedom.

AT ELLEN’S AGE (IM ALTER VON ELLEN) (2010, 95min)

Director: Pia Marais

Country: Germany

Marais’ AT ELLEN’S AGE catches a woman at a crossroads following her husband’s confession of having an affair and the loss of her job due to a subsequent panic attack. The film follows the woman’s awakening after she joins forces with a group of animal activists.

ATTENBERG (2010, 95min)

Director: Athina Rachel Tsangari

Country: Greece

Tsangari’s ATTENBERG is a fun melding of (new) Nouvelle Vague, musical, melodrama, and nature documentary, symbolically visualizing a change of generation and perspective as a father and daughter gently negotiate their individual rites of passage. The film follows a visionary architect who has come home to die in the vanishing industrial town that is his legacy to his daughter. Meanwhile, his daughter (played by Ariane Labed, in a performance that garnered her the Best Actress award at The Venice Film Festival) is exploring the mysteries of kissing with her girlfriend and the beyond with a visiting engineer.

BELLE EPINE (2010, 80min)

Director: Rebecca Zlotowski

Country: France

Zlotowski’s BELLE EPINE is a coming of age story about a teenage girl dealing with the death of her mother and absentee father. The girl loses herself in antisocial behavior, turning away from her Jewish heritage personified by her supportive aunt and uncle, and drawn into the orbit of a wrong-side-of-the-tracks classmate and her biker friends, who gather for chaotic, sometimes lethal night-time motorcycle meets on the edge of town.

THE BLACK POWER MIX TAPE 1967-1975 (2011, 100min)

Director: Göran Hugo Olsson

Country: Sweden

Olsson’s documentary utilizes never before seen interviews (with Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis among others) filmed by a group of Swedish filmmakers from the late sixties to mid-seventies to chronicle the growth of the black power movement. Thirty years later this lush collection of 16mm footage was found in a basement – and combined with additional commentary by artists and activists who were influenced by the struggle – from Harry Belafonte to Erykah Badu – becomes a powerful chronicle of the birth and life of a movement. THE BLACK POWER MIX TAPE 1967-1975 is a Sundance Selects release.

CIRCUMSTANCE (2011, 107min)

Director: Maryam Keshavarz

Country: France/USA/Iran

Keshavarz’s searing feature debut CIRCUMSTANCE follows two young Iranian women as they live life in the shadow of the regime, going to parties and listening to forbidden music while starting to explore their true feelings for each other. CIRCUMSTANCE recently won the Audience Award at the Sundance film festival. CIRCUMSTANCE is a Participant Media and Roadside Attractions release.

COPACABANA (2010, 107min)

Director: Marc Fitoussi

Country: France

Fitoussi’s second film, COPACABANA is a gentle French comedy about the relationship between a daughter and her single mother, starring real-life mother and daughter Isabelle Huppert and Lotlia Chammah. Embarrassed by her mother, the daughter wants a ‘settled’ life, something she believes her mother is not capable (nor desiring) of achieving. So her mother sets out to prove her daughter wrong, and win her respect by selling time-shares in a seaside resort town.

CURLING (2010, 96min)

Director: Denis Côté

Country: Canada

Set in the dead of winter, Côté’s CURLING is a tense and darkly comic portrait of a family in a rural Quebec village. The film follows a single father as he seeks to isolate his adolescent daughter from the outside world for fear that it will scar her as much as it has him. CURLING earned Côté the Silver Leopard for Best Director and Emmanuel Bilodeau the Leopard for Best Actor at the 2010 Locarno Film Festival.

THE DESTINY OF LESSER ANIMALS (2010, 90min)

Director: Deron Albright

Country: Ghana/USA

Albright’s drama THE DESTINY OF LESSER ANIMALS follows a Ghanian Police Inspector as he embarks on a dangerous journey through modern Ghana to retrieve his stolen counterfeit passport. Finding his own search linked to a series of violent crimes, he joins forces with a seasoned police veteran who is still optimistic about his country to solve the mystery.

GROMOZEKA (2010, 104min)

Director: Vladimir Kott

Country: Russia

Kott’s GROMOZEKA is his follow-up to THE FLY, which was a selection at New Directors/New Films in 2009. The drama follows three men who played in a pop-music trio during their high-school days, and are now three middle-aged men in different walks of life—surgeon, police officer, taxi driver,living at different levels in Moscow’s socio-economic structure. Aside from their annual reunions, which book-end the film, their lives intersect only glancingly and unknowingly as their respective personal discontents and professional troubles reach crisis points and presents the contrasting ways in which each of them tries to cope.

HAPPY, HAPPY (SYKT LYKKELIG) (2010, 85min)

Director: Anne Sewitsky

Country: Norway

Switsky’s directorial debut, HAPPY HAPPY is a comedy about a thirty-something couple with a young son, living a rather dull life in the Norwegian countryside.  Then new neighbors move in next door, and while at first glance they seem to be their mirror image and perfect friend material, the differences that do exist (the new couple’s son is an adopted African, the husband is full of sexual energy, and the wife is…Danish!) manifest in increasingly disturbing ways. The film was the winner of the Grand Jury Prize for World Cinema at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

HIT SO HARD (2011, 101min)

Director: P. David Ebersole

Country: USA

Ebersole’s rockumentary HIT SO HARD is a pull-no-punches portrait of the hell-and-back life of Patty Schemel, drummer for Courtney Love’s band Hole during its peak years. The result is an unprecedented inside look at the one of the Nineties most crucial and controversial groups. Notwithstanding its amazingly candid interviews (Love included), its unflinching accounts of the personal tragedies that plagued the band in its heyday, and a rare look at hardball music-industry politics gives the viewer the lowdown on the recording of Hole’s 1997 record Celebrity Skin.

HOSPITALITÉ (2010, 96min)

Director: Koji Fukada

Country: Japan

Set in the confines of downtown Tokyo, Fukada’s comedy HOSPITALITÉ is about a man living a mundane life, running a small printing factory and living a quiet life upstairs with his wife and children. Then a man arrives claiming to be the son of a wealthy financier who once helped his business. Soon the stranger has moved in with HIS wife, is running the business, and soon invites guests of his own – a large, eclectic and exotic group – into the apartment, destroying the once orderly and comfortable life of his host.

INCENDIES (2010, 130min)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Country: Canada/France

Villeneuve’s film, INCENDIES focuses on twins grieving their mother’s death who have their world shaken further when the reading of her will reveals that their father, presumed to be deceased, is actually still alive and that they also have a brother. The film follows the twins as they seek to fulfill their mother’s final wish – for them to find their father and brother and deliver to each of them a sealed letter. A Sony Pictures Classics release.

THE MAJORITY (ÇOGUNLUK) (2010, 111min)

Director: Seren Yüce

Country: Turkey

Yüce’s THE MAJORITY features Barta Küçükçaglayan as a man that manages to slide through each day working as an office assistant for his father’s construction company when not gobbling burgers at the mall with his buddies. That is until he meets a shy but charming Kurdish girl, and suddenly his entire approach and outlook to life begin to change. However, he now must face a new conflict with his parents…upon whom he is completely dependent, and who won’t even consider their son settling down with a Kurd.

MAN WITHOUT A CELL PHONE (BIDOUN MOBILE) (2010, 83min)

Director: Sameh Zoabi

Country: Israel

Zoabi’s feature debut, MAN WITHOUT A CELL PHONE, is a comedy about a young Israeli construction worker with little ambition other than to have fun with his friends and meet girls which is directly at odds with his father’s ambitions to bring down a cell phone tower he is sure is poisoning their Arab neighbors with radiation.

MARGIN CALL (2010, 109min)

Director: J.C. Chandor

Country: USA

Chandor’s timely and terrifying dramatic expose, MARGIN CALL tackles twenty-four hours on an investment bank trading floor; a day that brings layer upon layer of human and professional wrongdoing that jeopardizes the entire fabric of the banking system. An all-star ensemble cast, led by Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci and Jeremy Irons, propel this ominous day toward the abyss, preserving just enough pathos to allow us to ultimately recognize these bankers’ humanity.

MEMORY LANE (2010, 98min)

Director: Mikhaël Hers

Country: France

Hers’ MEMORY LANE is a film about characters caught “in between”-between city and country, friendship and love, life and death, and youthful dreams and the impending realities of growing up. Setting in motion several story lines, Hers allows action to develop and characters to emerge through subtle gestures, quick looks and offhand remarks via a splendid ensemble of actors that truly create a sense of closeness, a kind of familiarity that need not be emphasized as it’s always so present.

MICROPHONE (2010, 120min)

Director: Amhad Abdalla

Country: Egypt

Abdalla’s MICROPHONE stars (and is co-produced by) Egyptian heart-throb Khaled Abol Naga as a man who returns to his hometown Alexandria unmoored and restlessly searching for purpose beyond his ex-girlfriend who’s no longer interested and his aging father from whom he feels terminally alienated.  Wandering the streets he happens upon a music and art making group of younger people that he stubbornly pursues and eventually becomes part of as his self-involvement changes into a real connection with this new world.

OCTUBRE (2010, 93min)

Directors: Daniel and Diego Vega

Country: Peru

Co-directed by brothers Daniel and Diego Vega, OCTUBRE follows a small-time money-lender living in a Lima barrio who one day discovers a baby left on his doorstep. To care for the child–the product of one of his frequent liaisons with prostitutes–the man engages a female neighbor for help, and soon a new, unexpected family is formed. The film won the Jury Prize of the “Un Certain Regard” section of Cannes 2010. OCTUBRE is a New Yorker Films release.

OUTBOUND (PERIFERIC) (2010, 87min)

Director: Bogdan George Apetri

Country: Romania

Apetri’s OUTBOUND is a tense race against time as a young woman, serving a five-year prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit, attempts to right the wrongs done to her, collect on debts and cleanse herself from her past life after she receives a day pass so that she can attend her mother’s funeral.

PARIAH (2011, 86min)

Director: Dee Rees

Country: USA

Executive produced by Spike Lee, Rees’ debut feature PARIAH, is a character study of a seventeen year-old New Yorker (played by Adepero Oduye) whose efforts to explore her lesbian desires are squarely at odd with her middle-class Brooklyn family – and more specifically, her church-going mother (played by Kim Wayans). The film draws an affectionate portrait of a community, one so close everyone knows everyone else’s ‘business’, and dramatizes the longings, disappointments and achievements of a teenager whose ideas of femininity are less traditional than most. A Focus Features release.

SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! AN AUDIO MISADVENTURE (2011, 85min)

Director: Matthew Bate

Country: Australia

Bate’s documentary SHUT UP LITTLE MAN! AN AUDIO MISADVENTURE tells the story of two men who, upon discovering they had rented an apartment next to two men who drank and verbally abused each other every night, decided to record the nightly fights and play them back through their neighbors’ front door.  It didn’t quiet the noisy roommates, but somehow the recordings became part of an underground culture that still inspire musicians, poets, graphic artists and disc jockeys.

SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS (2010, 93min)

Director: Matt McCormick

Country: USA

McCormick’s debut feature SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS is a poetic character-driven film that asks why the good times slip by so fast while the difficult times seem so sticky. The film follows a trio of stranded characters that seem to be competing for first prize in a Saddest Job in the World contest as McCormick insists on the reality of work, distinctly rebutting the popular image of Portland as a paradise for under-achieving hipsters and the slacker ethos of “the unemployed, blissful lifestyle.”

SUMMER OF GOLIATH (VERANO DE GOLIAT) (2010, 76min)

Director: Nicolás Pereda

Country: Mexico/Canada/Netherlands

Pereda’s SUMMER OF GOLIATH combines documentary and fiction as it intertwines the stories of people living in a small town in rural Mexico. Those people include: a woman who believes her husband has left her for another woman; her soldier son, who hopes that one day he and his soldier partner will be issued machine guns so that they may intimidate passing motorists; and three brothers whose father left them many years ago in the care of their mother, who can barely support them.

TYRANNOSAUR (2010, 91min)

Director: Paddy Considine

Country: United Kingdom

Actor Considine makes his directorial debut with TYRANNOSAUR, an intense drama about a lonely man with a violent temper and a knack for getting into situations, particularly at pubs, that leave him and others bloody. However, he has a soft spot for a young boy who lives across the street with his feckless mother and her punk boyfriend. Beyond that, he knows better than to seek anyone else’s company until he meets a clerk in a church thrift shop who has some problems of her own. TYRANNOSAUR is a Strand Releasing film.

EL VELADOR (2011, 72min)

Director: Natalia Almada

Country: Mexico

Almada’s documentary EL VELADOR displays the world of “El Jardin,”, a cemetery in the drug heartland of Mexico. Since the war on drugs began in 2007, the cemetery has doubled in size and some of its mausoleums have been built to resemble gaudy cathedrals, creating a skyline that looks like a fantastical surrealist city more than a resting place for the deceased. The film introduces us to both the lives of the cemetery workers and families of the victims – in the shadow of an increasingly bloody conflict that has claimed nearly 35,000 lives.

WINTER VACATION (HAN JIA) (2010, 91min)

Director: Hongqi Li

Country: China

Hongqi’s WINTER VACATION is a deadpan comedy about four teenagers during the last day of their winter vacation as they face the prospects of having to return to school and their studies. The kids argue, debate and fight as the clock ticks away on their holiday and they deal with their love lives and question school’s value and relevance to real life. WINTER VACATION won the Golden Leopard for Best Film at the 2010 Locarno Film Festival.

About New Directors/New Films

Dedicated to the discovery and support of emerging artists, New Directors/New Films has earned an international reputation as the premier festival for works that break or re-cast the cinematic mold.  The New Directors/New Films selection committee is made up of members from both presenting organizations: from The Film Society of Lincoln Center, Marian Masone, Richard Peña, Gavin Smith; and from The Museum of Modern Art, Jytte Jensen, Laurence Kardish, and Rajendra Roy.

About The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art

Under the leadership of Rose Kuo, Executive Director, and Richard Peña, Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Centeroffers the best in international, classic, and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, now in its 49^th year, and New Directors/New Films, which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award—now named “The Chaplin Award”—to a major figure in world cinema. Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, and Tom Hanks. For more information, visitwww.filmlinc.com.

The Museum of Modern Art’s Department of Film was established as the Film Library in 1935, and presented its first series as circulating exhibitions in 1936.  The Film Department organizes over 50 film exhibitions every year, including annual programs such asPremiere Brazil, To Save and Project and The Contenders.  The Department organizes exhibitions in MoMA’s galleries, including Tim Burton (2009-10) and Pixar: 20 Years of Animation (2005–06). The department also has an extensive archive of over 27,000 film and video works, including the world’s largest institutional collections of the works of D. W. Griffith, Andy Warhol, and Stan Brakhage. Rajendra Roy is the current Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film, appointed in May 2007.

Sponsorship

New Directors/New Films is presented by The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center and is supported by Kenneth Kuchin, Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s NEW WAVE group, and Eastman Kodak Company.

Media sponsorship provided by indieWIRE.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center receives major, year-round support from 42BELOW; American Airlines; Stella Artois; The New York Times; The New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and the National Endowment for the Arts.