After hearing the buzz out of Sundance, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, and Toronto—and catching an early screening (or several) between festivals throughout the summer—we at Vogue have had little trouble lining up our watch lists for the New York Film Festival, which kicked off today in Lincoln Center. (It ends on October 13.) So, what’s worth getting tickets to over the next few weeks? Here, 10 things playing at NYFF that we’ve already seen and liked—and another 10 that we can’t wait to.
Our favorites:
Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt is not a perfect movie: Its story, broadly about a philosophy professor accused of sexual assault by a PhD candidate at Yale, is both overlong and overcomplicated, and it suffers for its thematic (and aesthetic) similarities to Todd Field’s Tár. But it’s grounded by a suite of compelling performances from Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg; elegant production design by Stefano Baisi (who also worked with Guadagnino on last year’s Queer); and a finely calibrated sense of atmosphere—one of Guadagnino’s signatures. Definitely worth seeing—and arguing over. —Marley Marius
Richard Linklater’s new film (one of two from him at the festival—the other is the charming Nouvelle Vague, see below) is a witty, piercing study of creative decline. It tells the story of the Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) holding court at Sardi’s on the opening night of Oklahoma!—a musical he did not write. That would be the triumph of his erstwhile songwriting partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) and a new rival: Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney). Hawke has never been better—electric with jealousy and witty pride—as he blusters, drinks, and flirts with Yale student Elizabeth Weiland, played by Margaret Qualley. He’s a genius with his light going out. —Taylor Antrim
You both have and haven’t seen anything like Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear-crisis thriller A House of Dynamite. Here’s what you have seen: moody drone shots of DC, tense situation rooms, stern men barking at each other, nuclear keys turned simultaneously. This heart attack of a film channels great Hollywood geopolitical crises of yore—beats borrowed from WarGames, Crimson Tide, The Sum of All Fears, you name it. But Bigelow is up to something subversive, and her horrifically plausible story, with a screenplay by Noah Oppenheim, throws a sucker punch at the end that will leave you reeling. —T.A.
Mary Bronstein’s hyper-anxious mother-in-crisis film gives us an incandescent Rose Byrne as Linda, a mother and therapist living in Montauk with her frighteningly underweight daughter. When a catastrophic leak in their home forces mother and daughter to a cheap hotel, they descend into a spiral of codependence and mania. Legs is a dark watch, but it has mordant, leavening wit, a career-defining lead performance, and great supporting work from a drolly deadpan Conan O’Brien (as Linda’s own therapist) and A$AP Rocky (as her amiable drug enabler). —T.A.
Despite being imprisoned and banned from filmmaking in his home country, the revered Iranian dissident director and screenwriter Jafar Panahi continues to make movies, albeit clandestinely. His latest, a politically charged thriller that won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, delves into themes of trauma, justice, and moral ambiguity within the context of Iranian society. With a blend of suspense, surrealism, and dark humor, Panahi highlights the absurdities of life under authoritarian rule, emphasizing repression’s emotional and psychological toll. A conversation between Panahi and fellow film legend Martin Scorsese (more on him below) held in Lincoln Center’s massive Alice Tully Hall is sure to be one of the highlights of the festival. —Lisa Wong Macabasco
I’m not sure there’s a movie I’ll hold in higher esteem this year than The Mastermind. We’re seeing Josh O’Connor go from strength to strength in 2025, and now in Kelly Reichardt’s facetiously titled latest, he does some of his finest work as the bumbling JB Mooney, an unemployed husband and father adrift in early-’70s suburban Massachusetts. He orchestrates a clumsy plan to steal a batch of lesser-known paintings from the local museum, and the film focuses on the fallout, with the Watergate scandal unfolding in the background and underscoring the all-too-sadly-relatable milieu of disillusionment and delusion. Reichardt, ever a master of muted storytelling, keeps the film teetering between dry humor and devastating pathos, while the production design revels in the textures of the 1970s. —L.W.M.
There’s something restorative in this haunting drama from German filmmaker Christian Petzold (whose Afire was one of my favorite films from 2023). The enchanting Paula Beer plays Laura, a pianist who survives a tragic car crash and is taken in by a kindly woman in the countryside (the bright-eyed Barbara Auer). It’s a typical Petzold exploration of memory and identity, but the movie’s charm comes less from where it goes than how it gets there, with a rich atmosphere and compelling performances. —L.W.M.
Nouvelle Vague, Richard Linklater’s other offering this fall, centers on a 28-year-old Jean-Luc Godard (Guillaume Marbeck), finally taking his first stab at feature filmmaking after grinding away as a critic at Cahiers du Cinéma. The result is 1960’s Breathless, starring the gamine Jean Seberg (played by a very likable, pixie-cut Zoey Deutch), fresh from Bonjour Tristesse, and the dopey, boyish Jean-Paul Belmondo (Aubry Dullin). The shooting schedule is erratic, each scene’s script is a page of handwritten notes that Godard largely disregards, there is no money for extras, no one cares about continuity…and yet! Something urgent and enduring is born. A delightful ode to the auteur’s auteur. —M.M.
A Jodie Foster performance remains a joy to behold—especially when she’s speaking entirely in French (for her first time as a lead actor) and inhabiting an impeccably chic Parisian life. In Rebecca Zlotowski’s new mystery, she portrays a psychoanalyst who suspects that one of her longtime patients (Virginie Efira) might not have died by suicide. The film blends psychological drama with dreamlike sequences and dark comedy (there’s more than a dash of Manhattan Murder Mystery). But Foster’s performance anchors the myriad emotional shifts, making her character not only compelling but deeply human. —L.W.M.
Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón’s poignant drama follows 18-year-old Marina as a seemingly straightforward task—getting a signature for a scholarship—unravels into a profound exploration of her family’s hidden past and a reconstruction of her sense of self. Llúcia García delivers a powerful performance in a film, drawn from Simón’s own experiences, whose evocative storytelling is matched by its emotional depth, touching on memory, family, belonging, and loss. —L.W.M.
Our most anticipated:
A first feature by the music video director Stillz, this found-footage vérité exploration of gangland Medellín sounds immersive and potentially assaultive too. (It comes from provocateur filmmaker Harmony Korine’s new production studio.) Original music by the Venezuelan electro musician Arca is sure to keep things interesting. —T.A.
Advanced buzz from Toronto has me excited for the Argentinian drama The Currents, about a 34-year-old fashion designer going through an eerie, life-upending crisis after a mysterious event on a work trip in Switzerland. —T.A.
Jim Jarmusch’s latest is a triptych of family stories, each set in a different country, with a dazzlingly starry cast: Adam Driver, Mayim Bialik, Cate Blanchett, Vicky Krieps, Indya Moore, Luka Sabbat, Tom Waits, and Charlotte Rampling. Described as an anti action film—quiet and closely observed—it took home the Golden Lion in Venice. —M.M.
Italian auteur Paolo Sorrentino lost me with his last film, 2024’s Parthenope, but the heady reviews out of Venice of his new one, La Grazia, about an aging president of Italy nearing the end of his term in office, have made it one of the must-see films in New York. It stars Sorrentino’s favored collaborator Toni Servillo and promises to cast a spell of Italian elegance. —T.A.
I’m a proud Maestro truther—it was robbed on Oscar night—so I can’t wait to see Bradley Cooper’s third directorial effort, which will have its world premiere at NYFF. This one stars Will Arnett as a guy whose marriage is breaking up (his wife is played by Laura Dern) and who is going through something of a midlife crisis. This leads him to…stand-up comedy in Manhattan’s West Village?! The setup places Is This Thing On? solidly in the could-go-either-way category. But Cooper (who also directed A Star Is Born) is two for two, and I’m here for number three. —T.A.
I was bowled over by Godland, Hlynur Pálmason’s meditative drama from 2023, set in remote 19th-century Iceland. His newest feature—a contemporary story, focused on a family fractured by divorce—sounds like a slightly fantastical, Scandinavian The Squid and the Whale or maybe Daddy Long Legs. Color me intrigued. —M.M.
What’s being pitched as the definitive portrait of one of our greatest living filmmakers, Mr. Martin Scorsese, is a five-part docuseries directed by Rebecca Miller featuring interviews with the likes of Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Isabella Rossellini, Thelma Schoonmaker, Steven Spielberg, Sharon Stone, and Miller’s husband, Daniel Day-Lewis. For those who miss it at NYFF, don’t fret; it’ll be on Apple TV+ on October 17. —M.M.
Following their wonderful work together on 2023’s Passages, Ira Sachs and Ben Whishaw reteam for Peter Hujar’s Day, focused on a conversation between Hujar (Whishaw)—a photographer revered for his striking portrait work—and his friend the writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) in 1974. —M.M.
After making an instant classic with 2021’s The Worst Person in the World, Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve are together again with a family drama that earned raves out of Cannes. Reinsve and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas star as sisters whose estranged film-director father, played by Stellan Skarsgård, plans to make a movie about his late mother—and casts an American actor (Elle Fanning) to play her. —M.M.
Scott Cooper’s Springsteen biopic, which premiered at Telluride but has a big moment at the festival, had me at Nebraska. That 1982 classic acoustic album of moody folk rock is a standout in the Springsteen catalog, and Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Jeremy Allen White, chronicles its creation. White, beloved from The Bear, still has something to prove on the big screen, and this will be a very big swing. —T.A.