New York Film Festival opens its 64th edition Friday, bringing international cinema and major premieres to audiences across New York.
The 64th New York Film Festival opened Friday at Film at Lincoln Center, beginning an 18-day program featuring new films from established directors, emerging filmmakers and documentary producers from around the world. The festival runs through Oct. 12, with screenings and related events taking place at venues across New York City’s five boroughs.
The opening-night selection is James Gray’s Paper Tiger, a North American premiere starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson. The film follows two brothers in 1980s New York whose efforts to make money draw them into a dangerous criminal scheme involving Russian organized crime.
This year’s festival includes more than 70 fiction features and documentaries receiving world or U.S. premieres, alongside short-film programs, repertory screenings and filmmaker discussions. The program also includes films featuring or made by prominent figures including Pedro Pascal, Julianne Moore and Godzilla.
Among the documentaries receiving attention is You Can See Everything, directed by Lance Oppenheim and Nathan Fielder, which examines Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes around the period before she began serving an 11-year prison sentence for fraud. Other nonfiction selections include My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, about independent Russian journalists forced into exile, and Making Marie Antoinette, assembled by Sofia Coppola from footage recorded by her late mother, filmmaker Eleanor Coppola.
The festival will also present NAZA, a documentary by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor that examines allegations concerning the use of artificial intelligence in Israeli military targeting in Gaza. The filmmakers say the documentary draws on interviews with sources connected to Israel’s military and intelligence services. Israeli authorities have rejected the allegations, while the Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly denied intentionally targeting civilians. The film is scheduled for its North American premiere on Sept. 26.
Other selections include films by filmmakers such as Pedro Almodóvar, Hong Sang-soo and Valeska Grisebach, reflecting the festival’s emphasis on international cinema as well as American filmmaking. The 2026 program includes films ranging from narrative features and documentaries to restorations and special presentations.
The festival is one of New York’s major annual film events and has been held since 1963. Its 2026 edition continues through Oct. 12, giving audiences an extended program of premieres, screenings and filmmaker events across the city.
Sources: Information from CBS News, The New Yorker, Film at Lincoln Center, The Hollywood Reporter and the Criterion Collection was used to report and cross-check this story.