The New Directors/New Films lineup boasts a slew of 2024 festival breakout features.
The annual festival, presented by Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art, will take place from April 3 to April 14 at Film at Lincoln Center. Sundance premiere “A Different Man,” Berlinale best first feature winner “Cu Li Never Cries,” and Locarno Film Festival winner “A Good Place” are among this year’s standout titles.
The 53rd annual festival celebrates rising filmmakers who redefine the state of cinema. The 2024 lineup includes 25 features and 10 short films, including one world premiere. “A Different Man,” directed by Aaron Schimberg and co-starring Berlinale best actor winner Sebastian Stan, will open the festival April 3. Theda Hammel’s “Stress Positions,” which also premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, will close New Directors/New Films April 14. Both features were directed by New York City-based filmmakers.
“It just feels right for us to bookend this year’s edition of ND/NF with two exciting new features by local filmmakers, as a reminder of what ND/NF has always been about: early encounters between the most cutting-edge emerging artists in international cinema and the New York audience who will be engaging with their work for years to come,” Dan Sullivan, Film at Lincoln Center programmer and 2024 New Directors/New Films co-chair said. “Aaron Schimberg’s ‘A Different Man’ is a delirious, complex, and hilarious work that evokes the best black comedies produced on the streets and inside the apartments of New York City in the 1960s and ’70s (with a healthy dash of body horror and metanarrative). Likewise, Theda Hammel’s similarly funny and spellbindingly chaotic ‘Stress Positions’ conjures the irreverence and messiness of that era’s cinematic underground but in an utterly contemporary and accessible vernacular, yielding a comic and incisive picture of trans and queer life in the city.”
La Frances Hui, curator at MoMA, and 2024 ND/NF co-chair added, “This year’s ND/NF lineup is a splendid exhibition of adventure, courage, and ambition. The latest class of new directors finds imaginative use of the film language to craft works that celebrate joy and love, while also reflecting on pain, conflict, and our shared humanity. Their creativity embodies profound insight and inspiration, reaffirming cinema’s relevance and essential place in contemporary expression.”
The New Directors/New Films selection committee is made up of members from both presenting organizations. The 2024 feature committee comprises Dan Sullivan (co-chair, FLC), Tyler Wilson (FLC), Maddie Whittle (FLC), La Frances Hui (Co-Chair, MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), and Josh Siegel (MoMA), and the shorts were programmed by Katie Zwick (FLC) and Francisco Valente (MoMA).
See the full lineup below.
Features
“All, or Nothing at All,” dir. Jiajun “Oscar” Zhang
“Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry,” dir. Elene Naveriani
“Blaga’s Lessons,” dir. Stephan Komandarev
“Cu Li Never Cries,” dir. Pham Ngoc Lân
“The Day I Met You,” dir. André Novais Oliveira
“A Different Man,” dir. Aaron Schimberg
“Dreaming & Dying,” dir. Nelson Yeo
“Exhibiting Forgiveness,” dir. Titus Kaphar
“Explanation for Everything,” dir. Gábor Reisz
“Foremost By Night,” dir. Víctor Iriarte
“Good One,” dir. India Donaldson
“A Good Place,” dir. Katharina Huber
“Grace,” dir. Ilya Povolotsky
“Hesitation Wound,” dir. Selman Nacar
“Intercepted,” dir. Oksana Karpovych
“A Journey in Spring,” dir. Wang Ping-Wen, Peng Tzu-Hui
“Lost Country,” dir. Vladimir Perišić
“Malu,” dir. Pedro Freire
“Meezan,” dir. Shahab Mihandoust
“Of Living Without Illusion,” dir. Katharina Lüdin
“Omen,” dir. Baloji
“Otro Sol,” dir. Francisco Rodríguez Teare
“The Permanent Picture,” dir. Laura Ferrés
“The Rim,” dir. Alberto Gracia
“Stress Positions,” dir. Theda Hammel
Shorts Program I
“Via Dolorosa,” dir. Rachel Gutgarts
“Goodbye First Love,” dir. Shuli Huang
“Shimmering Bodies,” dir. Inês Teixeira
“Nos Îles,” dir. Aliha Thalien
“The Voice of Others,” dir. Fatima Kaci
Shorts Program II
“Break no. 1 & Break no. 2,” dir. Lei Lei
“The night of the minotaur,” dir. Juliana Zuluaga Montoya
“Kill ’Em All,” dir. Sebastian Molina Ruiz
“The Porn Selector,” dir. Lou Fauroux
“Digital Devil Saga,” dir. Cameron Worden
