It’s about time for the annual New Directors/New Films Festival. Set to take place April 3 – 14, the festival presented by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art features a slew of early 2024 festival favorites. ND/NF opens with Sundance hit “A Different Man,” directed by breakout filmmaker Aaron Schimberg. Sebastian Stan won the Berlinale best actor award for his turn in the feature as an actor who undergoes a facial reconfiguration surgery.
Film at Lincoln Center programmer and 2024 New Directors/New Films co-chair Dan Sullivan billed “A Different Man” as 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).”
ND/NF closes with fellow New York-based film “Stress Positions,” which also premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Trans filmmaker Theda Hammel’s coming-of-age quarantine dramedy stars John Early as a millennial grappling with a breakup during the start of the pandemic. ND/NF co-chair Sullivan described the film as “spellbindingly chaotic” as it “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.”
The 53rd annual ND/NF festival celebrates rising filmmakers who redefine the state of cinema. The 2024 lineup includes 25 features and 10 short films, including one world premiere, 14 North American premieres, five U.S. premieres, and 15 New York premieres.
Berlinale best first feature winner “Cu Li Never Cries,” and Locarno Film Festival winner “A Good Place” are also among this year’s standout titles. Titus Kaphar’s “Exhibiting Forgiveness” and India Donaldson’s “Good One” are additional buzzy features making their way to ND/NF 2024 at Lincoln Center and MoMA.
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).
The New Directors/New Films Festival takes place April 3 – 14. Check out the sizzle reel trailer, an IndieWire exclusive, below and see the full lineup here.
