Now in its 47th year, the renowned New Directors/New Films festival, presented jointly by The Museum of Modern Art and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, introduces New York audiences to the work of emerging or not-yet-established filmmakers from around the world. The festival takes place at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center and at The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters at MoMA.

This year’s festival will introduce 25 features and 10 short films to New York audiences.

Winter Brothers / Hlynur Pálmason

Good Manners / Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas

Hale County This Morning, This Evening / RaMell Ross

“The purpose of New Directors/New Films is to seek out emerging filmmakers who are working at the vanguard of cinema,” said Film Society Director of Programming Dennis Lim. “This is as diverse and wide-ranging a lineup as we’ve assembled in years: full of pleasures and provocations and, above all, surprises – proof that film remains a medium ripe for reinvention in ways big and small.”

Ava / Sadaf Foroughi

The Nothing Factory / Pedro Pinho

A Violent Life / Thierry de Peretti

Josh Siegel, Curator of the Department of Film at The Museum of Modern Art said, “The filmmakers in this year’s New Directors are as imaginative, daring and restless as any we’ve seen, whether observing a world-famous rapper fighting injustices in Sri Lanka or prostitutes and holy men in Jamaica, a coal peddler in the Congo or a credit-card scammer in Switzerland.”

Cocote / Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias

Drift / Helena Wittmann

Milla / Valerie Massadian

The opening and closing night selections are the New York premieres of two Sundance award- winning documentaries: Stephen Loveridge’s Matangi / Maya / M.I.A., an intimate portrait of the global rap sensation via the artist’s own video diaries, which won the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award; and RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening, a visionary and poetic look at resilient African American families in the titular Alabama region, winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision.

This year’s lineup boasts features and shorts from 29 countries across five continents, with 10 North American premieres, 13 films directed or co-directed by women, and 14 works by first-time feature filmmakers.

The Great Buddha+ / Huang Hsin-yao

Notes on an Appearance /Ricky D’Ambrose

Those Who Are Fine / Cyril Schäublin

Highlights include Pedro Pinho’s surprising three-hour epic The Nothing Factory, which was voted #1 on Film Comment magazine’s Best Undistributed Films of 2017 list; the late Hu Bo’s epic feature debut An Elephant Sitting Still, a masterpiece sure to be remembered a landmark of modern Chinese cinema; New York-based filmmaker Ricky D’Ambrose’s dark, minimalist pseudo-detective tale Notes on an Appearance; Gustav Möller’s emergency call center thriller The Guilty, which won prizes at Rotterdam and Sundance; Our House, an evocative examination of female friendship by first-time Japanese filmmaker Yui Kiyohara; acclaimed documentarian Emmanuel Gras’s Cannes prizewinner Makala, which follows the monumental efforts of a young Congolese charcoal-maker at work; Khalik Allah’s stylistically rich Black Mother, a close look at Jamaica via its holy men and prostitutes; Locarno prizewinner Milla, Valérie Massadian’s moving, visually striking meditation on young motherhood; and many more exciting discoveries.

New Directors / New Films 2018
March 28 – April 8, 2018
At Walter Reade Theater Film Society Lincoln Center & The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters at MoMA.
Please visit the festival page >