2024 New Directors/New Films Lineup: Aaron Schimberg’s ‘A Different Man’ To Open the 53rd Edition
The New Directors/New Films festival has just announced the lineup of new breakout films for its 53rd edition. 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. This year’s ND/NF celebrates a variety of rising filmmakers redefining the state of cinema.
Opening this year’s festival is Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man starring Sebastian Stan, who recently won Best Lead Performance at Berlinale. Both Stan and Schimberg are expected to appear for post-screening Q+As. The closing night film is Theda Hammel’s queer comedy Stress Positions, starring John Early, which had its world premiere at this year’s Sundance. Both films were directed by NYC-based filmmakers.
Other Sundance titles that made the slate are Titus Kaphar’s drama Exhibiting Forgiveness, Brazilian filmmaker Pedro Freire’s drama Malu, India Donaldson’s Catskills film Good One, the latter of which recently got picked up for distribution by Metrograph Pictures. Other highlights of this year’s ND/NF are Pham Ngoc Lân’s Berlin Best First Feature winner Cu Li Never Cries, Belgium’s Oscar entry Omen, and Katharina Huber’s Locarno winner A Good Place.
“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,” said Dan Sullivan, Film at Lincoln Center programmer and 2024 New Directors/New Films co-chair. “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, Department of Film, 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.”
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