How New York Film Festival Landed Movies Like Controversial OpenAI Biopic ‘Artificial’ and Toho’s ‘Godzilla Minus Zero’ — SkimNews
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- NYFF is programming 113 films across all five New York City boroughs from September 25 through October 12, with artistic director Dennis Lim describing the lineup as among the buzziest in the festival's 64-year history.
- Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial," an Andrew Garfield starrer about Sam Altman that moved from Amazon to Neon, gets a world premiere; Lim said the AI-themed dramedy has "gotten even more scarily topical" since he first saw it in July.
- Toho's "Godzilla Minus Zero" world premieres at NYFF this weekend ahead of its Tokyo Film Festival screening, with U.S. release through subsidiary GKIDS — a rare blockbuster bow Lim linked to studios pulling prestige titles from festivals to dodge early reviews.
- James Gray's "Paper Tiger" opens the festival as a North American premiere ahead of Neon's November release; Lim called it "a pinnacle" for Gray and "unapologetically sincere," praising it as career-best work.
- "NAZA," a documentary by "No Other Land" collective members Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor featuring IDF interviews about Gaza, premieres September 26 before self-releasing at IFC Center; at the press screening, journalists had to surrender laptops and cellphones to prevent leaks.
- Ira Sachs' "The Man I Love" (starring Rami Malek and Tom Sturridge), an AIDS-era love triangle that premiered in Cannes competition, still lacks domestic distribution; Lim said NYFF's lack of a formal market still gives buyer-seeking films "industry presence."
- Other world premieres span Tom McCarthy ("A Statement"), Ava DuVernay ("14th"), Tony Gilroy ("Behemoth!"), and international entries from Carlos Reygadas, Radu Jude, Lee Chang-dong, Mike Leigh, Werner Herzog, and Pedro Almodóvar.
Why it matters: The festival is capitalizing on a shift Lim flagged: studios are now skipping fall festivals to avoid early bad reviews (hence no 'Digger' from Warners at Venice), freeing NYFF to scoop world premieres like 'Godzilla Minus Zero' and Guadagnino's AI-themed 'Artificial.' With 113 films across five boroughs, the festival doubles as a buyer-shopping stop for distribution-seeking titles like Sachs' 'The Man I Love.'
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