2026 NY Film Festival Main Slate Revealed

The New York Film Festival has revealed its main slate lineup, which includes a number of Cannes selections like Minotaur, Fatherland and All of a Sudden as well as Clarissa and The Man I Love.

The 32 movies that make up the NY Film Festival’s main slate include the previously announced opening, closing night and centerpiece films, with the latter two projects (Ava DuVernay’s 14th and Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth!) serving as two of three world premieres, the third of which is Mani Haghighi’s I Deserve a Lover Whose Every Rise Sets Fiery Dooms Raging Across the Skies, a documentary about an artist and activist whose path intersects with the U.S.-Iran war. There will be seven North American premieres, including the opening night film, James Gray’s Paper Tiger, and 13 U.S. premieres.

Minotaur, Fatherland and All of a Sudden all won awards at Cannes. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Minotaur, which won Cannes’ runner-up award, the Grand Prix, explores personal, political and patriarchal corruption in contemporary Russia. Pawel Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, which won best director, follows a novelist and his daughter, returning to a post-World War II Germany after years of exile in the U.S. And Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s All of a Sudden saw its two leads Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto share the best actress prize. Other Cannes award winners screening as part of the NY Film Festival include A Man of His Time (best screenplay), The Dreamed Adventure (jury prize) and La Gradiva (Critics’ Week Grand Prize). Additionally, Rose, for which Sandra Hüller won the Silver Bear for her performance at the Berlin Film Festival, will have its New York premiere at the NY Film Festival.

Other Cannes selections coming to the NY Film Festival include Arie and Chuko Esiri’s Mrs. Dalloway adaptation, Clarissa, which sets the Virginia Woolf novel in present-day Nigeria; Ira Sachs’ Rami Malek starrer The Man I Love, about queer lives during the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York; and Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas.

The festival will also feature the New York premiere of Mike Leigh’s reportedly final film, Tender Loving Care, about lives in post-Brexit England’s care sector; the U.S. premiere of Chris Rock’s Toronto-bound Misty Green; and the New York premieres of historical documentary Once Upon a Time in Harlem, about the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance shot in 1972 by William Greaves and finished by his son David Greaves, and Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile, which picks up where the award-winning first part left off, following a number of outspoken Russian journalists as they travel around the world.

“It’s hard to recall a prior main slate program in which the state of the world has been as urgently reflected in so many creative ways,” NY Film Festival artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement. “You could take any cross section of this lineup and come away with a vivid picture of what our present looks, sounds and feels like. I’m deeply encouraged to be able to introduce New York audiences to works by so many fearless, imaginative directors whose artistry has been inspired by the shared realities of our world.”

The 2026 New York Film Festival, which will also host the world premiere of Godzilla Minus Zero as its Spotlight gala, is set to run from Sept. 25-Oct. 12.