#581 - Programmer's Preview of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2025
This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Film at Lincoln Center Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle, as she discusses the films featured in the 2025 edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.
Unifrance and Film at Lincoln Center present the 30th edition of Rendez-Vous with French Cinema, running from March 6 to March 16. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/rdv.
This celebrated festival offers a dynamic showcase of contemporary French filmmaking, featuring an array of 23 films by both emerging voices—some selected as part of Unifrance’s 10 to Watch 2025 Program, a yearly initiative honoring a new generation of directors and actors who contribute to the vitality of French creation—and seasoned directors that tackle relevant and enduring themes. This selection of North American, U.S., and New York premieres celebrates the energy, innovation, and range of French cinema.
The conversation was moderated by Erik Luers, FLC's Digital Marketing Manager.
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#580 - Bong Joon Ho on Mickey 17
This week we’re excited to present a recent conversation with Mickey 17 writer and director Bong Joon Ho, interpreted by Sharon Choi, and moderated by FLC Assistant Programmer Madeline Whittle.
From the Academy Award-winning writer/director of Parasite (which was an NYFF57 Main Slate selection), Bong Joon Ho now presents his next groundbreaking cinematic experience, Mickey 17, based on the novel by Edward Ashton. The unlikely hero, Mickey Barnes has found himself in the extraordinary circumstance of working for an employer who demands the ultimate commitment to the job… to die, for a living.
Mickey 17 stars Robert Pattinson as the title character (well, characters) and also stars Naomi Ackie, Academy Award nominee Steven Yeun, Academy Award nominee Toni Collette, and Academy Award nominee Mark Ruffalo. Mickey 17 will open in theaters nationwide on Friday, March 7.
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#579 - Frederick Wiseman in Conversation with John Wilson
This week we’re excited to present a recent conversation with legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, moderated by multiple-time Emmy-nominated filmmaker John Wilson.
Through March 5, Film at Lincoln Center presents “Frederick Wiseman: An American Institution,” a retrospective featuring an extensive selection of films spanning decades of the iconic filmmaker’s prolific career, all newly restored in 4K. With 11 of Wiseman’s films having been selected for the New York Film Festival since 1967, this series signifies a celebration of the long-standing relationship between FLC and the renowned documentary filmmaker. Once limited to 16mm film prints rarely screened in theaters, these invaluable works can now be experienced in their fullest form at the Walter Reade Theater.
To view the remaining screening schedule and to get tickets, please visit filmlinc.org/wiseman.
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#578 - Matthew Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati, and Sylvain Corbeil on Universal Language
This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 62nd New York Film Festival with Universal Language director Matthew Rankin, cast members Ila Firouzabadi & Pirouz Nemati, and producer Sylvain Corbeil.
A Currents selection of NYFF62, Universal Language is now in select theaters, courtesy of Oscilloscope.
With deadpan, absurdist charm, Manitoban filmmaker Matthew Rankin triangulates a group of interconnected storylines set in a wintry, bleakly beautiful Winnipeg. Two kids discover a bank note frozen in a block of ice, which they hope to retrieve to buy their classmates a new pair of glasses. A tour guide brings befuddled visitors on a walking tour of the city’s modest environs. A melancholy man (Rankin, in an autobiographical role) returns home from Montreal to reunite with his family after many years. Imagining a city in which Farsi is the predominant language, Rankin’s visually and narratively inventive film was inspired by Iranian films of the 1970s, frequently humanistic children’s fables, in this case transferred to a world of beige, concrete brutalist buildings and increasingly surreal, Tati-esque humor. Universal Language was the winner of the Directors’ Fortnight Audience Award at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
NYFF62 Currents features are sponsored by Mubi.
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#577 - Oren Rudavsky and Annette Insdorf on Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire
This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 2025 edition of the New York Jewish Film Festival with Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire director Oren Rudavsky and co-producer Annette Insdorf. This conversation was moderated by Rachel Chanoff.
With his unforgettable and shattering 1958 memoir Night, Elie Wiesel forever changed the way the Holocaust would be written about. A survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a teenager, the Romanian-born Wiesel became an international spokesperson and renowned author, eloquently transforming his trauma into literature of the highest and most profound order. In this enthralling new documentary, filmmaker Oren Rudavsky goes deeper into Wiesel’s philosophically abundant inner life, depicted with nuance and tenderness, and enriched by access to his personal archives. In many ways a private man despite being one of the most public voices of Holocaust remembrance, Wiesel is presented here in newly intimate ways known only to his closest friends. Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire stands as a crucial testament to an extraordinary man who helped shape our collective memory of the darkest chapter of the 20th century.
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