World premieres bet on Oscar heat
‘The Walk’ and other selections hope to reach ‘Birdman’s’ awards heights.
NEW YORK — The last movie to play the New York Film Festival, the curated gathering of movies that happens in the city every fall, did pretty well for itself. The selection was “Birdman,” and after the Michael Keaton-starring drama closed the confab last year, it went on to win four Oscars, including best picture.
When the 53rd edition of the festival begins again Saturday — with the debut of Robert Zemeckis’ whimsical high-wire drama “The Walk” — a new crop of hopefuls will try to track “Birdman’s” flight. An elite group of films will be making their world premieres, looking to set themselves apart from a pack that this year is more crowded than ever.
“We’re not seeking to have a say in award season,” said Kent Jones, the longtime NYFF programmer who took over as director of the festival in 2013. “We’re just thinking ‘what is good’ and trying to expose audiences to that. And I think for that reason people are coming to us.”
The studios have, indeed, been flocking. Since NYFF tweaked its rules several years ago to require that at least two of its three high-
profile slots (opening, closing and centerpiece) must be world premieres, those platforms have been invaluable to Hollywood players.
The key is selectivity. Though the festival — which is run by and hosted at the upscale Lincoln Center — spans two weeks, there are just 28 films in the main selection, a fraction of other festivals’ lineups, which some lament have grown too crowded to effectively launch a film. (NYFF is even slightly smaller this year since Pope Francis’ visit to the city forced it to delay opening night from Friday to Saturday, causing a few sections to shrink by a film or two.)
That means world premieres attract a huge share of attention, from both the city’s high proportion of media as well as industry attendees, both local and from Los Angeles. The showcase slots helped launch “Life of Pi,” “Captain Phillips” and “Her” on their awards run in recent years; all went on to be nominated for best picture and also were hits at the box office. Meanwhile, nongala premieres helped send past contenders “Hugo” and “Lincoln” on their way.
This year, “The Walk,” which opens in limited release Wednesday before a wider rollout next month, will be accompanied in the high-profile slots by “Steve Jobs,” Danny Boyle’s movie about the Apple co-founder starring Michael Fassbender (next weekend) and the Miles Davis tale “Miles Ahead,” which stars and was directed, produced and cowritten by Don Cheadle (closing night, in two weeks).
Among the nongala world premieres is “Bridge of Spies,” Steven Spielberg’s Cold War-era thriller starring Tom Hanks, as Spielberg tries to repeat the feat of his “Lincoln,” a box-office and award-season success that had a nongala world premiere at NYFF three years ago.
Whether consultants have figured out how to maximize attention and goodwill from an NYFF screening or the festival simply has a sharp eye for movies that already were well on their way, the correlation between an NYFF debut and Oscar heat is strong.
“Steve Jobs,” which focuses on three key moments in its subject’s life and features an Aaron Sorkin script, hits theaters Oct. 9; it played Telluride before coming to New York (as “Birdman” did) and hopes to gain momentum at the festival. “Miles Ahead,” meanwhile, which focuses on its own turbulent and even funny period in the jazz legend’s creative life, will open next year, with distributor Sony Pictures Classics seeing 2015 as too packed to toss another entry into the mix.
“The Walk” offers perhaps the most intriguing story line. Opening night has been a slot of some potency (“Pi,” “Phillips” and David Fincher’s “Gone Girl” have occupied it in the past three years). That gives the Sony film a measure of both potential and pressure, heightened by its PG rating and allaudience ambitions.
Made for just $35 million, the film is an Imax 3-D presentation in which Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as the World Trade Center wirewalker Philippe Petit, a man who in the 1970s achieved an unlikely feat through a mix of big thinking and headstrong will. It is both a melancholic elegy to the towers and a more uplifting paean to the power of dreaming.
“I felt that identifying with Philippe’s creative passion is a universal theme,” Zemeckis said in an interview. “Everybody has some kind of muse, whether you’re baking a cake or singing in a choir or writing for a newspaper. You understand that there comes a time when you just have to do it, and I think anyone who does anything creative can identify with the part.”
NYFF also can reintroduce audiences and tastemakers to movies that debuted at another festival. And it can help set documentaries apart, as Laura Poitras’ “Citizenfour” did last year with a splashy NYFF world premiere that set it on the course for the documentary Oscar.
Among the past debuts that will look to get a fresh start at the festival are Todd Haynes’ period lesbian drama “Carol,” starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara; Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Lobster,” about a dystopian world in which nonmarried people are hunted (like “Carol,” it debuted at Cannes); and “Brooklyn,” the Saoirse Ronan-starring immigrant drama directed by John Crowley.
That last film comes with a certain weight. Adapted by Nick Hornby from a Colm Toibin book, it is being released by Fox Searchlight, the studio behind “Birdman” and “12 Years a Slave” that has won best picture two years running.
Searchlight is looking to give the immigrant tale a charge after it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival eight months ago. “It’s one of those films that remind us how great things happen when we begin in a new place,” Michelle Hooper, Searchlight’s executive vice president of marketing, said of the parallels between its themes and its rollout.
Documentaries, meanwhile, are getting their own moment. Among those movies making their world premieres this year are “Everything Is Copy,” journalist Jacob Bernstein’s movie about his late mother, Nora Ephron; “Junun,” Paul Thomas Anderson’s chronicling of a trip to India he took with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood; “The Witness,” James Solomon’s examination of the infamous Kitty Genovese murder case and the myths that surround it; and “Don’t Blink — Robert Frank,” Laura Israel’s look at the influential photographer and filmmaker.
The festival also will take a night to honor Albert Maysles, the seminal documentarian who died in March. The nonfiction movies about famous people offer a complement to the showcase selections, which also look at well-known figures; indeed, the subjects of both “The Walk” and “Steve Jobs” have had documentaries made about them.
“All three of the big slots have movies about real people, and two of them are unorthodox biographies, which I think tells you a lot not just about the films but how audiences now are able to handle shifts and tones in registers,” Jones said.