22 THENEWYORKER, AUGUST 26, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY MAX DALTON
The New York Film Festival, at Lincoln
Center (Sept. 27-Oct. 13), is the city’s
main movie event, and this year’s edi-
tion includes a trio of films from Netflix.
The festival’s opening-night offering is
Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” star-
ring Robert De Niro as a hit man whose
exploits connect with politics—in partic-
ular, the real-life disappearance, in 1975,
of the union leader Jimmy Hoffa (played
by Al Pacino). Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel,
and Anna Paquin co-star. Noah Baum-
bach’s romantic drama “Marriage Story,”
the festival’s centerpiece, stars Scarlett
Johansson and Adam Driver as an actress
and a playwright going through a bitter
divorce; Laura Dern, Alan Alda, and Ray
Liotta co-star. Among the festival’s main
slate of films will be the French actress
and director Mati Diop’s first feature,
“Atlantics,” a drama set in Dakar, Sen-
egal, about a young woman named Ada
(Mame Bineta Sane) who confronts su-
pernatural disturbances when her family
thwarts her relationship with a construc-
tion worker (Ibrahima Traoré).
Bio-pics, as ever, are prominent
among fall releases, but this year’s batch
covers a distinctive range of historical
figures. “Harriet” (Nov. 1), directed byKasi Lemmons (who wrote the script
with Gregory Allen Howard), stars
Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman, who
escaped slavery, liberated hundreds of
other enslaved Africans via the Under-
ground Railroad, and worked on behalf
of women’s suffrage. Janelle Monáe, Joe
Alwyn, and Leslie Odom, Jr., co-star.
Renée Zellweger plays Judy Garland
in “Judy” (Sept. 27), which is centered
on the singer’s performances in London
in 1968, the year before her death. It’s
directed by Rupert Goold; Rufus Sewell
co-stars, as Garland’s husband Sid Luft,
and Jessie Buckley plays her assistant. In
James Mangold’s drama “Ford v Ferrari”
(Nov. 15), Matt Damon plays the car
designer Carroll Shelby and Christian
Bale plays the race-car driver Ken Miles,
who, in the mid-sixties, joined forces to
take part in the twenty-four-hour Le
Mans competition. “Hustlers” (Sept. 13),
written and directed by Lorene Scafaria,
is based on the true story of a group of
New York strippers who teamed up, after
the 2008 financial crisis, to extract money
from rich men by any means necessary.
Constance Wu, Cardi B, and Jennifer
Lopez star; Julia Stiles plays a journalist
reporting on their deeds.
High-profile fantasies extend from
outer space to Gotham City. James
Gray’s science-fiction drama, “Ad Astra”
(Sept. 20), is the story of an astronaut
(Brad Pitt) who undertakes a dangerous
mission to find his father (Tommy Lee
Jones) deep in space. Liv Tyler, Ruth
Negga, and Donald Sutherland co-star.
In Pedro Almodóvar’s movie-centered
drama “Pain and Glory” (Oct. 4), An-
tonio Banderas plays an aged director
whose creative and personal struggles
unleash a torrent of memories, including
ones involving his mother (Penélope
Cruz). The South Korean director Bong
Joon-ho’s thriller “Parasite” (Oct. 11)
follows members of a poor family in
Seoul who, under false pretenses, move
into a rich family’s palatial home. “J o k e r ”
(Oct. 4), the latest installment in the
Batman series, stars Joaquin Phoenix in
a tale of the villain’s turn to the dark side.
Robert De Niro, Zazie Beetz, and Marc
Maron co-star, and Dante Pereira-Olson
plays Bruce Wayne.
—Richard BrodyMOVIES
FALL PREVIEW
Romance and Politics, Past and Present