As artistic director Dennis Lim put it, the program "pushes against the conventions of cinematic form, putting into relief the standardization that dominates the film landscape." The 64th edition, running September 25 through October 12, leans fully into that provocation.
A Centerpiece in Motion
This year's Currents is anchored by "Bardi," a new documentary from filmmaker and photographer Tala Hadid that shadows participants in a Moroccan equestrian ritual rooted in the 16th century. Positioned as the section's centerpiece, the film reads as both anthropological study and visual incantation — exactly the kind of hybrid gesture Lim's curation favors. Surrounding it, the lineup functions less as a competition slate than as a curated atlas of contemporary risk-taking: Éric Baudelaire's "For the Moon," Carlos Reygadas's "Heil Jupiter!," Dan Sallitt's "What Can't Be Mentioned," and Tiffany Sia's "Overt Listening" all receive world-premiere slots, while a restored print of Fred Camper's 1984 "Suicide Note" ties the program to its avant-garde lineage.
The Shape of the Selection
What strikes us, scanning the full roster, is its refusal of easy geography. Beatrice Gibson's "At Night," Jacqueline Lentzou's "A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra," Ted Fendt's "Foreign Travel," Ana Vaz's "Hanabi," Mariano Llinás's "Life of Jorge Luis Borges," Sebastian Brameshuber on London, Bruno Dumont in "Red Rocks," John Torres's "The Remotes," and Luise Donschen's "Tomorrow a Long Time Ago" — the program braids continents without flattening them. Nathan Silver's "Sounds From Home" precedes Sallitt's feature, a pairing that quietly insists on the relational nature of avant-garde inheritance. Lim's framing — "visions that range from the dynamically intimate to the genuinely — sometimes literally — cosmic" — lands as more than boilerplate.
Why It Matters Now
For New York cinephiles, the Currents slate arrives as the festival's clearest statement of intent in a season already heavy with marquee premieres elsewhere in the lineup: the opening "Paper Tiger," the closing Ava DuVernay feature "14th," and high-profile world premieres of "Godzilla Minus Zero" and "Behemoth!" Currents makes plain that the festival is also, and just as consequentially, a site of discovery. That same hunger for unfamiliar voices is reshaping how we discuss cinema well beyond Lincoln Center — from indie bastions to platforms tracking India entertainment and Bollywood. The 64th NYFF, in other words, is not merely a programming choice but a quiet referendum on what cinematic discovery is supposed to look like.