The New York Film Festival has announced the lineup for its Currents section, featuring films that expand the possibilities of the medium, including boundaries of narrative and form.
The slate of 15 feature films and 28 short films has as its centerpiece the world premiere of Bardi, from filmmaker and photographer Tala Hadid, for which she immersed herself in the world of horse riders in Morocco.
Other notable Currents selections include feminist meditation At Night, from experimental filmmaker Beatrice Gibson; Sebastian Brameshuber’s London, about a driver and ride sharers traveling along the Westautobahn; Bruno Dumont’s observational yet fanciful Red Rocks, about kids on the French Riviera; John Torres’ neo-noir The Remotes; and Luise Donschen’s Tomorrow a Long Time Ago, a supernatural story about unemployment and social estrangement amid German reunification in 1990.
The section also includes Jacqueline Lentzou’s expansive coming-of-age story A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra; Ana Vaz’s surreal Hanabi, set in contemporary Japan; Carlos Reygadas’ Heil Jupiter! featuring a dreamlike look at authoritarian surveillance and transgression; Tiffany Sia’s serene but sonically complex landscape film Overt Listening, tackling the Cold War legacy of China and Taiwan.
And there are more intimate, personal stories including Éric Baudelaire’s improvisatory For the Moon, a world premiere collaboration with kids at the National Institute for Blind Youth in Paris; Ted Fendt’s Foreign Travel following four friends over a year in Berlin as they engage with Anna Maria Ortese’s novels; Dan Sallitt’s neurotic comedy What Can’t Be Mentioned, catching up with characters from his The Unspeakable Act. And, as both a Currents and Revivals selection, NYFF will world premiere a new restoration of Fred Camper’s Suicide Note, a diary-like work shot in New York in the 1970s and meant to be slightly different at each screening.
And, as a blend of both an epic and small-scale film, Currents will screen Mariano Llinás’ 330-minute biographical Life of Jorge Luis Borges.
Among the noteworthy filmmakers represented in the shorts lineup is Laura Poitras, who collaborated with Rachel Lauren Mueller on They’re Here, a look at battles between ICE agents and anonymous Minneapolis residents using dashcam footage, crowdsourced data and POV cinema.
“The Currents lineup pushes against the conventions of cinematic form, putting into relief the standardization that dominates the film landscape,” New York Film Festival artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement. “This year’s selection is especially thrilling in its scope and diversity, encompassing multiple modes of production and possibilities for film language and visions that range from the dynamically intimate to the genuinely — sometimes literally — cosmic.”
The 2026 NY Film Festival is set to run from Sept. 25-Oct. 12.