New York Film Festival Reveals 2026 Currents Lineup, Headlined by Tala Hadid's 'Bardi'
The New York Film Festival has unveiled the Currents section for its 64th edition, with the world premiere of Tala Hadid's Bardi as its centrepiece. The festival runs from 25 September to 12 October 2026 at Film at Lincoln Center and venues across New York City (Film at Lincoln Center).
Currents — the festival's showcase for innovative and boundary-pushing work — includes 15 feature films and 28 short films this year. Hadid's Bardi, a 109-minute Moroccan production in Arabic and Greek with English subtitles, follows a group of horse-riders through central Morocco's rugged terrain. A photographer as well as a film-maker, Hadid trains her lens on what the festival describes as the fraternal world of these riders (The Hollywood Reporter).
Festival artistic director Dennis Lim commented on the lineup, though his full remarks were carried in the festival's own announcement (Film at Lincoln Center).
The feature selections read like a roll call of international art-house names. Bruno Dumont returns with Red Rocks, while Mexico's Carlos Reygadas brings Heil Jupiter!. Argentine director Mariano Llinás contributes Life of Jorge Luis Borges, a biographical film that runs a staggering 330 minutes — five and a half hours on the life of the celebrated Argentine writer (The Hollywood Reporter).
The rest of the feature slate spans several continents. Beatrice Gibson's At Night, Sebastian Brameshuber's London, John Torres's The Remotes, and Luise Donschen's Tomorrow a Long Time Ago fill out the selection. Jacqueline Lentzou's A Day in the Life of Jo: Chapter Phaedra, Ana Vaz's Hanabi, and Tiffany Sia's Overt Listening round out the list, alongside Éric Baudelaire's For the Moon, Ted Fendt's Foreign Travel, and Dan Sallitt's What Can't Be Mentioned (The Hollywood Reporter).
Beyond the new films, the festival will world premiere a fresh restoration of Fred Camper's Suicide Note, programmed in both Currents and the Revivals section — a rare cross-listing that bridges the festival's contemporary and archival threads (The Hollywood Reporter).
The short-film programme carries its own headline. They're Here, a collaboration between Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras and Rachel Lauren Mueller, documents confrontations between ICE agents and anonymous Minneapolis residents — a subject that places the festival squarely in the territory of contemporary American civic life (The Hollywood Reporter).
What makes the Currents section worth watching is its range. In a single programme, a five-hour biographical deep-dive on Borges sits alongside a dispatch from the front lines of US immigration enforcement, a Moroccan equine portrait, and a restored avant-garde work from decades past. For a festival that positions Currents as its window onto the edges of cinematic form, the 2026 edition covers a remarkable amount of ground.
