New York Film Festival opens with Paper Tiger and world premieres
James Gray's Paper Tiger opens the 64th New York Film Festival on 25 September 2026 at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. The festival, organised by Film at Lincoln Center, runs through 12 October with artistic director Dennis Lim at the helm, according to Deadline.
The opening night sets the calendar. The run ends on 12 October. In between sits a Main Slate packed with first showings.
Three fiction features will have their world premieres in New York, meaning their first public screenings anywhere. They are Tony Gilroy's Behemoth!, Tom McCarthy's The Statement and Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus Zero, a sequel to his Godzilla story, according to Deadline. Godzilla Minus Zero is also the festival's Spotlight Gala, a centrepiece screening with extended red-carpet presentation, according to Film at Lincoln Center.
Luca Guadagnino's Artificial, a drama about OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, will also world premiere at the festival. Neon acquired global rights to the nearly finished 50 million US dollar film in June after Amazon let it go, according to Deadline.
Documentaries shape much of the programme. Jonathan Glazer, Paul Thomas Anderson and Ava DuVernay each arrive with a new nonfiction film having its world premiere. The slate also includes You Can See Everything, an Elizabeth Holmes documentary by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, and NAZA by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.
A24's You Can See Everything has already been tested in front of an audience. It played as a secret screening at the Telluride Film Festival before heading to New York.
DuVernay closes the festival. Her 14th is the closing-night selection. It follows her 2016 documentary 13th, which opened the festival that year.
Screenings take place at Film at Lincoln Center and across New York City, with dates in all five boroughs from 2 to 9 October. The venues include BAM, the Museum of the Moving Image and sites in Staten Island and the Bronx.
What makes this stand out is the balance. Big titles share space with first screenings and nonfiction work, all inside one city-wide programme.
