Main slate
| English title | Original title | Director(s) | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Night | The Class | Entre les murs | Laurent Cantet |  France |
| Centerpiece | Changeling | Clint Eastwood |  United States | |
| Closing Night | The Wrestler | Darren Aronofsky | United States |
The 46th New York Film Festival ran from September 26 to October 12, 2008. In addition to screening the feature films listed below, which were often preceded by short films, the festival ran a sidebar retrospective of the films of controversial Japanese director Nagisa Oshima. The festival also included its twelfth annual series Views from the Avant-Garde, showcasing a variety of experimental films.
| English title | Original title | Director(s) | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Opening Night | The Class | Entre les murs | Laurent Cantet | France |
| Centerpiece | Changeling | Clint Eastwood | United States | |
| Closing Night | The Wrestler | Darren Aronofsky | United States |
Richard Stuart Linklater is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for making films that deal thematically with suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies Slacker (1990) and Dazed and Confused (1993); the Before trilogy of romance films: Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004), and Before Midnight (2013); the music-themed comedy School of Rock (2003); the adult animated films Waking Life (2001), A Scanner Darkly (2006), and Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood (2022); the coming-of-age drama Boyhood (2014); the comedy film Everybody Wants Some!! (2016); and the romantic comedy Hit Man (2023).
Hong Sang-soo is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. An acclaimed and prolific filmmaker, Hong is known for his slow-paced films about love affairs and everyday dilemmas in contemporary South Korea.
William Todd Field is an American film-maker and actor. He is known for directing In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022), which were nominated for a combined fourteen Academy Awards. Field has personally received six Academy Award nominations for his films; two for Best Picture, two for Best Adapted Screenplay, one for Best Director, and one for Best Original Screenplay.
The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center. Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, NYFF is one of the longest-running and most prestigious film festivals in the United States. It is a non-competitive festival centered on a "Main Slate" of typically 20–30 feature films, with additional sections for experimental cinema and new restorations.
Kenneth Turan is an American retired film critic, author, and lecturer in the Master of Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 1991 until 2020 and was described by The Hollywood Reporter as "arguably the most widely read film critic in the town most associated with the making of movies".
Gerald Peary is an American film critic, filmmaker, editor of the University Press of Mississippi, and a former curator of the Harvard Film Archive.
The American Cinematheque is an independent, non-profit cultural organization in Los Angeles, California, United States that represents the public presentation of the moving image in all its forms.
Anupama Vinod Chopra (née Chandra) is an Indian author, journalist and film critic who served as the festival director of the MAMI Mumbai Film Festival from 2015 to 2023. She is also the founder and editor of the now-defunct digital platform Film Companion, which offered a curated look at cinema with an emphasis on Indian film. She has written several books on Indian cinema and has been a film critic for NDTV and India Today, as well as the Hindustan Times. She also hosted a weekly film review show, The Front Row With Anupama Chopra, on Star World. She won the 2000 National Film Award for Best Book on Cinema for her first book Sholay: The Making of a Classic. Chopra joined the Indian iteration of the film journalism outlet The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, launched domestically in the same year by the RP Sanjiv Goenka Group.
The Golden ApricotYerevan International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Yerevan, Armenia. The festival was founded in 2004 with the co-operation of the "Golden Apricot" Fund for Cinema Development, the Armenian Association of Film Critics and Cinema Journalists. The GAIFF is continually supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, the Ministry of Culture of Armenia and the Benevolent Fund for Cultural Development.The objectives of the festival are "to present new works by the film directors and producers in Armenia and foreign cinematographers of Armenian descent and to promote creativity and originality in the area of cinema and video art".
Up in the Air is a 2009 American comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman. It was written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner from Walter Kirn's 2001 novel. The story is centered on traveling corporate "downsizer" Ryan Bingham. Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick, and Jason Bateman also star. Up in the Air was primarily filmed in St. Louis with additional scenes shot in Detroit, Omaha, Las Vegas, and Miami.
Dale M. Pollock is an American film producer, writer and film professor. A journalist whose works have been published in a number of magazines and newspapers, Pollock is also the author of a biography of George Lucas. Pollock has produced thirteen feature films, one of which (Blaze) received an Academy Award nomination for Cinematography. He was Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts from January 2007 to December 2019. He served as Interim Dean from January 1 to July 31, 2021, and is currently Emeritus Professor in the School of Filmmaking.
Lee Isaac Chung is an American filmmaker. His debut feature Munyurangabo (2007) was an official selection at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and the first narrative feature film in the Kinyarwanda language.
Jodorowsky's Dune is a 2013 American-French documentary film directed by Frank Pavich. The film explores cult film director Alejandro Jodorowsky's unsuccessful attempt to adapt and film Frank Herbert's 1965 science fiction novel Dune in the mid-1970s.
African Film Festival, Inc. (AFF) is a non-profit cultural organization that presents an annual film festival and year-round community programs. Based in New York City, the organization was founded in 1990. The organization is dedicated to promoting greater understanding of African culture through film.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi is a Japanese film director and screenwriter. An alumnus of the University of Tokyo and the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he started gaining attention in his home country with the graduate film Passion (2008).
The Lost Daughter is a 2021 psychological drama film written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, based on the 2006 novel by Elena Ferrante. The film stars Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Dagmara Domińczyk, Jack Farthing, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Peter Sarsgaard, and Ed Harris. Colman also served as an executive producer.
Claudia Puig is an American entertainment journalist and film critic. She was on staff at USA Today as lead film critic and prior to that was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times. She is currently a critic for NPR's Film Week, and president of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA).
Gabriel LaBelle is a Canadian actor. He is best known for his leading role as young aspiring filmmaker Sammy Fabelman in Steven Spielberg's semi-autobiographical film The Fabelmans (2022), for which he received acclaim and won the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer.
