Now that the main slate has been announced, I can finally point out some press screenings I’ll mark on my calendar as I cover this year’s festival:

Les Herbes Folles (Wild Grass)

New Wave filmmaker Alain Resnais (Night and Fog, Last Year in Marienbad) is one of those old French guys you study in film school, and—after four years in swirly soap-bubble academia, cut off from most of what happened after the 70s—you hide your embarrassing surprise upon finding out he’s still alive. Suffice it to say, the Diet Coke of his mid-century ego is ‘back’ with another light-stepping arthouse whimsy, a story about a bizarre love affair that begins with a stolen wallet. An interesting choice for the opening night, Grass, which opened to a positive reception at Cannes, marks the 50th anniversary of his Hiroshima Mon Amour. I repeat: this guy is old—exactly one week older than Judy Garland, whose Wizard of Oz has been remastered for NYFF, as well. Funny enough, he’s still 13 years shy of the oldest filmmaker in the festival. That award goes to 100-year-old Manoel de Olivera, Portuguese director of Eccentricities of a Blonde.

Precious

I’ll admit, I’m hugely excited about this one; it comes with a lot of buzz. Precious, based on the novel Push by Sapphire, has been lauded for its colossal (yet believable) performances by Mariah Carey, Lenny Kravitz, and Mo’Nique—which give the film some marketability in lieu of an otherwise dismal spin of yarn: Precious is an illiterate, obese 16-year-old, eking out a miserable existence in the gothic squalor of the Harlem ghetto. Oh yeah, and she gets pregnant. Twice. By her father. It’s exactly the type of ‘Sundancey’ film that needs a critical push to make itself accessible to audiences (lest it carry the brand of hypermoralizing “inner-city, turn-your-life-around melodrama”). The big criticism here is that, well, it has already played everywhere, and NYFF should have invested in a centerpiece that was not so overplayed—a world premiere, perhaps.

Antichrist

Lars von Trier is a pompous fathead. His new movie will have a talking fox. Willhem Dafoe’s porn double will have his testicles smashed with a wooden plank before a bloody climax. A vagina prop will be cizared.

When the credits for Antichrist rolled at Cannes, boos were muffled by cheers and uproarious laughter. Four people fainted during the premiere, and Charlotte Gainsbourg went on to win Best Actress for her performance as the hacky-sack female lead. A very Danish von Trier called it “the most important film of my entire career.” This was, of course, before he proclaimed at a press conference, “I am the best film director in the world…. All the others are overrated, so that’s quite simple.” He proceeded to talk about how he had just met an ‘overrated’ Martin Scorcese back at the hotel. Talk about balls… That said, he directed Dancer in the Dark, and for that I am forever grateful. Talking fox aside, I have to see this movie for no other reason than I have to see it.

Crossroads of Youth

I’ll admit, I know nothing about this film by An Jong-hwa besides the fact that it was recently rediscovered in the form of a nine-reel nitrate negative, and it is now the oldest surviving Korean film. The screening will feature accompaniments of live music and offscreen narration (by a benshi). Rara avis.

Independencia

The more I read about this film, the less I can afford to wait. At first, I said to myself, “Oh hey, the Philippines. Cool.” I’ll be leaving for Manila a week after NYFF ends to visit my heart in Barangay Ayala Alabang, and as such I’ve taken up an interest in the Philippines. I say this very loosely, of course—I occasionally come across articles in the Times, sometimes BBC. I bombard Google and Wikipedia with queries after I hang up with Manila. Standard fare in trying to relieve, ever so slightly, my unawareness of Philippine issues. So my interest in this film was admittedly superficial, at first.

Director Raya Martin is in his mid-twenties; he is two years older than I. He comes from a family in the arts, and certain publicized elements of his history and upbringing are already familiar to me in a removed, second-hand sort of way. Three years after participating in Cinefondation, a filmmakers’ residency program in Paris associated with Cannes (about which he wrote an interesting series of journal entries), he made Independencia—the early-1900s story of a mother and son who flee (from war-tearing American occupiers) to the mountains. Some years later, a storm threatens their isolation and survival from the countrywide chaos that upon them encroaches.

Morrer como um homem (To Die Like a Man)

I’ll have to catch this film before it dips back into obscurity, which will happen sooner than you’d expect—with a plot that “leads nowhere,” says Variety, it plays to a small audience of queer arthouse stylemongers… and it’s long. Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues has made a seemingly Almodóvar-inspired film about an older travesti who faces younger competition in a Lisbon nightclub, as well as the sudden reappearance of a murderous son she fathered years earlier. The hope is that I’ll find this film more interesting than Variety, if only because of my research in Argentina and my ability to channel a decent amount of queer arthouse savvy (thanks, RG!).

Los abrazos rotos (Broken Embraces)

I haven’t lost faith in Pedro Almodóvar, though many people have to some degree. (Those people probably never saw Volver.) Los abrazos rotos, which boasts Almodóvar’s largest budget and longest runtime, is yet another Penélope Cruz–laden genre shuffle. The main character is a blind screenwriter who, due to some random series of events, revisits his past—including the car crash that caused him to lose his sight and his woman (Cruz) 14 years prior. What’s more, Abrazos brings promise of hardboiled noir aesthetic.

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There’s a host of other exciting movies—White Material by Claire Denis, and Life During Wartime, which sounds like a dark Jewish coming-of-age by fellow Yale grad Todd Solondz (Palindromes)—and this is by no means an exhaustive list. You can find that here.