As we come to the end of New York’s 61st Film Festival, viewers have seen great performances by award-winning actors, along with a great lineup of directors and curators.
2023 has not been too good for the film and television industry following a writers’ strike from earlier this year and now an actors’ strike this year. It is interesting to see how this might affect the future for emerging casting directors and production teams.
Although the political climate of the film and television industry has been shaky, the audience and viewers were still eager to see the 32 films that are featured in this year’s lineup.
The festival began on September 27th and ended this past Sunday. The very first viewing was on September 29th, which featured May December by Todd Haynes, which starred Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.
The festival was capped off by Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla this past Sunday. Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper, had its North American premier. The film turned out to be a big hit. It follows the life of musical composer Leonard Bernstein, where Cooper himself stars as Bernstein in a biopic about his personal life and marriage.
Another highly anticipated film was Poor Things starring Emma Stone and Willem Defoe and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos. The film is an adventurous drama about a woman who becomes the subject of an experiment, which she then becomes reborn by a mad scientist.
The romantic film by Anh Hung, The Taste of Things starring Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel was one of the smaller films that gained a lot of approval by viewers and critics.
Although the festival is over, it will be great to see how these films thrive once they are officially released and available to the public.
