The 64th annual New York Film Festival (NYFF) just wrapped yesterday, which effectively locks in the slate for this year's Oscar race. You may have already seen the accolades for buzzy premieres like Luca Guadagnino's Sam Altman-centered Artificial or the Pedro Pascal-led Behemoth!, which are sure to factor heavily into the competition next spring. But to focus only on these frontrunners would be to miss out on a whole world of new and interesting work that too often gets lost in the louder conversation. This year's NYFF, which I had the pleasure of attending, saw the premieres of dozens of fresh and exciting foreign-language narrative films, all of which are set to screen for the general public in the coming weeks and months.
Here are a few standouts to look out for:
All of a Sudden | Soudain (dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
French and Japanese with English subtitles
Very few directors have the power to make a three-plus-hour film—one that's mostly just two women talking, mind you—as powerful and profoundly moving as Ryûsuke Hamaguchi. The Japanese filmmaker behind past NYFF darlings such as Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist returned to the fest this year with All of a Sudden, a compassionate, humanist tour de force that's almost certain to leave you teary-eyed, yet hopeful. The film follows Marie-Lou (Virginie Efira), the director of an elder-care facility who's attempting to introduce a program centering respect and empathy in the treatment of dementia patients, and Mari (Tao Okamoto), a theater director with terminal cancer. The two women meet and strike up a soulmate-level friendship that indelibly changes the course of both of their lives. Efira and Okamoto are stunning in their roles and share an undeniable, lived-in chemistry that's increasingly rare in cinema these days. (The two shared the Best Actress award for their work at this year's Cannes Film Festival.) Trust me—those 196 minutes will fly by.
The Diary of a Chambermaid | Le Journal d’une femme de chambre (dir. Radu Jude)
French and Romanian with French and English subtitles
Radu Jude, the world-class weirdo behind such films as Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, the Andrew Tate-skewering Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World, and last year's AI send-up Dracula, returned to the fest this year with The Diary of a Chambermaid. The film, a very loose adaptation of Octave Mirbeau's 1900 novel of the same name, follows a young Romanian immigrant, Gianina (Ana Dumitrascu), as she attempts to make a living keeping house for a wealthy French couple and their son, all while maintaining an increasingly strained relationship with her mother and daughter back home. While the film isn't quite as all-out insane as Jude's past work (though if you've seen it you'll know that's not saying much), it still shows off the satirist's particular gift for mixing eye-popping vulgarity with sharp, incisive social commentary. Dumitrascu also delivers a world-class performance in one of her first ever leading roles.
Everything Else Is Noise | Lo demás es ruido (dir. Nicolás Pereda)
Spanish with English subtitles
Move over, Sam Altman. Step aside, Nathan Fielder and Elizabeth Holmes. Everything Else Is Noise may just take the crown for most stressful release at NYFF this year. The film opens with a continuous shot of a never-ending traffic jam that clocks in at about four minutes, but feels closer to ten. That's one of the sparse, brilliant film's few external scenes. The rest of the project unfolds within a small but well-appointed Mexico City apartment, as two documentary filmmakers attempt to interview a trio of female composers, Tere, her friend Rosa, and Tere's daughter Luisa (Teresita Sánchez, Rosa Estela Juárez Vargas, and Luisa Pardo), while beset by sound and lighting issues galore. A dog barks loudly in the background for almost the entirety of the film (much to the chagrin of Tere's intrusive neighbor, who keeps butting into the scene to complain), the power in the apartment flickers in and out, and that eternal traffic jam keeps on roiling in the background. That's in addition to the women themselves, whose individual antics certainly don't make things easier for their interviewers. Underneath all the anxiety, however, the film unfolds as both a heartfelt commentary on family and domesticity and a sharp exploration of the role of the artist and what it means to be a woman in a male-dominated space.
Fatherland (dir. Paweł Pawlikowski)
German, English, French, and Russian with English subtitles
Very few actors are having a better film festival run than Sandra Hüller right now. The inimitable Oscar nominee (you may know her from such films as The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, or, more recently, Project Hail Mary) stars alongside Hanns Zischler in Oscar-nominated director Paweł Pawlikowski's latest piece of historical commentary. The film follows famed Doctor Faustus novelist Thomas Mann (Zischler) as he embarks on a fictionalized road trip through the ravaged, postwar Germany of 1949 with his daughter, Erika (Hüller). Shot in black-and-white and utilizing a constrained 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Fatherland presents a chilled, penetrating portrait of a country struggling with its self-identity in the wake of the evils it perpetrated, set in parallel to the more intimate resentments that bubble up between father and daughter. The vision is stunningly realized; it's easy to see why it earned Pawlikowski the Best Director award at this year's Cannes.
Godzilla Minus Zero | ゴジラ-0.0 (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
Japanese with English subtitles
The follow-up to director Takashi Yamazaki's Oscar-winning 2023 film Godzilla Minus One, Godzilla Minus Zero once again sees former kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki) take on a B.A.M. (Big Ass Monster). This time, it's got multiple heads, can generate hurricanes, and fires off gravity beams that have the power to flip and destroy entire buildings. (And destroy them it does. This is the first film in the Godzilla franchise's seven-decade history to earn an R-rating for "violent content/bloody images," according to the MPA.) Still, despite the godlike scale of Godzilla Minus Zero's rampaging lizard creature, not to mention the destruction it leaves in its wake, the film is just as remarkably human as its predecessor. This one delves even further into the indelible scars left on Japan by World War II, making explicit the parallels between Godzilla and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once again, Yamazaki pulls off the near-impossible feat of making the B.A.M.'s human victims just as interesting as the monster itself. And it looks amazing, to boot.
Nowhere To Lay My Eyes | 눈둘데가 없네 (dir. Hong Sangsoo)
Korean with English subtitles
There's a lot that goes unsaid in Korean director Hong Sangsoo's Nowhere To Lay My Eyes, both by the narrative's small constellation of characters as well as the filmmaker himself. The minimalist project follows a young experimental filmmaker, Sanghee (Kim Min-hee), as she embarks on a trip with her brother (Shin Seok-ho) to visit her estranged mother (Choi Myung-gil) on the pastoral Jeju island. There, Sanghee suspiciously meets her mother's new documentarian husband (Kwon Hae-hyo), as well as his visual artist daughter (Park Mi-so). As a director, Hong approaches these characters with an almost clinically detached hand. You never quite know what they think of each other (or what he thinks of them) at any given moment. Still, the character study proves deeply affecting and will linger long after the credits roll, largely thanks to the excellent, restrained performances of Kim and Choi.
Red Rocks | Les Roches Rouges (dir. Bruno Dumont)
French with English subtitles
If you've ever been frustrated with adaptations of Romeo and Juliet that insist on aging up the play's young teen leads (Leonardo DiCaprio was 21 when the Baz Luhrmann version came out), you might be particularly excited about director Bruno Dumont's vision for Red Rocks. Using a restrained, semi-documentary approach (think The Florida Project), Dumont captures the exploits of rival "gangs" of kids—all aged 5 through 7—as they vie for dominance over a gorgeous French Riviera town. (And we mean really gorgeous. The crystal-clear water will make you want to pack a suitcase ASAP.) The film's Shakespearean framing device helps to organize its loose narrative of youthful exploration and rival love interests (although in this case, love is more gawky hand-holding than fiery passion), but the joy of the film is really in seeing these young stars let loose to do their thing.
