Mike Mill’s upcoming drama will receive its world premiere at the 54th New York Film Festival on October 8.

20th Century Women takes place in the bohemian household of a single mother in the Californian locale of Santa Barbara in 1979.

Annette Bening plays the mother and newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann her teenage son. Sharing the home are an itinerant carpenter (Billy Crudup), a punk artist (Greta Gerwig) and the son’s rebellious friend (Elle Fanning). 

“I was taken aback by 20th Century Women,” said NYFF director and selection committee chair Kent Jones. “It’s made with an extraordinarily unusual level of craft and attention to detail, human and visual, which is now all but extinct.

“As someone who actually lived through 1979 in middle-class America, I will testify to the fact that Mike Mills and his remarkable cast approach the level of the uncanny. I felt like I was back there, with all the shared behaviors and worries, the divisions, the look and feel and smell of the world as it was.”

A24 will distribute in the US in December and Annapurna Pictures’ Megan Ellison produced with Anne Carey of Archer Gray, and Youree Henley.

As previously announced, Ava DuVernay’s documentary The 13th will become the first non-fiction film to open the festival.

The NYFF runs from September 30–October 16.