The 57th New York Film Festival will close on October 11 with Motherless Brooklyn, Edward Norton’s neo-noir inspired by Jonathan Lethem’s book of the same name.
Motherless Brooklyn will receive its New York premiere after the international premiere at Toronto. That suggests the film has landed a slot at Telluride, which has not yet announced its line-up.
Norton directed and stars in the 1950s-set tale of a Lionel Essrog, a lonely private detective with Tourette syndrome who gets sucked into a conspiracy that encompasses the city’s racial divide and a Machiavellian urban developer played by Alec Baldwin. Warner Bros will release the film in the US on November 1.
New York Film Festival director and selection committee chair Kent Jones said, “Edward Norton has taken Jonathan Lethem’s novel as a jumping-off point to craft a wildly imaginative and extravagant love letter to New York, a beautifully told semi-musical hard-boiled yarn grounded in the mid-20th century history of the city. What a way to close the festival!”
“NYFF has been my hometown festival for nearly 30 years, and it’s consistently one of the best curated festivals in the world,” said Norton. “Every year I look forward to meeting up with old friends and colleagues to go watch the year’s best films in their program. Their audiences are serious about film, offering just the right balance of celebratory fun and thoughtful conversation. NYFF always straddles everything I love about the movies. To have this particular film – which grew out of my love affair with New York – selected for Closing Night is just a huge thrill… a dream come true, actually.”
As previously announced, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman will open the festival, and Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is the centrepiece screening.
Film at Lincoln Center presents the NYFF and the festival runs from September 27-October 13. is the centrepiece screening.
No comments yet