NYC’s New Directors/New Films Sets Lineup For 2020

Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art announced the complete lineup for the 49th annual New Directors/New Films running March 25 – April 5 and opening with Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’s Boys State, winner of the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for documentary at Sundance.

The closing film is Maite Alberdi’s The Mole Agent. Both are New York premieres.

In between, the iconic series will screen 27 features and 10 short films from 35 countries, with 13 North American premieres and 4 U.S. premieres, 15 films directed or co-directed by women and 15 works by first-time feature filmmakers

In Boys State, Texas high school students participate in an elaborate mock election to build their own state government, encapsulating  “precisely the state of politics in the United States today. The idealistic, pragmatic, witty, and combative teenage subjects are uncanny reflections of their adult counterparts,” said La Frances Hui, Associate Curator of Film, The Museum of Modern Art and 2020 New Directors/New Films co-chair.

The Mole Agent, follows an octogenarian on his comedic first stint as an undercover spy at a Chilean nursing home.

The 2020 lineup includes international film festival circuit award-winners from Rotterdam, Locarno and Venice along with Sundance. They include Zheng Lu Xinyuan’s debut feature The Cloud in Her Room; Janis Rafa’s Kala azar; Arun Karthick’s Nasir; Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Atlantis; Maya Da-Rin’s The Fever; Mamadou Dia’s Nafi’s Father; Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features; and Aneil Karia’s Surge.

Other debuts tackle subjects from a dying teenager to a forbidden love affair to economic hardship to an emotional breakdown, told through the lens of filmmakers from around the world.

“The New Directors/New Films selection is always international in scope, but I’m particularly struck by the sheer breadth of this year’s lineup,” said Dennis Lim, Film at Lincoln Center Director of Programming and 2020 New Directors/New Films co-chair Dennis Lim.

“We have everything from speculative war films to intimate dramas, unnerving works of science fiction to political documentaries, hailing from countries often represented on screen as well as some less commonly seen ones. Collectively these films speak to the continued vibrancy and daring of world cinema in an age of political uncertainty and cultural sameness. They prove that cinema still has what it takes to reflect and enhance the moment we live in,” said Lim, who was just named Director of Programming for Film at Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival.