NEW YORK, NY.- The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center announce the 54th edition of New Directors/New Films, taking place from April 2 through April 13. Since 1972, New Directors/New Films has showcased new and emerging filmmakers whose distinctive visions and risk-taking works highlight the vitality and potential of cinema. This year’s ND/NF will present 24 features and nine short films, including 20 North American or U.S. premieres.
Opening ND/NF is the New York premiere of Familiar Touch, Sarah Friedland’s debut, which won three top prizes in the 2024 Venice Film Festival Orizzonti Competition and showcases an astonishing performance by Kathleen Chalfant. The festival will close with the New York premiere of Alex Russell’s feature debut Lurker, a tense thriller about the darker side of pop-star worship fresh from screenings at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals.
Films in the ND/NF program probe a diverse array of themes, including community and co-existence, family histories, the lives of artists, global political issues, and the complexities of youth and coming of age. A number of works experiment with hybrid forms, blurring the lines between fiction and documentary. In this geographically diverse lineup, works by emerging filmmakers from 22 countries are represented, many of which premiered at, and in many cases received awards and prizes from, prestigious international film festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Locarno, CPH:DOX, Sundance, Rotterdam, and Berlin.
Festival highlights include reflections on family and family histories in Maxime Jean Baptiste’s Listen to the Voices; Tato Kotetishvili’s Holy Electricity; Courtney Stephens’s Invention; and Drowning Dry by Laurynas Bareiša (ND/NF 2022), all Locarno Film Festival prize recipients. Political realities are observed through the lens of history and present-day events in Lorena Alvarado’s Lost Chapters; Igor Bezinović’s Fiume o morte! (winner of the top prize at Rotterdam); Bálint Szimler’s Lesson Learned; and Kateryna Gornostai’s (ND/NF 2021) documentary about life during wartime in Ukraine, Timestamp (Eurimages New Lab Outreach Award at CPH:DOX). Also of note are Constance Tsang’s Blue Sun Palace (French Touch Prize at Cannes Critics’ Week), featuring the celebrated actor/director/screenwriter Lee Kang- sheng, and Suhel Banerjee’s CycleMahesh, an experimentation on the fiction/nonfiction hybrid form.
Dan Sullivan, 2025 ND/NF Co-Chair and FLC Programmer, says, “The lineup for this year’s edition of New Directors/New Films inevitably reflects the uncertainties and tragedies of our global situation in 2025, yet it also evinces the sheer resilience of cinema and the continued emergence of important new talents working within it. A number of films in this year’s lineup take up the challenge of recovering and reconceptualizing human connection as a cherished value, perhaps none more movingly than Sarah Friedland’s Familiar Touch, a sophisticated and boundlessly sensitive subversion of the coming-of-age film that challenges our preconceptions about the subjectivity of the elderly. Likewise, Alex Russell’s stylish and gripping Lurker trains its gaze on Gen Z, posing hard questions about the nature of ambition, fame, and friendship amid a culture that prizes selfish striving to the detriment of the fundamental bonds that unite us and make life worth living.”
La Frances Hui, 2025 ND/NF Co-chair and Curator, Department of Film, MoMA, observes, “Cinema dazzles in the hands of this remarkable class of new directors, who bring astonishing creativity to exploring and interpreting the vast spectrum of human experience. Their films abound with surprising, magical touches, weaving stories of love, family, and anguish, while also delving into themes of identity, history, and conflict. These filmmakers reaffirm the boundless potential of the moving image to regenerate, create meaning, and expand our horizons. Prepare to be captivated by this exceptional collection of new films.”
Over 54 festivals, ND/NF has maintained a commitment to its founding mission to showcase distinctive new voices and share the gift of discovery with audiences. Directors showcased in past festivals include Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Kelly Reichardt, Pedro Almodóvar, Souleymane Cissé, Jia Zhangke, Spike Lee, Lynne Ramsay, Michael Haneke, Wong Kar-wai, Agnieszka Holland, Denis Villeneuve, Luca Guadagnino, and many others.
The complete 2025 New Directors/New Films lineup:
Features
• The Assistant dir. Wilhelm Sasnal, Anka Sasnal
• Blue Sun Palace dir. Constance Tsang
• Cactus Pears dir. Rohan Parashuram Kanawade
• CycleMahesh dir. Suhel Banerjee
• Drowning Dry dir. Laurynas Bareiša
• Familiar Touch dir. Sarah Friedland
• Fiume o morte! dir. Igor Bezinović
• Grand Me dir. Atiye Zare Arandi
• The Height of the Coconut Trees dir. Du Jie
• Holy Electricity dir. Tato Kotetishvili Invention dir. Courtney Stephens
• Kyuka Before Summer’s End dir. Kostis Charamountanis
• Lesson Learned dir. Bálint Szimler
• Listen to the Voices dir. Maxime Jean-Baptiste
• Lost Chapters dir. Lorena Alvarado
• Lurker dir. Alex Russell
• Mad Bills to Pay (or Destiny, dile que no soy malo) dir. Joel Alfonso Vargas
• No Sleep Till dir. Alexandra Simpson
• Sad Jokes dir. Fabian Stumm
• Stranger dir. Zhengfan Yang
• Two Times João Liberada dir. Paula Marques
• The Village Next to Paradise dir. Mo Harawe
• The Virgin of the Quarry Lake dir. Laura Casabé
Shorts Program I
• Landscapes of Longing dir. Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez, Anoushka Mirchandani
• You Can’t See It From Here dir. Enrique Pedráza- Botero
• In Retrospect dir. Daniel Asadi Faezi, Mila Zhlutenko
• The Inhabitants dir. Maureen Fazendeiro
Shorts Program II
• Life Story dir. Jessica Dunn Rovinelli
• Crushed dir. Camille Vigny
• Maidenhair dir. Julia Sipowicz
• Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World dir. Kevin Walker, Irene Zahariadis
• What We Ask of a Statue Is That It Doesn’t Move dir. Daphné Hérétakis
New Directors/New Films is organized by La Frances Hui (Co-Chair, MoMA), Dan Sullivan (Co-Chair, Film at Lincoln Center), Sophie Cavoulacos (MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), Francisco Valente (MoMA), Madeline Whittle (Film at Lincoln Center), Tyler Wilson (Film at Lincoln Center), Katie Zwick (Film at Lincoln Center).
