Each of the fall film festivals, which collectively sound the starting gun on Oscar season, has its own distinct flavor. Venice typically celebrates European directors, while Toronto is the most star-studded, and Telluride features the highest concentration of Academy Award contenders and industry insiders.
The New York Film Festival, which starts on Friday, Sept. 27, and is now in its 62nd year, features plenty of Oscar buzz (“The Artist,” “Birdman,” and “Parasite” all played there before winning Best Picture), but it also maintains the most artistic integrity. The only standard is quality, which means, as an attendee, you really can’t go wrong.
Here are just a few of the films that you may want to catch this year, if you can snag a ticket:
“Anora”
(dir. Sean Baker)
The independent-minded Baker, whose films often feature economically distressed protagonists, has been inching toward the mainstream for some time.
His 2017 drama “The Florida Project” earned a few Oscar nominations, but “Anora,” about a sex worker (Mikey Madison) who gets involved with the Russian mob, is said to be his funniest and liveliest film to date.
It already won the Palme D’or at the Cannes Film Festival, which puts it on a fast track to a Best Picture nomination.

“The Brutalist”
(dir. Brady Corbet)
All screenings for “The Brutalist” are already sold out, but don’t worry: They’ll announce more soon.
Still, that’s how strong the buzz is for the latest film from the young Corbet. His previous films, “Childhood of a Leader” and “Vox Lux,” were received well, but “The Brutalist” is being hailed as a true American epic. It concerns a Jewish architect (Adrien Brody) who survives the Holocaust and immigrates to America, where he becomes embroiled with an eccentric industrialist (Guy Pearce).
It’s three and half hours long, and it’s the first American film since Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” to have an intermission.

“Hard Truths”
(dir. Mike Leigh)
Mike Leigh has never made a bad movie. The secret is staying true to his artistic sensibility.
The British director has sniffed the Oscar race before, with “Secrets and Lies,” “Vera Drake,” and “Happy-Go-Lucky,” but you never get the sense he’s particularly interested in accolades.
His milieu is the human experience, portrayed with naturalistic ease. “Hard Truths” reunites him with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, nominated for “Secrets and Lies,” in a film about a prickly woman navigating life’s difficulties in a contemporary setting.
As is usually the case with Leigh, a plot summary will not do it justice.

“Blitz”
(dir. Steve McQueen)
McQueen won Oscars in 2014 for “12 Years a Slave,” but “Blitz” marks his first return to prestige filmmaking since.
It hasn’t screened yet for critics (or anyone else), so little is known about its actual plot, but Saoirse Ronan and fast riser Harris Dickinson star in a tale set in London during World War II.
The cast is filled out by lesser-known British actors, which indicates “Blitz” will not be the typical “awards bait.”
We should expect something more authentic and emotionally raw, a tone McQueen has mastered to much acclaim in the past.

“Nickel Boys”
(dir. RaMell Ross)
Adapted from a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winner Colson Whitehead, “Nickel Boys” is a first-person account of two young men (Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson) who are sent to a corrupt reform school in the Jim Crow South.
The film, by acclaimed documentarian RaMell Ross (“Hale County This Morning, This Evening”), is shot entirely from the point of view of the two protagonists, making for what has been described as a challenging and immersive experience.
The central performances by Herisse and Wilson are said to be extraordinary, while stalwarts Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Hamish Linklater provide able support.
Overall, the film has gotten mixed reviews — it may be too avant-garde for some — but at the very least, it will be like nothing else you see this year.

“The Room Next Door”
(dir. Pedro Almodovar)
Spain’s most accomplished filmmaker since Luis Buñuel, Almodovar takes a bold risk with his latest film, conceiving and filming it entirely in English.
It stars Tilda Swinton as a retired war correspondent with a fatal disease, and features Julianne Moore as an old colleague of the journalist who reconnects with her toward the end of her life.
It’s hard to imagine Almodovar working in the English language; his films burst with emotion in ways that feel entirely European, while Americans are typically more buttoned-up about death. But after 22 mostly excellent films, the Spanish master has earned the right to try.
