Directors Ethan Coen (L) and Joel Coen attend the ‘Hail, Caesar!’ photo call during the 66th Berlinale International Film Festival. Image by Getty Images/Pascal Le Segretain/Staff

By PJ Grisar August 7, 2018

This year’s New York Film Festival will mark a major moment for Jewish film.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, which hosts the 56-year old festival, announced the festival’s main slate lineup on August 7. Filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen, 88-year old documentarian Frederick Wiseman and visual artist Julian Schnabel are on the bill with new feature films.

The Coens, who share four Academy Awards for their writing and directing work on “Fargo” and “No Country For Old Men,” will present “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” made in conjunction with Netflix. The film is a Western — familiar territory for the fraternal auteurs — and stars their “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” collaborator Tim Blake Nelson in the title role.

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Wiseman, renowned for his granular looks at American institutions — most recently the New York Public Library — will present “Monrovia, Indiana,” in which he focuses his camera on a small town in America’s heartland.

Schnabel, who began his career as a painter before venturing into film, returns to a subject he knows well with “At Eternity’s Gate.” The film, which will premier at the Venice Film Festival in September, is a biopic of Vincent Van Gogh starring Willem Dafoe as the tormented Dutch artist. It’s set to close the festival in New York.

“Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins’s James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite,” which opens the festivities and Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” which serves as the festival’s centerpiece, are also among the 30 main stage selections.

The New York Film Festival runs from September 28 to October 14.

PJ Grisar is the Forward’s culture intern. He can be reached at [email protected]

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