The New York Film Festival has long prided itself on premiering work that pushes against the comfortable middle of the film industry, and this year's edition is leaning hard into that reputation. Festival leadership has locked in the world premieres of two of the fall's most anticipated titles, "Artificial" and "Behemoth," while making clear that the selection is meant to provoke as much as it is to entertain. In an extended conversation about the lineup, the festival's top programmer argued that any attempt to treat cinema as a neutral art form is a losing battle - because movies, by their nature, take sides.
"Films are unavoidably political," the festival chief said, framing the argument not as a slogan but as a simple description of how the medium works. Every choice a filmmaker makes, from whose face fills the frame to whose story gets told at all, carries a point of view. The festival, in that reading, is not a venue that injects politics into movies. It is a venue that recognizes the politics already there.
That position has shaped how this year's slate came together. Landing "Artificial" and "Behemoth" as world premieres gives the festival two high-profile launches that are likely to dominate conversation well beyond Lincoln Center. Neither title arrives as a known quantity to general audiences, and the festival appears to be counting on that. A world premiere at NYFF is a statement of faith in a filmmaker's vision before the market has had a chance to render its verdict.
A Platform for Films Without a Safety Net
The value of a world premiere, the festival boss suggested, lies in what it withholds as much as what it offers. There is no accumulated buzz, no festival-circuit consensus, no review embargo already breached elsewhere. Audiences walk in cold. For a certain kind of director, that is exactly the point.
"Artificial" and "Behemoth" will both get their first public screenings under the festival's banner, a slot that has historically served as a launchpad for titles that go on to define the fall season. The festival's programming team has spent months winnowing submissions, and the decision to hand two of its marquee world-premiere slots to these films signals confidence in work that resists easy categorization. NYFF has never been a market-driven event in the way that some other festivals are, and its leadership seems determined to keep it that way.
The festival chief was blunt about the pressures facing programmers today. Streaming platforms, awards-season calendars and international sales agents all exert gravitational pull on which films get seen and when. Against that backdrop, the festival positions itself as a place where the art comes first - a claim that is easy to make and harder to sustain, but one that this year's selections are meant to substantiate.
Why "Political" Isn't a Dirty Word
The framing of movies as "unavoidably political" is not new, but it lands differently in a moment when the phrase is often used as an accusation. The festival boss flipped that instinct on its head. Politics in cinema, in this view, is not a matter of inserting a message into an otherwise clean vessel. It is a matter of acknowledging that the vessel was never clean to begin with.
A film about a family, a heist or a robot can be as political as a film about an election, depending on how it looks at power, labor, intimacy or who gets to speak. The festival's leadership seems to be arguing that audiences do not need to be warned about this. They need to be trusted with it.
That trust extends to the selection of "Artificial" and "Behemoth," two titles whose very names suggest concerns with the manufactured and the monstrous - with what humans build and what those creations become. The festival is not shy about the thematic weight it is putting behind them.
Whether the gamble pays off will be measured in reviews, awards chatter and, eventually, the kind of afterlife these films find after the festival lights go down. For now, the message from NYFF is consistent with its history: the festival would rather premiere a film that starts an argument than one that ends a conversation. With "Artificial" and "Behemoth" both getting their first bow on its stage, the argument is set to begin in earnest.
Source: Variety