Film at Lincoln Center Podcast

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with Silent Friend director Ildikó Enyedi and lead actor Tony Leung, moderated by TIME film critic Stephanie Zacharek.

Silent Friend is currently playing daily at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/friend

Ildikó Enyedi, whose On Body and Soul won the Golden Bear at the 2017 Berlinale and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best International Feature Film, returns with a century-spanning triptych that moves from 1908 to the early months of the pandemic, unfolding around an ancient ginkgo in the botanical garden of Marburg University, the fixed witness to a century’s worth of passing faces. From a young woman forcing her way into the male-dominated scientific establishment at the dawn of the 20th century to idealistic lovers in the politically turbulent 1970s, Enyedi considers how consciousness itself is historically situated, mapping the incremental rewiring of how people think and connect over time. Tony Leung anchors the 2020 chapter with a characteristically subtle, deeply felt performance as a visiting neuroscientist stranded on campus during lockdown, whose attempt to measure the tree’s electromagnetic signals—guided remotely by a French plant biologist, played by Léa Seydoux—gradually opens into a meditation on perception itself.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with With Hasan in Gaza director Kamal Aljafari, moderated by NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. An NYFF63 Currents selection, With Hasan in Gaza opens in select theaters beginning May 29, courtesy of The Cinema Guild.

It is 2001 in Gaza, and Palestinian filmmaker and visual artist Kamal Aljafari is traveling from north to south, accompanied by a MiniDV camera and searching for a man he met while briefly imprisoned as a teenager. Aljafari’s footage, now nearly a quarter-century old and unseen by the filmmaker himself until recently, is often tranquil: drives down the highway, walks through the market, a trip to the beach, a card game among friends. But the immediate return of Israeli shelling, captured here in detail, invokes the ever-present background of settler violence. With Hasan in Gaza is an aching witness to the beauty of this land and the struggle of its people, neither of which may soon be recognizable at all.

The 63rd New York Film Festival is presented in partnership with Rolex while NYFF63 Currents features are sponsored by The Travel Agency: A Cannabis Store.

This week we’re excited to present a conversation with The Christophers' lead actor Ian McKellen and screenwriter Ed Solomon as they discuss their film with FLC programmer Madeline Whittle.

In Steven Soderbergh’s new film The Christophers, Ian McKellen plays Julian Sklar, who was once a star of London’s 1960’s and 70’s pop art explosion but hasn’t painted in decades and has been broke for years. His two estranged children (James Corden, Jessica Gunning), desperate for an inheritance, hire Lori, an art restorer and former forger (Michaela Coel), to pose as a prospective assistant in order to access 8 unfinished canvases Julian has buried deep in storage. Her plan is to complete them, then return them to storage, where they are to be “discovered” upon Julian’s death.

This week we’re excited to present a special conversation with global icon Tony Leung, tracing one of the most extraordinary screen careers of the past five decades. From his emergence in the Hong Kong New Wave to his enduring collaborations with many of the defining filmmakers of contemporary cinema, Leung reflects on his roles, working methods, and creative instincts that have shaped his singular screen presence.

This conversation was moderated by FLC Vice President of Programming, Florence Almozini.

See Tony Leung in the new feature film Silent Friend, currently playing daily at Film at Lincoln Center. Get tickets at filmlinc.org/friend

This conversation took place as part of our recently concluded retrospective The Grandmaster: Tony Leung. The series was sponsored by Criterion.

This week we’re excited to present a special episode featuring the star-studded speeches from our recent 51st Chaplin Award Gala, honoring George Clooney. Having taken place on April 27 at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, the Gala encompassed a joyful celebration of the celebrated actor and filmmaker’s incredible body of work, featuring notable speakers and film clips, and culminating in the presentation of the Chaplin Award, an annual honor bestowed upon cinema’s most outstanding talents.

The evening’s guest speakers included, in order of appearance, Emmy Award winner Julianna Margulies, Emmy Award–winning actor, writer, and director John Turturro, Academy Award winner Sam Rockwell, Emmy- and Grammy Award–winning host Stephen Colbert; Academy Award-winning producer Grant Heslov, and the man himself George Clooney.