Through a New York Lens: Four Films at the New York Film Festival
By Michael Jacobsohn
The New York Film Festival has long been a destination for international arthouse cinema. For New York’s cinephiles, it offers an opportunity to discover acclaimed films that may struggle to secure American distribution. A screening at the palatial Alice Tully Hall can be a rare chance to experience these works on a large screen, surrounded by an audience eager to explore unfamiliar stories and styles. This year, I chose to concentrate on four films at the festival, rooted closer to home. Each offers a different view of New York, and I would not be surprised to see some earn Academy Award nominations.
It is 9:00 a.m. and I am standing in the press line for the 64th New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. Roughly 100 critics have arrived ahead of me, hoping to secure a seat for Paper Tiger. Written and directed by James Gray, this tense drama stars Miles Teller, Adam Driver, and Scarlett Johansson.
The story takes us to Queens and Brooklyn in 1986, with the polluted Gowanus Canal becoming the setting for a dangerous business proposition. Gary, a former New York City police officer played by Driver, persuades his younger brother, Irwin, an engineer played by Teller, to pursue a cleanup contract. Irwin has a family and a comfortable existence, but the prospect of greater financial security draws him into his brother’s scheme.
There is one major complication: Russian criminals have their own interests in the project. What appears to be a promising opportunity spirals into a nightmare. Gray turns a polluted stretch of Brooklyn into a place where family loyalty, ambition, and corruption collide. The threat reaches beyond the brother’s business dealings and into the home, giving the suspense a deeply personal dimension.
Club Kid, written and directed by its star, Jordan Firstman, is his debut feature ─ a comedy-drama that initially tested my patience. Its opening 20 minutes look back a decade to Peter’s life as a cocaine-fueled party animal. Watching these long, loud sequences, I began to wonder where the comedy was hiding.
Fortunately, the film takes a dramatic turn when Peter discovers that he has a 10-year-old son who unexpectedly enters his life. From that point, the story becomes a heartfelt exploration of an unlikely father-son relationship, infused with humor that resonated with both me and the press audience. I cannot remember another screening where a room full of critics shared so much sustained laughter.
Reggie Absolom plays the lovable boy whose arrival brings warmth and light to the film. Firstman is convincing as a gay Jewish nebbish whose chaotic world is upended by fatherhood. The humor grows out of Peter’s struggle to adjust, while the emotional connection gives the film its heart. New York’s nightlife provides the backdrop for a man who must finally make room for someone besides himself.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem, directed by William Greaves and his son, David Greaves, offers a very different gathering of New Yorkers. Its remarkable footage was filmed in 1972, when Greaves brought surviving figures of the Harlem Renaissance together at Duke Ellington’s home. The project remained unfinished during his lifetime and was completed more than 50 years later.
Guests included musicians Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, artists Aaron Douglas and Romare Bearden, photographer James Van Der Zee, writer Arna Bontemps, and librarian Regina Andrews. Amid laughter, reminiscences, poetry, and song, they discussed racism, racial violence, artistic recognition, and the financial struggles of Black creators. They also debated the movement’s origins and meaning, revealing differing views about racial identity and separatism.
The gathering preserves enduring friendships alongside sharp disagreements. These are people discussing history they helped create, and their personalities give that history an immediacy no textbook can provide. Harlem emerges as a community whose influence reached far beyond its streets.
William Greaves, who died in 2014, was a pioneering Black filmmaker, actor, and producer raised in Harlem. His work explored African American culture and struggles for equality. He helped shape television’s Black Journal and directed the experimental classic Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Completing his final passion project was a remarkable achievement by David Greaves, director and an original cameraman; Liani Greaves, William’s granddaughter and a producer; and producer and co-editor Anne de Mare.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York reminded me of Robert Bresson’s Pickpocket, the 1959 French drama about a young Parisian thief. Noah Segan’s film introduces a much older practitioner: Harry, played by John Turturro, a Bronx pickpocket supporting his disabled wife in a city increasingly shaped by technology.
Steve Buscemi plays Ben, a pawnbroker who buys Harry’s stolen goods. Trouble begins when Harry robs Dylan, played by Will Price, a privileged young man with dangerous criminal connections. Determined to recover what was taken, Dylan threatens Harry, sending him on a desperate journey across the city. The suspense is grounded in an intimate portrait of aging, loyalty, and survival. Harry knows his trade, but New York is becoming a place with little use for his particular skills.
Together, these four films reveal a city of ambition, reinvention, creativity, and hardship. From Brooklyn’s waterfront to its nightlife, from Harlem’s cultural memory to the Bronx’s disappearing trades, New York shapes the choices its people make. I hope local audiences seek out these films as they reach theaters. Their stories remind us how much of the city’s character resides in people struggling to find, preserve, or reconsider their place within it. The lead and supporting actors deliver wonderful performances throughout these films, and I hope their work receives recognition at the Academy Awards.
Michael Jacobsohn is an independent New York City filmmaker. Last year, he completed The Cornelia Street Café in Exile, a full-length documentary about the greatly missed café. He curates and hosts a bimonthly screening of short films by New York metropolitan filmmakers at New Plaza Cinema.
