New Directors/New Films 2021

The Museum of Modern Art and Film at Lincoln Center announce the 50th anniversary edition of New Directors/New Films (ND/NF), available April 28 – May 8 via virtual cinema, with in-person screenings extending through May 14 at FLC. Throughout its rich, half-century history, the festival has celebrated filmmakers who represent the present and anticipate the future of cinema, and whose daring work pushes the envelope in unexpected ways. This year’s festival will introduce 27 features and 11 shorts to audiences nationwide in the MoMA and FLC virtual cinemas, and to New Yorkers at Film at Lincoln Center. Special to this year’s festival is a free virtual retrospective celebrating 50 years of ND/NF, April 16-28.

Opening the festival is writer-director-star Amalia Ulman’s breakthrough El Planeta, a captivating portrait in miniature of a mother and daughter barely scraping by in Spain’s northwestern seaside town of Gijón. ND/NF will close with All Light, Everywhere, winner of a Sundance Jury Prize for Experimentation in Nonfiction. Director Theo Anthony’s follow-up to the acclaimed Rat Film, All Light, Everywhere uses U.S. law enforcement body-cam footage to anchor an ever-expanding treatise on perception, power, and policing.

The New Directors/New Films selection committee is made up of members from both presenting organizations. The 2021 feature committee comprises Florence Almozini (Co-Chair, FLC), La Frances Hui (Co-Chair, MoMA), Rajendra Roy (MoMA), Josh Siegel (MoMA), Dan Sullivan (FLC), and Tyler Wilson (FLC), and the shorts were programmed by Brittany Shaw (MoMA) and Madeline Whittle (FLC).

New Directors/New Films is presented by Film at Lincoln Center and The Museum of Modern Art and is supported by Film at Lincoln Center’s New Wave Membership Program.

Major support for Film at Lincoln Center is provided by American Airlines and The New York Times. Additional funding is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, and is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

Film at MoMA is made possible by CHANEL. Additional support is provided by the Annual Film Fund. Leadership support for the Annual Film Fund is provided by Debra and Leon D. Black and by Steven Tisch, with major contributions from The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, MoMA’s Wallis Annenberg Fund for Innovation in Contemporary Art through the Annenberg Foundation, the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP), The Junior Associates of The Museum of Modern Art, the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, Karen and Gary Winnick, and The Brown Foundation, Inc., of Houston.