Closing Night Film: "The Inspection" (Lachlan Milne/a24)
This year’s 60th annual New York Film Festival Main Slate will feature critically-acclaimed films from alumni Elegance Bratton, Charlotte Wells & Margaret Brown.
Elegance Bratton's THE INSPECTION is NYFF's Closing Night Film. In Elegance's inspirational and deeply moving retelling of his own story, a young, gay Black man, rejected by his mother and with few options for his future, decides to join the Marines, doing whatever it takes to succeed in a system that would cast him aside. But even as he battles deep-seated prejudice and the grueling routines of basic training, he finds unexpected camaraderie, strength, and support in this new community, giving him a hard-earned sense of belonging that will shape his identity and forever change his life. The film stars Jeremy Pope and Gabrielle Union and was produced by A24.
Charlotte Wells’s AFTERSUN follows Sophie who reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t. Starrng Paul Mescal and newcomer Frankie Corio, Wells’ directorial debut premiered to critical acclaim in Cannes’ Critic’s Week, won the Critic’s Week award, and was picked up for North American distribution by a24.
Margaret Brown’s documentary DESCENDANT centers on Clotilda, the last ship carrying enslaved Africans to the United States which arrived in Alabama 40 years after African slave trading became a capital offense. It was promptly burned, and its existence denied. After a century shrouded in secrecy and speculation, descendants of the Clotilda’s survivors are reclaiming their story. Her film caught the eyes of the Sundance Jury, winning the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision 2022, and is now headed to Netflix for an October release.
“If there is one takeaway from this year’s Main Slate, it is cinema’s limitless capacity for renewal,” said Dennis Lim, artistic director, New York Film Festival to IndieWire. “Collectively, the films in the program suggest that this renewal takes many forms: breathtaking debuts, veterans pulling off new tricks, filmmakers of all stripes seeking new and surprising forms of expression and representation. We love the range and eclecticism of this group of films and are excited to share it with audiences.”
Find the full lineup at IndieWire.