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New York Film Festival Taps James Gray’s ‘Armageddon Time’ For Main Slate With Special 60th Anniversary Screening

Jill Goldsmith
·2 min read

James Gray’s Armageddon Time will be a main slate selection of the New York Film Festival as well as a special 60th anniversary screening event celebrating the history of the fest.

It will premiere at Alice Tully Hall Oct. 12 with Gray and cast in attendance, along with NYFF filmmakers and supporters who have been integral to the success of the festival, which runs from Sept. 30 through Oct. 16.

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Gray has represented at NYFF with The Immigrant and The Lost City of Z.

Separately, as part of its 60th, NYFF said it will screen a selection of films in all five boroughs in partnership with Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (Staten Island), The Bronx Museum of the Arts (Bronx), Maysles Documentary Center (Harlem) and The Museum of the Moving Image (Queens), throughout the festival.

The complete list of films and showtimes will be announced later this month. Tickets go on sale to the general public September 19.

Armagedon Time is a detailed and deeply emotional etching of a time and place, Queens in 1980 set against the backdrop of a country on the cusp of ominous sociopolitical change.

The Focus Features release follows Paul Graff (Banks Repeta), a sixth grader who dreams of becoming an artist, as he builds a friendship with classmate Johnny (Jaylin Webb), who’s mercilessly targeted by their racist teacher. He finds himself increasingly at odds with his parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway) but on firm ground with his grandfather (Anthony Hopkins).

“I am truly honored to have my film Armageddon Time chosen as the 60th Anniversary screening at NYFF, and to return to this great festival for a third time,” said Gray. “This is a film that’s deeply personal – it’s inspired by my childhood growing up in New York City – so I can’t imagine a more fitting place to share it.”

“There’s a powerful New York streak running through NYFF’s selection this year and we’re exhilarated that James Gray, a NYFF veteran, will center our anniversary efforts to share our Festival more widely this year,” said NYFF Executive Director Eugene Hernandez.

“James Gray is without question one of the great New York filmmakers of his generation. In film after film, he has captured both the physical realities and the psychic life of his hometown as a city of strivers and immigrants,” said Dennis Lim, the festival’s Artistic Director.

Noah Baumbach’s feature take of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel White Noise will open NYFF with its North American debut after premiering at the Venice Film Festival.

Laura Poitras’s documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed about photographer Nan Goldin and the downfall of the Sackler family pharmaceutical dynasty, will be the Centerpiece film on Oct. 7.

The complete NYFF60 Main Slate lineup will be announced next week.

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