The Future of Movies Collides With the Past at the New York Film Festival

Memory and storytelling are intriguingly intertwined in work by world-class filmmakers that confounds and intrigues.

For almost six decades, the New York Film Festival has offered a glimpse of the movie future. That has certainly been true this year, with the Lincoln Center screening rooms populated and a busy season of streaming and theatrical releases ahead. Over two autumn weeks — the 59th edition of the festival runs through Sunday — New York cinephiles are treated to a series of sneak previews, early chances to see films that will make their way into the wider world over the next few months.

Part of the function of the event is to spark word of mouth and media coverage, to tease the Oscar race and handicap the art-house box office, and to see what people are inclined to argue about. Will it be the lurid provocations of Julia Ducournau’s “Titane”? The wide-screen western psychodrama of Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”? The aching, low-key intimacy of Mike Mills’s “C’mon C’mon”? There has been something reassuring about the ritual of those questions, and about the conversations, blessedly unrelated to pandemics or politics, that they promise.

But the excitement of novelty has been tinged with nostalgia. Apart from the required masks and proof of vaccination, this New York festival seemed a lot like the earlier ones. The blend of favored auteurs and up-and-comers felt familiar, and not in a bad way. We expect to see Todd Haynes, Wes Anderson, Bruno Dumont and Hong Sangsoo in this setting, and also to stumble into discoveries and reappraisals. I didn’t know what to expect from “What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?,” from the Georgian director Alexandre Koberidze. After having seen it — a slow-moving, semi-magical romance with a ruminative voice-over and leisurely shots of the town of Kutaisi — I’m still not sure what to make of it. That, too, is a quintessential festival experience.