Writer-director Payal Kapadia’s debut feature follows a group of friends in Mumbai, two colleagues and roommates, and a recently retired coworker, through the ups and downs of their daily lives and along on a trip that reveals unknown (or at least previously unspoken) truths about the women and what the future holds for them. The film was a hit at Cannes, where Kapadia won the Grand Prize for her film, and with critics; Variety said, “Kapadia has established her rare talent for finding passages of exquisite poetry within the banal blank verse of everyday Indian life.”

When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in May, Anora—a dramatic comedy, or perhaps vice versa, from writer-director Sean Baker—was the first American-made film in more than a decade to win the festival’s coveted Palme d’Or. It’s no surprise the movie captivated audiences; it’s a very funny, at times bleak, look at a whirlwind romance between a New York City dancer (a star-making turn for Mikey Madison) and a Russian oligarch’s troubled son (Mark Eydelshteyn) that goes incredibly off course to exceedingly entertaining results. See this one now and secure your bragging rights come awards season.

Saoirse Ronan and Elliott Heffernan star in the festival’s closing-night selection, the latest from artist and director Steve McQueen, which follows a single London mother and her young son as they’re separated during WWII-era German bombing. The film, which also features Harris Dickinson, Benjamin Clémentine, and Paul Weller, zooms in on the personal tragedies of war, looking more closely than we’ve often seen before at the true cost of freedom.

The architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) has rebuilt his life in America after the horrors of WWII. While he waits for his wife to join him, he meets a mogul (Guy Pearce) who changes the course of his life—for better and worse. The three-and-a-half-hour epic directed by Brady Corbet looks at the haves and have nots of 20th-century America, both immigrants and the native born, and the ways in which the era changed the country and its future forever.

This documentary from filmmaker Mati Diop (who made 2019’s excellent Atlantics) follows 26 treasures, looted from the African kingdom of Dahomey, as they begin their journey back. And while the return of stolen artifacts would be dramatic enough, Diop takes the chance to step back and look at larger questions of ownership and sovereignty in an ever-changing world. Is it any wonder the film nabbed the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival?

If you didn’t catch Elton John during his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, which wrapped up in 2023, taking in this documentary on the legendary singer and his final tour might be the next best thing. Co-directed by R.J. Cutler (The September Issue) and John’s husband, David Furnish, the film blends archival footage and interviews to capture a global superstar’s reflections as he prepares to live behind a life in the spotlight.

Is Emilia Pérez, the Cannes Jury Prize-winning French entry for the Academy Awards, a crime drama, a musical, or a love story? Yes, yes, and yes. Director Jacques Audiard’s thrilling film tells the story of a Mexico City lawyer (Zoe Saldaña, an awards shoo-in) who finds herself caught up with a cartel boss (Karla Sofía Gascón, same) who wants her help clearing the way to live her life more authentically. Flash forward and the film’s title character appears as a powerhouse philanthropist helping to raise the now-missing cartel honcho’s family; when she goes missing, however, things get even more complicated. It’s a bold swing that pays off in spades, and features a stellar supporting casting including Selena Gomez and Édgar Ramirez.

The Oscar-nominated director Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies, Vera Drake) is back at the New York Film Festival with this latest feature, which stars Marianne Jean-Baptiste as a woman at the end of her rope. Leigh’s known for making films that expose the inner lives of everyday Brits, and this one follows Jean-Baptiste’s Pansy, whose disappointments have turned into a blazing fury and whose only solace is her sister, Chantelle.

On the heels of his films about Princess Diana and Jackie Kennedy, director Pablo Larrain has turned his sites on another complicated, glamorous, and immensely famous woman: Maria Callas. Here, Angelina Jolie plays the part of La Divina during the final week of her life, living in Paris, attempting to reconcile her true self and the way the public perceives her. We’re hard pressed to think of a better subject for a director like Larrain, or a more exciting star to take on the role.

The festival’s opening-night feature is Nickel Boys, a big-screen adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from director RaMell Ross (Hale County This Morning, This Evening). The film, which is based in part on true events, stars Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson as teenagers in a Florida juvenile detention facility whose friendship is the only bright spot among the atrocities with which they live. The supporting cast includes Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Hamish Linklater, and Daveed Diggs.

Richard Gere, Michael Imperioli, Uma Thurman, and Jacob Elordi star in the latest from director Paul Schrader, which follows a legendary documentarian who steps on the other side of the camera to appear in a film by a former protégé and discovers that being the subject of the camera’s glare isn’t exactly what he expected.

William S. Burroughs’s novel gets the big-screen treatment care of writer Justin Kuritzkes and director Luca Guadagnino. Daniel Craig stars as an addict living in Mexico City who becomes infatuated with Drew Starkey’s Eugene Allerton, a young man who’s new to town. Will it be a bit risqué? Sure. But buzz on the film is that it’s more striking for its depiction of a complicated, afflicted man in love than for anything else. Just ask the audiences from the Venice Film Festival, who gave it a nine-minute standing ovation at its premiere.

Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin star in this feature (written and directed by Eisenberg) about two cousins who take a trip to Poland in honor of their grandmother, only to find that changing their location doesn’t change the differences between them. As the two grapple with the gravity of history and legacy, they also explore with humor and pathos what it means to find common ground in the modern moment.

In Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language feature, two old friends, Ingrid (Julianne Moore) and Martha (Tilda Swinton), are reunited when Ingrid learns of Martha’s terminal illness. The pair begin spending more time together, and before long Martha makes a request of Ingrid that will test their relationship. This being Almodóvar, however, it’s all done in a sharp, exceedingly stylish way that, despite the high stakes, feels recognizable and relatable.

Iman and his wife Najmeh are content to work within the system; he works for the Iranian government and recently received a promising promotion. But the couple’s two daughters have a different take, and support the protests against the regime that are taking place in their streets. This latest from director Mohammad Rasoulof, who’s had his own real-life troubles with Iran’s government, won four awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and follows the differences between the two generations in one household as they reach a boiling point.

Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger (and Diane Kruger) star in this new film from director David Cronenberg, about a tech mogul whose latest innovation—a program that allows the bereaved to watch their deceased loved ones on a screen—begins to complicate his life, which has already been turned upside down by the recent death of his wife (Kruger) and a romance with her sister (also Kruger).

For his third outing with star Isabelle Huppert, director Hong Sangsoo tells the tale of a French woman living outside of Seoul and floating in and out of the lives of her neighbors. She quarrels with some, teaches French lessons to others, but the heart of the movie lies in the small ways we can recognize ourselves and our own constellations of friends and acquaintances—who do we really know, who’s just furniture?—and see the humor and the pathos in the way that we live, no matter where it is.