New York Film Festival Announces Mike Mills’ ’20th Century Women’ As Centerpiece Selection

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced that Mike Mills’ star-packed “20th Century Women” has been picked as the New York Film Festival’s Centerpiece gala. The film, which features Annette Bening, Billy Crudup, Greta Gerwig and Elle Fanning, will have its world premiere on October 8, when it debuts at the festival.

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Described as a “texturally and behaviorally rich new comedy” by NYFF, the film is “a moving group portrait of particular people in a particular place (Santa Barbara) at a particular moment in the 20th century (1979), one lovingly attended detail at a time.”

In the film, Bening plays a single mother who must contend with raising her teenage son — played by newbie Lucas Jade Zumann — in a wild house populated by unpredictable characters during an equally as unpredictable time period.

Of the pick, New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones said, “I was taken aback by ’20th Century Women.’ It’s made with an extraordinarily unusual level of craft and attention to detail, human and visual, which is now all but extinct. As someone who actually lived through 1979 in middle-class America, I will testify to the fact that Mike Mills and his remarkable cast approach the level of the uncanny. I felt like I was back there, with all the shared behaviors and worries, the divisions, the look and feel and smell of the world as it was.”

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A24 will release the film in December.

NYFF will open with Ava DuVernay’s “The 13th,” which is the first-ever nonfiction work to serve as the fest’s Opening Night selection. This year’s New York Film Festival runs from September 30 – October 16. Stay tuned for more programming announcements in the coming days.

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