Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas, more join 2019 New York Film Festival lineup

Agnès Varda's final film, Pedro Almodovar's 'Pain and Glory,' more join the 2019 NYFF

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Published on August 6, 2019 12:00PM EDT

The 2019 New York Film Festival is shaping up to be a cinematic buffet chock-full of international flavor hailing from 17 different countries.

Projects by scores of global filmmakers — including Pedro Almodóvar, Céline Sciamma, Bong Joon-ho, Olivier Assayas, and more — will join the 2019 NYFF lineup next to previously announced films like Martin Scorsese’s highly anticipated gangster drama The Irishman (starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci), Noah Baumbach’s Scarlett Johansson/Adam Driver marital dramedy Marriage Story, and Edward Norton’s Manhattan-set neo-noir Motherless Brooklyn.

Film at Lincoln Center — previously known as Film Society at Lincoln Center — announced the annual, awards-positioning festival’s main slate Tuesday afternoon, offering pre-Oscar boosts to awards-bound titles like Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or-winning drama Parasite, Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory, which earned star Antonio Banderas some of the best reviews of his career following the film’s Cannes debut. The film’s animated sequences also inspired Almodóvar’s design for the 2019 NYFF poster, as seen below.

Late filmmaking legend Agnès Varda‘s final film, the self-reflective documentary Varda by Agnès, will also venture Stateside for the festival, as will Mati Diop’s Atlantics: A Ghost Love Story, which earlier this year became the first film directed by a black woman to compete for the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize.

Assayas’ Cuban spy drama Wasp Network — starring Penélope Cruz, Edgar Ramirez, and Gael Garcia Bernal — will also visit the NYFF after premiering at the 2019 Venice Film Festival alongside new works from Kelly Reichardt (First Cow), Arnaud Desplechin (Oh Mercy!), and the Dardenne brothers (Young Ahmed).

“Cinema is the domain of freedom, and it’s an ongoing struggle to maintain that freedom. It’s getting harder and harder for anyone to make films of real ambition anywhere in this world,” said NYFF’s director, Kent Jones, in a press statement. “Each and every movie in this lineup, big or small, whether it’s made in Italy or Senegal or New York City, is the result of artists behind the camera fighting on multiple fronts to realize a vision and create something new in the world. That includes masters like Martin Scorsese and Pedro Almodóvar and newcomers to the festival like Mati Diop and Angela Schanelec.”

NYFF 2019 runs from Sept. 27 to Oct. 13. Tickets go on sale to the general public Sept. 8, while VIP passes are on sale now. Read on for this year’s full main slate.