New Directors New Films 1987
New Directors/New Films is a joint presentation of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, making it one of the very few major film showcases in the États-Unis co-curated by two major cultural institutions simultaneously - a collaboration that has been ongoing since the festival's founding in 1972.
The festival was established in 1972 with a straightforward mandate: to identify emerging filmmakers making their first or second feature films and to give those works a high-profile theatrical premiere in New York City. Over more than five decades of operation, New Directors/New Films has become one of the most reliable early indicators of significant directorial careers. An enormous number of filmmakers who went on to international recognition - across commercial, arthouse, and genre filmmaking - received their first major American exposure through this showcase.
The joint curatorial structure between Lincoln Center's Film at Lincoln Center (formerly the Film Society of Lincoln Center) and MoMA is genuinely unusual. Both institutions have their own ongoing film programming, their own distinct aesthetics and institutional cultures, and their own staff - yet the New Directors/New Films selection is made collaboratively. This dual curatorial voice gives the festival a breadth that reflects both MoMA's interest in film as an art form within a fine arts museum context and Lincoln Center's more cinephilic, world-cinema-oriented programming identity.
The festival runs annually in New York, typically in the spring. Screenings take place at Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater and at MoMA's dedicated cinema spaces in Midtown Manhattan, giving the event two distinct geographic and architectural settings within the city. New York City is one of the world's most important film markets, and a premiere at New Directors/New Films reaches an audience of critics, distributors, and industry professionals that can materially affect a film's commercial trajectory in the États-Unis and internationally.
For genre filmmaking, New Directors/New Films has historically been open to work that combines formal ambition with genre convention. Films operating at the intersection of horreur and art cinema, or combining thriller mechanics with character-driven storytelling, have appeared in the selection. The festival's commitment to first and second features means it captures directors at the moment when they are most likely to take risks, before commercial pressures constrain their choices. This is precisely the moment at which genuinely original genre filmmaking tends to emerge.
The two institutions behind the festival bring significant resources and prestige to the curatorial project. MoMA holds one of the world's great film archives and has a history of legitimizing cinema as an art form within the fine arts museum context going back to the 1930s. Film at Lincoln Center has for decades been a leading voice in American cinephilia, publishing Film Comment magazine and organizing retrospectives and new film programming of consistent distinction. Together they give New Directors/New Films a cultural weight that no single-institution festival of the same scale in the États-Unis could match.
The festival has helped launch the North American careers of directors from Japon, France, South Korea, Mexico, Brésil, and dozens of other countries, making it a genuinely international showcase despite its New York City base. Its five-decade track record of identifying significant new directorial voices makes it one of the most historically meaningful of the ongoing American film festivals.
International Film Festival Rotterdam 
Locarno International Film Festival 
Berlin International Film Festival 
Cannes Film Festival 
