NYFF64 Opens With ‘Paper Tiger’; Ava DuVernay’s ‘14th’ Will Close the Festival October 9
James Gray’s New York crime drama starts the September 25–October 12 festival, while DuVernay’s constitutional documentary receives its world premiere as the closing-night selection.
The 64th New York Film Festival opens Friday, September 25, with James Gray’s Paper Tiger and runs through October 12 at Film at Lincoln Center. Ava DuVernay’s 14th is not an opening-day film, but it is the festival’s Closing Night selection, with its world premiere scheduled for Friday, October 9, at Alice Tully Hall. That timing gives DuVernay one of the festival’s two highest-profile slots while keeping the opening program centered on Gray’s New York-set thriller.
Paper Tiger stars Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson in a story set in 1986 Queens and Brooklyn. Film at Lincoln Center describes the film as a family crime drama in which an engineer is pulled into a dangerous scheme involving his former NYPD-officer brother and Russian criminals. The festival lists a 6 p.m. screening and a cast-and-director Q&A on September 25, making Gray’s film the immediate public face of NYFF64.
DuVernay’s 14th is one of four world premieres in the festival’s 34-film Main Slate, which spans 31 countries and includes 17 directors making their NYFF Main Slate debuts. The documentary follows her 2016 film 13th and examines the political and legal history of the 14th Amendment, including fights over birthright citizenship, due process, equal protection and the prohibition on insurrectionists holding office. Netflix has announced the film for a December release after its festival premiere.
The connection to 13th is deliberate. DuVernay premiered that film as NYFF54’s Opening Night selection in 2016, and 14th returns her to the festival a decade later with a documentary focused on a different constitutional amendment and the continuing struggle over who receives the rights promised by it. Film at Lincoln Center has described the new film as a response to the erosion of democratic norms and the renewed political battle over the amendment’s meaning.
The festival’s first-day news is therefore twofold: Paper Tiger establishes NYFF64 with a major American filmmaker’s new New York thriller, while 14th gives the event a closing-night film rooted in Black political history and present-day constitutional conflict. DuVernay’s placement is more than a prestige booking; it puts a Black woman director’s documentary at the endpoint of one of the country’s most influential fall film festivals and connects the 2026 program directly to a landmark edition from 10 years earlier.