For the fourth consecutive year, the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New York Film Festival will open with an American film. This year, it is Robert Zemeckis’ ambitious 3D film The Walk starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
The Walk is the perfect film to open a festival in New York City. The movie is based on Philippe Petit’s memoir and stars Gordon-Levitt as Petit, the famed French high-wire artists who walked between the Twin Towers in 1974, with the authority to do so.
“The Walk is surprising in so many ways,” NYFF Director Kent Jones said in a statement. “First of all, it plays like a classic heist movie in the tradition of The Asphalt Jungle or Bob le flambeur—the planning, the rehearsing, the execution, the last-minute problems—but here it’s not money that’s stolen but access to the world’s tallest buildings. It’s also an astonishing recreation of Lower Manhattan in the '70s. And then, it becomes something quite rare, rich, mysterious… and throughout it all, you’re on the edge of your seat.”
The Walk is also the second 3D film to open NYFF, following Ang Lee’s Life of Pi in 2012. That year, Zemeckis’ Flight, which was his return to live-action filmmaking, was the Closing Night movie.
Last year’s NYFF opener was David Fincher’s Gone Girl, while Paul Greengrass’ Captain Phillips opened the 2013 festival. Roman Polanski’s Carnage, a France/Poland production, and Fincher’s The Social Network also opened the festival in recent years.
Tickets for the festival, which runs from Sept. 25 to Oct. 11, will be available starting in early September. Film Society members at Film Buff Level or higher get early access.
The Walk opens nationwide on Oct. 2.
screenshot from Sony YouTube Video