Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple part of main slate at New York Film Festival

After Venice and Toronto, Chaitanya Tamhane’s The Disciple now heads to New York. The Marathi film will be part of the main slate of films selected for the 58th edition of the New York Film Festival next month.

The Disciple is part of 19 films from around the world that have been selected for this year’s festival. Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock will open the festival on 17 September while Azazel Jacobs’s French Exit will be the closing film on 10 October. Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, starring Frances McDormand, has been selected as the Centerpiece feature and will be screened on 26 September.

In a statement, Dennis Lim, the festival’s director of programming said, “The disorientation and uncertainty of this tough year had the effect of returning us to core principles. To put it simply, the Main Slate is our collective response to one central question: which films matter to us right now?”

“Movies are neither made nor experienced in a vacuum, and while the works in our program predate the current moment of crisis, it’s striking to me just how many of them resonate with our unsettled present, or represent a means of transcending it,” he continued.

The festival is being held one week earlier in order to accommodate drive-in screenings. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 58th edition will be a mixture of virtual and outdoor screenings.

Tamhane’s film, which features Oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón as an executive producer, is set in the world of Hindustani classical music. First-time actor Aditya Modak plays Sharad who looks to follow his father in the Khayal music tradition but grows disillusioned the further he journeys into the world.

The Disciple will have its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival prior to its screening in New York.