If a film must be seen to be appreciated, then a film festival doubles as an appreciation society. The New York Film Festival (NYFF) provides a shining example, a showcase for movies that can inspire the world. Founded in 1963, NYFF’s noncompetition format allows it to program films with passion and perseverance while celebrating progress within the craft of cinema.
“The mission of the festival is to capture what’s most exciting or important about the year in cinema,” says Dennis Lim, NYFF’s artistic director since 2020. “We distill where cinema is today. We’re always trying to make a case for cinema as a relevant, vital, and exciting art form. The program that we put together is our answer.”
Lim and his team take pride in the great responsibility they hold. Being selected for NYFF can change the course of a movie and the life of a filmmaker, setting them up for success today and tomorrow. The NYFF programming committee brings a global perspective to the world of film, unearthing cinematic gems from all corners of the globe and screening them in the center of Manhattan. “This is often the place where audiences are introduced to films from around the world,” Lim says. “There’s nothing like showing the work of a first-time filmmaker to an audience in New York. And there’s a real appetite among younger filmmakers to experience cinema on the big screen as a communal experience.”
NYFF’s more than six-decade history gives Lim an opportunity to look back and reflect on the past, while also charting a way forward. “For me, the lineups from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s are important records,” he says. “These are films—snapshots in time—but they also point to a canon, and a counter-canon. A lot of the films we’ve shown during our 63 years have been forgotten and are under-appreciated today. The curatorial function of a festival like ours is to define this moment in time but also to make a guess about which films will stand the test of time.”
One prominent, time-tested example is Mean Streets, the Martin Scorsese masterpiece that had its world premiere at the 1973 festival. At the 2025 festival, the organizers screened Mr. Scorsese, a five-part documentary from Rebecca Miller about the life and work of the auteur and Hollywood legend. “Scorsese is not just one of the great filmmakers of the last several decades, but he’s one of the great custodians of cinema,” Lim says. “He’s somebody who’s interested in the history of cinema and safeguarding it. This comes across most obviously in his work with The Film Foundation, an organization devoted to the preservation and restoration of historically important films. And we work with them every year on the revival section of the New York Film Festival.”
The 2025 NYFF also saw Rolex join as presenting partner of the entire festival. “Our new partnership seems natural, with the missions of the festival and Rolex being aligned,” Lim says. “We’re both interested in celebrating established talent while also supporting and championing new and emerging voices. When we put together the program of the festival, we’re very mindful of the need to introduce new voices to audiences all the time. We want to showcase filmmakers who are showing for the first time alongside really well-known and established figures.”
“Rolex has a legacy of about 120 years, which is about as old as the medium of cinema itself,” Lim says. “At the New York Film Festival, we have been going for about half that time. And I hope that the festival continues to do what it’s always done, which is to celebrate excellence and to make a case that this art form matters.”
