For those taking notice, NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim has been increasingly moving towards giving indie studios an extra “option” for their world premiere destinations. Last year, A24’s Marty Supreme snuck into the fest, and this year, Searchlight have two horses in the race with Wild Horse Nine hitting up Venice and Telluride, and now Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth! is going the NYC city route. The fest announced that the film (to be released in December) will begin its red carpet run as a Centerpiece selection of the 64th New York Film Festival – world premiere is October 2nd. Let’s see what other world premieres they manage to steal away from Telluride/Toronto. From the fest:
Pedro Pascal gives the performance of his career so far as Alex, a cellist picking up the pieces of a fractured life, in this American drama of uncommon intelligence, humor, and grace from Academy Award–nominated writer-director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton). A former child prodigy living in the shadow of a storied musical family, Alex has left his position with an orchestra in Chicago—fleeing a soured relationship with a manic ex (a piledriving Olivia Wilde)—and returned to Los Angeles to record Hollywood film scores and resolve unfinished family business. Using a deft flashback structure to weave in and out of his adult life, while cleverly employing a panoply of original movie compositions to both accompany and comment upon them (in a soundtrack featuring nine of the industry’s leading musicians), Gilroy turns Alex’s desire for stability, meaning, and redemption into a sophisticated drama of the highest order. Behemoth! is a thundering, savvy tribute to the power of music that builds to an emotional wallop of a climax, also featuring stellar supporting work from Eva Victor, Alexa Swinton, Kaya Ralls, Erik Griffin, JoBeth Williams, and Margarita Levieva, with Hank Azaria and Will Arnett. A Searchlight Pictures release.