The 2026 New York Film Festival’s Spotlight section will include Cristian Mungiu‘s Fjord (a kind of consolation slot after Mungiu’s Palme d’Or winner was excluded from the NYFF main slate), Jonathan Glazer’s Joy of Joys (short doc), Werner Herzog‘s Bucking Fastard, Tom McCarthy’s The Statement (1980 period ensemble drama) and Jordan Firstman’s Club Kid.
Hey, what happened to Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi‘s La Bola Negra, celebrated in Cannes as an ensemble queer epic?
Fjord being drop-kicked into the Spotlight section is fine, but this doesn’t change the fact that (a) until Fjord came along the NYFF main slate had long included the previous May’s Palme d’Or winner, or at least over the last ten years (the last Palme d’Or blow-off happened in 2015), and (b) Mungiu’s films have always been main-slated ever since 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, which popped in 2007 or nearly 20 years ago.
Spotlight choices generally don’t reflect a purist, full-hearted, first-choice aesthetic on the part of NYFF committee members (Dennis Lim, Justin Chang, Rachel Rosen and Florence Almozini). Spotlight films tend to be “eclectic, star-studded, or accessible ensemble pieces that may sit outside traditional avant-garde programming,” per an AI description.
I still believe that award-season-wise, the woke reptiles are going to rhetorically diminish Fjord any way they can…they’re going to chip-chip and chisel-chisel in a kind of “death of a thousand cuts” fashion. They’re going to backhand it ever so gently. Because Mungiu’s film more or less demonizes their team.