In fall, one of the best things to do in New York City is to see a movie. Every year, a couple of months before Hollywood’s awards season enters full swing, anyone who happens to be in New York has a chance to see a spate of cinema’s top contenders before they’re released in theaters elsewhere. You don’t need to know anyone, you don’t need to work in the industry. You just need to buy a ticket. Starting today, you can.
Tickets for the 63rd New York Film Festival (NYFF63) are now on sale to the general public. Running from September 26 through October 13, 2025, NYFF brings screenings to all five boroughs, with most of the action centered at the host site Film at Lincoln Center—one of the best movie theaters in the city.
World travelers will especially appreciate the broad selection of international cinema—a festival signature—on offer. Out of 34 films on the main slate, 22 are in a language other than English—including major Oscar favorites like Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value (Norway), Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident (Iran), and Park Chan-Wook’s No Other Choice (South Korea). Tickets cost $35 for films shown in Alice Tully Hall (Lincoln Center’s grand screening space that you’ll recognize from the likes of Tár), and $30 for smaller venues on the premises, such as Walter Reade, Francesca Beale, and Howard Gilman Theaters. Other announced venues include the Brooklyn Academy of Music; the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens; Alamo Drafthouse Staten Island; and AMC Bay Plaza Cinema in the Bronx.
If that seems like a steep price, mind you that these tickets give you more than mere bragging rights for being amongst the first people to see a given film. These screenings are typically accompanied by introductions and/or followed by Q&A’s with members of the cast and crew: Pre- or post- screening appearances are currently confirmed from the likes of Bradley Cooper, Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, and Luca Guadagnino, and you never know who else might show up. These casual chats are are often unannounced, and are moderated by NYFF’s artistic director, the curator Dennis Lim. During the screenings, the crowd at New York Film Festival is incredibly, delightfully reactive—moviegoers gasp and laugh and weep in blissful complement to the respective film (encouraging rather than disrespectful).
How to get tickets to New York Film Festival
NYFF63 tickets go on sale Thursday, September 18 at 12 p.m. The full slate of screenings can be viewed here, with ticket pricing here. In addition to the pricing information above, note that Film at Lincoln Center members and students get discounted tickets. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the Alice Tully Hall box office on the northwestern corner of West 65th Street and Broadway. Seats for screenings in Alice Tully Hall are reserved at random if purchased online, but you can select your seat if you book in-person at the box office.
What films are screening at NYFF63?
A total of 34 films are screening as part of NYFF63’s Main Slate. There’s the aforementioned Sentimental Value, about the strained relationship between a film director and his actress daughter in Oslo, It Was Just an Accident regarding political repression in Iran, and South Korean satire No Other Choice. Other international films include The Fence from French director Claire Denis, set at a white-run construction site in West Africa where a mysterious accident has killed a worker, German multi-generational epic Sound of Falling, and Miroirs No. 3 following a Berlin pianist on a road trip who, after a car crash, is taken in by an unknown woman. Brazil is represented by the thriller The Secret Agent, wherein Wagner Mourra runs from his past through the city of Recife. There’s Spanish cinema abound: surreal Sirât follows a middle-aged father to the Moroccan desert, where his daughter has vanished at an endless rave; and Romería, Carla Simón’s drama about an orphaned young woman who travels to Vigo in Galicia to meet her extended family. Bi Gan brings Chinese sci-fi with the nebulous Resurrection (in addition to Chongqing, the film also shot on location in Copenhagen).