Neon Skipped Telluride and Toronto to Open Paper Tiger at NYFF in 35mm

Distributor Neon deliberately held James Gray's Paper Tiger out of Telluride and Toronto, choosing instead a gala opening-night North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, IndieWire reported. The film, starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson, had already premiered at Cannes to a reception Gold Derby called solid but not sterling, and NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim said he wanted the film for opening night as soon as he saw it last spring, calling it the festival's first 35mm opening-night screening in some years; Neon presented the film in 35mm at all four opening-night screenings, two at Alice Tully Hall and two at the Walter Reade Theater. Neon opens Paper Tiger theatrically November 13 and is campaigning Teller for Best Actor, Driver and Johansson in supporting categories, Gray for director, and the film for Best Picture, the rare instance, Gray said, of a film opening for him directly in Oscar season. The same opening slate introduced NYFF Encounters, a new annual commissioning program that invites one filmmaker already in the festival lineup to shoot an original short during the festival itself, premiering it the following year. Its inaugural film is Kleber Mendonca Filho's South of Tehran, an eight-minute short built from conversations between Mendonca Filho and Jafar Panahi, both of whom screened films at the 2025 festival that went on to earn Best International Feature Oscar nominations. "We invite each commissioned filmmaker to capture that spirit while leaving the choice of subject and style up to them," Lim said. The lineup also includes NYFF's Saturday premiere of the Venice-winning Gaza documentary Naza, and world premieres of Tony Gilroy's Centerpiece Behemoth! (Searchlight, December 4, starring Pedro Pascal) and Luca Guadagnino's Artificial.