The 43rd New York Film Festival kicked in September 23 and runs till October 9,2005

The New York Film Festival, now celebrating its 43rd year, continues its tradition of showing the newest and most important cinematic works by directors from around the world. The 17-day Festival is a showcase of inspiring and provocative cinema by emerging talents and first-rank international artists whose films are often recognized as contemporary classics.
The festival opened with Good Night, and Good Luck:
The confrontation between newscaster Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s is uncannily brought to life in this dramatic reconstruction elegantly directed by George Clooney (who also plays Fred W. Friendly). A choice ensemble cast (Frank Langella, Robert Downey, Jr., Patricia Clarkson) supports the amazing central performance of David Strathairn as Murrow. With its expressive, fluid black-and-white cinematography, this film expertly captures the climate of fear and the downbeat, gray flannel contradictions of the era, while its theme of the news mediaís responsibility to speak truth to power could not be more pertinent today. We are brought deep inside the operation of a television network, as a tense political thriller about courage and patriotism unfolds: cat and mouse keep exchanging roles, and there are no absolute winners.

Cache (Hidden) will close the festival October 9
As he has shown with The Piano Teacher, Code Unknown, and Funny Games (among other chilling creations) the Paris-based Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke is a peerless artist-provocateur who has never met a situation of bourgeois stasis he didn’t want to explode—quietly, precisely, and with devastating effect. Caché, though, may be his best and most meaningful detonation yet—an absolutely, excitingly unnerving study in middle-class disequilibrium brought on by realistic urban paranoia and inflamed by a latent racism in all its ugliness. Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche are brilliantly cast as Georges and Anne, a sophisticated couple tormented by the arrival of anonymous surveillance videos of their everyday lives. And the more convinced Georges becomes that he knows the sender, the more breathtaking is Auteuil’s wisely daring performance. Caché digs deep and hits a nerve worth inflaming.