The New York Film Festival, now at its midpoint, is a grand, institutional affair. What the selection committee agrees is the best of world cinema — work from established masters and up-and-coming auteurs — assembles at Lincoln Center, along with judiciously selected documentaries, repertory offerings and experimental films. But the film festival is also made up of countless subjective experiences, encounters not with the State of Cinema but with particular movies and the states of mind they create. So let’s start with “The Whistlers,” the new feature from the Romanian writer and director Corneliu Porumboiu. The whole thing is clever and a little silly, with a lightness and energy that testifies to the filmmaker’s inventiveness.

Source: International New York Times October 04, 2019 19:18 UTC