July 11 (UPI) — May December will open the 2023 New York Film Festival.
Film at Lincoln Center announced in a press release Tuesday that the stylized melodrama will have its North American premiere Sept. 29 at the 61st annual festival.
May December is written by Samy Burch and directed by Todd Haynes (Carol, Mildred Pierce).
The film follows Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), a television star who travels to a tight-knit island community in Savannah, Ga., to research a new part. The character ingratiates herself into the lives of Gracie (Moore), whom she’ll be playing on-screen, and her much younger husband, Joe (Charles Melton).
“As Elizabeth attempts to get closer to the family, the uncomfortable facts of their scandal unfurl, causing difficult, long-dormant emotions to resurface,” an official synopsis reads.
Todd Haynes’s thought-provoking and purely pleasurable MAY DECEMBER, starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton, will have its North American Premiere as the #NYFF61 Opening Night selection on September 29! pic.twitter.com/Ui1omR2tiO— New York Film Festival (@TheNYFF) July 11, 2023
May December opens in theaters Nov. 17 and will start streaming Dec. 1 on Netflix.
“We are all so proud and moved to have been invited to open the New York Film Festival with the North American premiere of May December,” Haynes said in a statement. “It is a festival that plays a role in my work and life like no other in the world, since it enshrines the cultural life of this city, which is both my creative home as a filmmaker and, as ever, the eternal site of artistic possibility.”
The New York Film Festival will run Sept. 29-Oct. 15.
May December had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May, where it received an 8-minute standing ovation.
