64th New York Film Festival Opens With James Gray's 'Paper Tiger,' Starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson

The 64th New York Film Festival opened Friday night at Lincoln Center with the North American premiere of James Gray's "Paper Tiger," a Brooklyn-and-Queens crime drama starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller that Cannes audiences greeted in May with a 10-minute standing ovation. The gala screening at Alice Tully Hall, presented on 35mm film, marks the fourth time a Gray picture has opened or closed the festival and kicks off a 17-day program that runs through Oct. 12.

What happened

Driver, Johansson and Teller walked the red carpet at Lincoln Center before the screening and stayed for a post-film question-and-answer session with festival programmers. The film had premiered in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in May, where it was Gray's sixth film in the festival's official competition. Johansson, who had skipped the Cannes premiere while filming overseas, flew in for the New York screening; Driver told reporters on the carpet that "a set culture comes from the top down, and James sets a culture where everyone feels free."

Set in Queens and Brooklyn in 1986, "Paper Tiger" follows Irwin Pearl (Teller), an engineer chasing middle-class stability, after his brother Gary (Driver), a former New York police officer, pulls him into a scheme to dump oil for the Russian mafia near the Gowanus Canal. The plan endangers Irwin, his wife Hester (Johansson) and their children. Gray both wrote and directed the film, his first since 2022's "Armageddon Time," which also premiered at the festival.

The numbers

This year's Main Slate comprises 34 films from 31 countries, including four world premieres: Ava DuVernay's documentary "14th," which closes the festival on Oct. 12; Luca Guadagnino's "Artificial"; Tony Gilroy's "Behemoth!," the festival's centerpiece selection; and Mani Haghighi's latest feature. The Currents sidebar adds 15 feature films and 28 shorts from 24 countries and regions. "Paper Tiger" itself carries a reported $15 million production budget, was shot on 35mm on location in New Jersey standing in for 1980s New York, and runs 115 minutes. Neon, which acquired North American rights ahead of Cannes, has scheduled a limited theatrical release for Nov. 13, expanding wide on Nov. 20.

Context and background

Founded in 1963, the New York Film Festival is one of the longest-running film festivals in North America and, unlike Cannes, Venice or Toronto, does not hand out competitive prizes, functioning instead as a critics' and cinephiles' showcase for films that have often already played elsewhere on the festival circuit. It is presented by Film at Lincoln Center, whose home stage, Alice Tully Hall, has hosted the festival's marquee screenings since the hall opened in 1969. Gray has now had films open, close or screen in the festival's Main Slate five times since 2013, alongside "The Immigrant," "The Lost City of Z" and "Armageddon Time," making him one of the event's most frequently featured American directors.

"Paper Tiger is a movie of immense emotional power, at once lovingly realistic and grandly mythic, and it confirms that James is one of the great New York filmmakers — one of the great filmmakers, period — of our time," festival artistic director Dennis Lim said in announcing the opening-night selection.

Who is affected

The premiere is as much a marker for Neon's awards-season strategy as for the festival calendar. The distributor, coming off consecutive best-picture wins with "Parasite" and "Anora," is positioning "Paper Tiger" as a multi-category Oscar contender, with plans to campaign Teller for lead actor, Driver and Johansson for supporting roles, and Gray for both directing and original screenplay, according to Deadline. For Gray, a filmmaker whose New York-set dramas have drawn festival acclaim without translating into major Oscar nominations, the reception at Cannes and now at Lincoln Center is being read in the trade press as his strongest awards positioning to date. Critics have responded favorably on the whole: the film holds an 83 percent approval rating among reviews aggregated by Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 77 on Metacritic, indicating generally favorable notices.

Reaction

Speaking before the screening, Gray downplayed the pageantry around the film's rollout. "We had a nauseatingly lovely set. I love them. I'm not on the Today show. I'm telling you the truth," he said of his three lead actors, according to Variety's account of the evening. Lim, in the same announcement, framed this year's Main Slate more broadly as unusually attuned to current events, saying "there has not been another year where I felt the films to be so directly in conversation with the real world." The decision to screen the opening film on 35mm, rather than a digital projection, was also noted by festival press as a deliberate callback to the format's history at the venue.

What happens next

The New York Film Festival continues through Oct. 12 with Gilroy's "Behemoth!" as its centerpiece presentation and DuVernay's "14th" closing the event, alongside dozens of Main Slate, Currents and Spotlight selections screening at Lincoln Center venues across the city. "Paper Tiger" moves next toward its commercial release, opening in limited theaters on Nov. 13 before expanding nationwide a week later, positioning it to compete directly in the heart of awards-qualifying season. Gray and his cast are expected to continue promotional appearances through the fall as Neon builds its campaign toward Oscar nominations, which are set to be announced in early 2027.