The 54th New York Film Festival has kicked off under grey autumn skies, cloaked by an unusual degree of topicality.
Ava DuVernay's documentary on mass incarceration, The 13th opened the festival, the first documentary to ever mark the start of the Film Society of Lincoln Centre's prestigious celebration. Taking its name from the 13th amendment, DuVernay's film traces the criminalisation of African Americans from the abolishment of slavery up to today's overcrowded prisons and Black Lives Matter protests.
It's a portrait of racial dominion through history, by names as varied as Jim Crow and the "war on drugs."
One of the festival's other much-anticipated world premieres, Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, was conceived as an argument for the theatrical experience. Lee's adaption of Ben Fountain's novel about an Iraq war hero on a victory tour in Dallas, was made in 3-D and with a much faster frame-rate than the traditional 24-frames-per-second to boost definition.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk will premiere at the festival on October 14 ahead of its November release.
