Richard Linklater's “Last Flag Flying” to open New York Film Fest

PanARMENIAN.Net - Richard Linklater’s Last Flag Flying will be the first title of the upcoming New York Film Festival, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

The Amazon title will make its world premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Sept. 28 as the opening-night film of the fest. Starring Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne, the film is set to open theatrically Nov. 17.

Linklater’s lyrical road movie centers on three aging Vietnam-era Navy vets — soft-spoken Doc (Carell), unhinged and unfiltered Sal (Cranston) and quietly measured Mueller (Fishburne) — as they reunite to perform a sacred task: the proper burial of Doc’s only child, who has been killed in the early days of the Iraqi invasion.

"Last Flag Flying is many things at once — infectiously funny, quietly shattering, celebratory, mournful, meditative, intimate, expansive, vastly entertaining and all-American in the very best sense," NYFF director and selection committee chair Kent Jones said Monday in a statement. "But to isolate its individual qualities is to set aside the most important and precious fact about this movie: that it all flows like a river. That’s only possible with remarkable artists like Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston, and a master like Richard Linklater behind the camera.”

"It’s always special to be at the New York Film Festival, but to be premiering our movie on opening night, when you look at the half-century of films that have occupied that slot, is a wonderful honor," said Linklater.

The 55th New York Film Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is set to run Sept. 28-Oct. 15.