Above: US release poster for Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Denmark/France/Sweden/Norway). Illustrations by Mikkel Sommer and Kenneth Ladekjaer; art direction by Martin Hultman.
Since 2010, on the last Friday of every September, I have gathered all the posters for the films in the main slate of the New York Film Festival. Last year, six months into the pandemic, I didn’t do it. There was a New York Film Festival, and there was a main slate, but with most of the films only screening online, it just didn’t seem like the real thing and my heart wasn’t in it. This year the NYFF is back and entirely IRL and, although we’re still not out of the pandemic woods, I feel that the wonderful new poster for Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee is emblematic of the moment: people, lots of them, (vaccinated, hopefully), coming together.
Aside from the Flee poster, the highlights of this year would have to be Javier Jaén’s two posters for Pedro Almodóvar’s Parallel Mothers: especially his now legendary teaser which was initially censored by social media. After that my favorite designs are the release poster for The Velvet Underground (though it pales in comparison to the negative version released a year ago as a teaser which was my second favorite poster of 2020), the Shine Horovits poster for Ahed’s Knee and the relatively simple uncredited design for The Girl and the Spider. I’m also quite partial to the title treatment for Neptune Frost. We are also unveiling the brand new poster for MUBI’s own release of What Do We See When We Look at the Sky?
I’ve been able to find posters, or at least some sort of key art (see The Tragedy of Macbeth) for almost all of the 32 main slate films, with the exception of Jonas Carpignano’s A Chiara and Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II. Eight of the films premiered in competition at Cannes in July and so a couple of these posters were already featured in my Cannes round-up, but I have tried to find alternate versions where possible.
Posters are presented in alphabetical order by English-language release title.
Above: Israeli poster for Ahed’s Knee (Nadav Lapid, France / Israel / Germany). Design by Shine Horovits.
Above: Festival poster for Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Radu Jude, Romania/ Luxembourg/ Czech Republic/ Croatia).
Above: French release poster for Benedetta (Paul Verhoeven, France/Netherlands). Design by Le Cercle Noir.
Above: US poster for Bergman Island (Mia Hansen-Løve, France/Germany/Belgium/Sweden).
Above: Italian release poster for Il Buco (Michelangelo Frammartino, Italy/France/Germany).
Above: French release poster for Drive My Car (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan).
Above: Festival poster for The First 54 Years: An Abbreviated Manual for Military Occupation (Avi Mograbi, France/ Finland/ Israel/ Germany).
Above: US release poster for France (Bruno Dumont, France/Germany/Belgium/Italy).
Above: Festival poster for Futura (Pietro Marcello, Francesco Munzi, Alice Rohrwacher, Italy).
Above: Festival poster for The Girl and the Spider (Ramon and Silvan Zürcher, Switzerland).
Above: Festival poster for Hit the Road (Panah Panahi, Iran). Art by Pooya Abbasian.
Above: Festival poster for In Front of Your Face (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea).
Above: Festival poster for Întregalde (Radu Muntean, Romania).
Above: Festival poster for Introduction (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea).
Above: Festival poster for Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Colombia/ Thailand/ UK/ France/ Germany/ Mexico/ Qatar).
Above: Festival poster for Neptune Frost (Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, USA/Rwanda).
Above: Spanish teaser poster for Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain). Design by Javier Jaén.
Above: US release poster for Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodóvar, Spain). Design by Javier Jaén.
Above: US release poster for Passing (Rebecca Hall, USA).
Above: UK release poster for Petite Maman (Céline Sciamma, France).
Above: US release poster for The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, Australia/New Zealand).
Above: Festival poster for Prayers for the Stolen (Tatiana Huezo, Mexico/Germany/Brazil/Qatar).
Above: US release poster for Titane (Julia Ducournau, France).
Above: Teaser art for The Tragedy of Macbeth (Joel Coen, USA).
Above: Russian poster for Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko, Russia).
Above: US release poster for The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes, USA). Design by LA.
Above: Festival poster for Vortex (Gaspar Noé, France).
Above: US poster for What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (Alexandre Koberidze, Georgia / Germany). Design by MUBI.
Above: US poster for Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Japan). Art by Elizabeth Yoo.
Above: French release poster for The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, Norway). Design by Benjamin Seznec.
Above: the official 2021 poster for the 59th New York Film Festival. Art by Kara Walker.
You can buy tickets to the New York Film Festival here, and you can see my previous New York Film Festival poster round-ups here: 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, as well as flashback posts to 1988, 1969, 1968, 1965 and 1963.