James Gray’s Paper Tiger Sets North American Premiere as Opening Night of the 64th New York Film Festival

One of the great New York filmmakers is getting the highest honors for a city showcase: Film at Lincoln Center has announced that James Gray’s Paper Tiger is the Opening Night selection of the 64th New York Film Festival. The film will make its North American premiere (confirming it’s skipping Telluride and Toronto) in a gala debut at the Alice Tully Hall on Friday, September 25, with Gray and members of the cast and crew in attendance.

Starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller, and Scarlett Johansson, the film premiered in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival. Paper Tiger is Gray’s fourth film to be selected for the New York Film Festival, following The Immigrant (2013) as an official Main Slate selection; The Lost City of Z (2016) as the Closing Night film; and Armageddon Time (2022) as a Main Slate selection and the festival’s 60th Anniversary Screening.

“I’m immensely grateful to be welcomed back to this remarkable festival,” said Gray. “This deeply personal film is rooted in New York City; from my upbringing to life-changing family experiences. To be here, at the heart of art and cinema, with our cast and crew—many of whom are New Yorkers—is a privilege. Thank you to the entire New York Film Festival team. It is an honor.”

“James Gray has been a fixture at the New York Film Festival for many years, and we are thrilled to welcome him back as our Opening Night filmmaker with a career-best achievement,” said NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim. “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.” 

Here’s the NYFF synopsis: “The gripping, exquisitely foreboding dramas of James Gray reside in the dark space between the American dream and gutting reality. His brilliant new thriller, set in 1986 Queens and Brooklyn, is an authentically drawn New York story and a master class in escalating tension, charting the tragic domestic fallout after family man and engineer Irwin (Miles Teller), who aspires to middle-class comforts, is pulled into a shady deal by his brother, Gary (Adam Driver), a former NYPD cop. Gary thinks he can make a killing on a scheme with Russian criminals dumping oil down by the Gowanus Canal, assisting them to work around regulations; instead Gary ends up endangering his brother, as well as Irwin’s sons (Gavin Goudey and Roman Engel) and wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson), who is going through her own private crisis. Torn between brotherly love and marital loyalty, Irwin discovers he’s ensnared in forces far beyond his control. With its vivid period detail and marvelous, deeply moving trio of lead performances, Paper Tiger is a frightening portrait of pollution in all forms—and the human bonds that can save us from the brink of despair. A NEON release.”

Luke Hicks said in his Cannes review, “Driver, Teller, and Johansson are all equally fantastic under the direction of Gray and his brilliant screenplay. Joaquín Baca-Asay––returning after We Own the Night and Two Lovers––delivers an inspired vintage aesthetic that draws out Gray’s now-retro directorial tendencies (read: the opposite of a Netflix movie). Wardrobes and sets feel more found than created, a testament to the work of costume designer Amy Roth and production designer Happy Massee.”

The 64th New York Film Festival takes place September 25 through October 12, 2026 with passes on sale now.