First Look at Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, Set to World Premiere at the 64th New York Film Festival

Following yesterday’s announcement of Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest project coming to this fall’s New York Film Festival, another major world premiere has been unveiled. Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial will world-premiere in the Main Slate of the 64th New York Film Festival, taking place from September 25 through October 12. The debut of the film, which NEON acquired after Amazon MGM Studios’ abandonment, is set for October 5 at the Alice Tully Hall with Guadagnino and members of the cast in attendance.

Here’s the festival’s synopsis: “The stakes couldn’t be higher in Luca Guadagnino’s thrilling, funny, and very human Artificial, a drama of immense moral urgency that propels the viewer through the two decades of machine learning research and technocratic recklessness that have brought us to our current AI crisis point. In 2003, Soviet-born computer scientist Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov) began studying artificial neural networks under University of Toronto professor Geoffrey ‘Godfather of AI’ Hinton (Mark Rylance). A decade later, while employed by Google, Sutskever fatefully crosses paths with a young entrepreneur named Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield), the eventual co-founder and CEO of OpenAI. Among our boldest auteurs, Guadagnino (previously at NYFF with Call Me by Your Name, Bones and All,Queer, and After the Hunt) takes his biggest swing yet for this headlong plunge into our doomsday moment, with a script by Simon Rich that probes the increasing gray areas between human and machine, truth and lie. Anchored by brilliant, fully inhabited lead performances by Garfield and Borisov; a remarkable supporting cast, including Rylance, Monica Barbaro, Cooper Hoffman, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schwartzman, and Chris O’Dowd; and original songs and score by Damon Albarn, Guadagnino’s film moves like a machine in unstoppable, constant motion—a history being written as we’re watching it. A NEON release.”

NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim stated: “The most remarkable thing about Luca Guadagnino’s sly and sobering new film is that it finds the perfect tone to tell the story of how we arrived at the AI precipice. Artificial traces this trajectory with clear-eyed horror, dark humor, and a sense of existential urgency. If ever there was a movie for its moment, this is it.”

“I don’t know Sam Altman. I’ve never met him,” Garfield recently told Esquire. “I was going off of the script and court transcripts and interviews and research, and we were telling a story, but I think anyone who takes on that level of responsibility for a company or a technology that you know is going to do a hell of a lot of damage to the soul of humanity [must have] a certain ability to dissociate.”

The 64th New York Film Festival takes place September 25 through October 12, 2026 with passes on sale now. Single tickets go on sale September 15 at noon.

See the first image from Artificial below.