57th New York Film Festival (September 27 – October 13) — Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn as Closing Night.

Edward Norton’s Motherless Brooklyn the Closing Night film for the 57th New York Film Festival (September 27 – October 13).

The 57th New York Film Festival presented by Film at Lincoln Center announced the closing film, Edward Norton’s “Motherless Brooklyn” which will mark its New York premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, October 11, 2019. The film will be released by Warner Bros. Pictures later this year.

In an unusually bold adaptation, writer-director Edward Norton has transplanted the main character of Jonathan Lethem’s best-selling novel “Motherless Brooklyn” from modern Brooklyn into an entirely new, richly woven neo-noir narrative, re-set in 1950s New York. Emotionally shattered by a botched job, Lionel Essrog (Norton), a lonely private detective with Tourette syndrome, finds himself drawn into a multilayered conspiracy that expands to encompass the city’s ever-growing racial divide and the devious personal and political machinations of a Robert Moses–like master builder, played by Alec Baldwin. 

Featuring a rigorously controlled star turn by Norton and outstanding additional supporting performances by Bruce Willis, Willem Dafoe, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Leslie Mann, and Cherry Jones, plus a haunting soundtrack (featuring a score by Daniel Pemberton, with orchestration by Wynton Marsalis, and an original song by Thom Yorke), “Motherless Brooklyn” is the kind of production Hollywood almost never makes anymore, and a complexly conceived, robust evocation of a bygone era of New York that speaks to our present moment.

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