James Gray’s “Paper Tiger” Will Open the 2026 New York Film Festival

The New York thriller, starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson, will make its North American premiere at Alice Tully Hall on September 25.

James Gray is returning to the New York Film Festival with a story rooted in the city that shaped him.

“Paper Tiger,” Gray’s new thriller starring Adam Driver, Miles Teller and Scarlett Johansson, has been selected as the opening-night film of the 64th New York Film Festival. The film will make its North American premiere at Alice Tully Hall on Friday, September 25, with Gray and members of the cast and crew expected to attend.

Presented by Film at Lincoln Center in partnership with Rolex, the festival will run from September 25 through October 12.

Set in Queens and Brooklyn in 1986, “Paper Tiger” follows Irwin, an engineer and family man played by Teller, whose pursuit of middle-class security draws him into a dangerous scheme devised by his brother, Gary, a former New York City police officer played by Driver.

Gary believes there is money to be made by helping Russian criminals evade environmental regulations while dumping oil near the Gowanus Canal. The plan quickly places Irwin, his wife, Hester, played by Johansson, and their two sons in danger.

The crime plot gives Gray a way into familiar territory: the distance between the American dream and the compromises people make while trying to reach it. As Irwin becomes caught between loyalty to his brother and responsibility to his family, the promise of financial stability gives way to fear, secrecy, and domestic collapse.

Johansson’s Hester is also facing a private crisis, adding another strain to a household already buckling under the consequences of Gary’s scheme. The film’s portrait of pollution is both literal and moral, spreading from the industrial edges of the Gowanus Canal into the family’s most intimate relationships.

“Paper Tiger” premiered in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival and will be released by NEON.

For Gray, who was born in New York and raised in Queens, the opening-night selection carries a distinctly personal significance.

“I’m immensely grateful to be welcomed back to this remarkable festival,” Gray said. “This deeply personal film is rooted in New York City, from my upbringing to life-changing family experiences.”

He added that presenting the film with a cast and crew that includes many New Yorkers was “a privilege.”

“Paper Tiger” marks Gray’s fourth appearance at the New York Film Festival. “The Immigrant” was included in the festival’s Main Slate in 2013, “The Lost City of Z” closed the festival in 2016, and the autobiographical drama “Armageddon Time” screened in the Main Slate as part of the festival’s 60th-anniversary celebration in 2022.

Dennis Lim, the festival’s artistic director, called “Paper Tiger” a film of “immense emotional power” and described it as both “lovingly realistic and grandly mythic.”

Gray has spent much of his career examining ambition, family allegiance and the uneasy pursuit of success. He made his feature directorial debut at 25 with “Little Odessa,” which won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. His subsequent films include “The Yards,” “We Own the Night,” “Two Lovers,” “The Immigrant,” “The Lost City of Z,” “Ad Astra” and “Armageddon Time.”

Several of those films have drawn directly from New York’s neighborhoods and family histories. “Armageddon Time,” inspired by Gray’s childhood in 1980s Queens, also explored the pressures of class, race and aspiration through the experiences of a family trying to secure a place within a shifting city.

With “Paper Tiger,” Gray returns to that borough and that decade, this time through a thriller in which the desire for a better life becomes the opening through which danger enters.

Passes for the 2026 New York Film Festival are currently available in limited quantities. Single tickets go on sale to the general public on Tuesday, September 15, at noon Eastern Time, with advance access available to Film at Lincoln Center members and festival pass holders.

Film at Lincoln Center membership must be secured by August 28 for access to the festival presale. Press and industry accreditation remains open through August 14.

The complete New York Film Festival lineup, including its Main Slate, Spotlight, Currents, Revivals and Talks programs, will be announced separately.