Nine movies in Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’s New York Film Festival recommendations offer something more useful than another argument about the year’s best film: nine different ways into lives under pressure. The selection spans family conflict, caregiving, artistic identity, forbidden attachment, and a supernatural loss of self. Ficks’s enthusiasm provides the starting point; the characters provide the reason to look closer. [Ficks’s festival recommendations](https://48hills.org/2026/10/ficks-picks-9-movies-worth-all-the-hype-from-new-york-film-festival/)
Premise spoilers follow. This is a critical viewing guide based on documented story details, rather than a claim to have independently screened all nine films. Interpretations below are editorial readings of those premises; endings remain undisclosed.
When helping someone becomes complicated
Fjord: Whose definition of protection prevails?
Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as parents who move from Romania to Norway with their five children. Their conservative Pentecostal household comes under suspicion following an allegation of parental abuse. That allegation is essential to the premise, but it should not be mistaken for a verdict. [Film at Lincoln Center’s Fjord program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/fjord/)
The most productive character perspective here belongs to neither an automatically innocent family nor an automatically enlightened community. It lies in the competing meanings of safety. Parents may understand intervention as an attack on their authority; outsiders may understand restraint as abandoning vulnerable children. My interest is in how the children’s needs can become obscured when adults defend their own moral identities. Choose this one if you want a family drama that invites argument about responsibility.
Tender Loving Care: The people who help also need help
Mike Leigh’s Tender Loving Care centers on Amy, a child protection worker played by Kate O’Flynn, and her friend Rosie, a social services officer played by Alice Bailey Johnson. After a relationship ends, Amy moves back in with Rosie. Amy’s parents subsequently face a crisis of their own. [Film at Lincoln Center’s Tender Loving Care program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/tender-loving-care/)
That arrangement creates a revealing reversal: professional familiarity with other people’s difficulties offers no guarantee of private stability. From Amy’s perspective, accepting assistance may threaten the competence she needs to project at work. Rosie’s friendship matters because it places care inside an ongoing relationship, where fatigue and affection must coexist. The appeal is recognizable emotional labor, especially for viewers drawn to characters whose problems cannot be solved by one decisive speech.
9 Temples to Heaven: A loving plan meets an exhausted body
Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven follows a family pilgrimage undertaken after a prophecy threatens the elderly matriarch’s future. Her son Sakol hopes visits to nine Buddhist temples will help change her fate. The journey brings generations together while exposing disagreement and strain; her tiredness complicates the purpose of continuing. [Singapore International Film Festival’s synopsis](https://sgiff.com/film/9-temples-to-heaven/)
For me, the premise’s sharpest question concerns listening. Sakol’s determination can be understood as an attempt to turn helplessness into action. His mother, however, has an immediate physical experience that no itinerary can overrule. A reading attentive to both characters need not dismiss faith to question whether a loving undertaking still serves its intended beneficiary.
Artists trying to keep possession of themselves
Nowhere to Lay My Eyes: A daughter’s return carries obligations
In Hong Sangsoo’s Nowhere to Lay My Eyes, Kim Min-hee plays Sanghee, an experimental filmmaker visiting her partly estranged mother on Jeju Island. Her mother wants more regular contact. The visit also introduces Sanghee to her mother’s new husband and his daughter, with whom she finds an artistic affinity. [Film at Lincoln Center’s program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/nowhere-to-lay-my-eyes/)
Sanghee’s position invites a distinction between being emotionally available and being permanently available. Creative independence and family responsibility need not be enemies, but each makes claims on limited time. Watch for how a conversation becomes an obligation—or a welcome release from one. Readers interested in the uneasy overlap between intimacy and artistic work may also appreciate our character analysis of Possible Love.
The Day She Returns: An interview is also a performance
Hong’s other selection follows a middle-aged actress returning to filmmaking after retirement and divorce. Three press interviews, each presented in a single take from the same camera position, form its central structure. [Film at Lincoln Center’s The Day She Returns program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/the-day-she-returns/)
Repetition gives the viewer a specific task: notice what changes when someone tells her story again. A polished answer may protect something fragile; reluctance may establish a necessary boundary. The interesting possibility is that authenticity includes choosing what to withhold. Pair this with Nowhere to Lay My Eyes for two perspectives on women negotiating access to their lives.
The Diary of a Chambermaid: Who gets to have a private life?
Radu Jude’s film follows Gianina, a Romanian worker played by Ana Dumitrascu, who cleans a prosperous Bordeaux household and cares for its young son while anticipating a reunion with her own daughter. She also rehearses a stage adaptation of Octave Mirbeau’s novel. [Film at Lincoln Center’s The Diary of a Chambermaid program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/films/the-diary-of-a-chambermaid/)
From Gianina’s position, domestic comfort has an unequal cost: her labor supports another family’s togetherness while requiring separation from her own. The theater adds a second perspective on service and authority. Its presence suggests a useful question for viewers: does performing a social role make its everyday demands easier to recognize?
Belonging, desire, and an unstable sense of self
What Can’t Be Mentioned: Insight does not erase desire
Dan Sallitt returns to Jackie, played by Tallie Medel, from The Unspeakable Act. Now training as a social worker, she faces sexual incompatibility with her boyfriend and potentially unresolved feelings for her brother, who is expecting a child with his partner. [Film at Lincoln Center’s What Can’t Be Mentioned program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/what-cant-be-mentioned/)
The useful distinction is between understanding a feeling and being free of it. Jackie’s professional direction makes that distinction especially uncomfortable. Her story invites attention to avoidance, projection, and the distance between acknowledging desire and acting responsibly. Viewers interested in difficult relationship dynamics should approach the premise with that distinction intact.
Dao: One woman between mourning and celebration
Alain Gomis’s Dao connects a memorial in Guinea-Bissau with a wedding in Paris. Gloria, played by Katy Correa, attends both: her father has died, and her daughter Nour is marrying. [Film at Lincoln Center’s Dao program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/dao/)
Gloria offers an emotional point of entry into the larger gathering. She is simultaneously a bereaved daughter and a mother participating in a new beginning. Those positions suggest that grief and celebration can demand attention at the same time. For viewers comfortable with an expansive ensemble, the attraction is the possibility of understanding one person through the relationships surrounding her.
The Unknown: What remains when recognition fails?
Arthur Harari’s The Unknown begins with photographer David, played by Niels Schneider, meeting Eva, played by Léa Seydoux, at a costume party. After their sexual encounter, he discovers that he has exchanged bodies with her. [Film at Lincoln Center’s The Unknown program notes](https://www.filmlinc.org/nyff2026/films/the-unknown/)
That premise puts self-knowledge in conflict with the evidence other people see. From David’s position, identity becomes something he can assert but cannot easily demonstrate. The question extends beyond solving the transformation: how much of everyday freedom depends on being recognized? It makes a natural companion to our discussion of identity and misrecognition in Mama Bear.
The deeper connection: Who gets to define a life?
My reading of these nine premises is that their shared concern is authority over personal experience. A parent, employer, interviewer, relative, or unfamiliar body can change what someone is permitted to say about themselves. Care becomes especially complicated when one person’s explanation displaces another’s needs.
Choose by the tension that interests you: caregiving, artistic independence, social inequality, or unstable identity. Then watch whose perspective receives room to develop—and whose gets interrupted. That is a more revealing measure of these films’ potential than expecting nine interchangeable masterpieces.
Original content by this site's editorial team. Published: October 30, 2026 at 01:39:27 PDT (Los Angeles time)
