The New York Avignon Film Festival

New Yorkers can treat themselves from November 9th to 13th to some new films from France. While the annual Rendez vous with French cinema held in the Spring at Lincoln Center showcases already famous directors the NY-Avignon film festival often brings the opportunity to view some less known but enormously talented directors. It also boasts a short films section. One of the great films not to be missed at the festival this year is Deadlines by Ludi Boeken and Michael Lerner, an English language film set in Lebanon. The film is complex in its covering of the suicide car bombing of the US Marines in Beirut. The pace of the film never slacks, Stephen Moyer in the lead role as a journalist is on-the-money and the political crisis is not over-simplified or dumbed down for us. Despite treating a subject from the past, the film offers us a glimpse of the middle-east that is no less pertinent today. The American interests portrayed in the film make one wonder about present day Iraq. At the same time Deadlines remains fair and sympathetic to the different political interests in the region. It is showing on Sunday the 13th at 6:30pm.