On Thursday night, the New York Film Festival and Rolex opened a new filmmakers lounge at Lincoln Center, giving directors and industry insiders a relaxed place to connect before the festival’s busy opening weekend. Among the first to stop by were James Gray, director of Paper Tiger, and Tony Gilroy, who is at the festival with Behemoth!
The lounge is set inside Lincoln Ristorante, a glass-walled space facing the Lincoln Center reflecting pool and just steps from the festival’s main exhibition hall. Daniel Battsek, president of Film at Lincoln Center, said the idea for such a room had been on his mind even before he took the job in 2025. He wanted a spot where filmmakers and their industry colleagues could simply hang out before or after a screening. Raising a glass to the new space, Battsek said he was thrilled to see it finally happen.
Thursday’s guests also included filmmakers and teams behind Tender Loving Care, Club Kid, Clarissa, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, Edward Said: Between Worlds, Everytime, My Undesirable Friends: Part II – Exile, Bucking Fastard, and My Wife Cried, along with people from Lincoln Center and the festival. This marks Rolex’s second year sponsoring the festival. The company has a clock in the lounge and loaned watches to some of the notable attendees.
Ahead of the event, festival organizers were preparing for a technical challenge: screening the opening-night film, Paper Tiger, in 35 mm, a rare format at NYFF. When asked about the preparations, Gray turned to his cinematographer and editor nearby. Their confidence levels varied, though festival organizers insisted the 35 mm screening would happen. Earlier, Gray and Gilroy also got into a conversation about the origins of Esperanto and joked that it could be their next project. “An Esperanto musical,” Gilroy quipped.
Gray said he was feeling “stress and terror” about the opening-night screening. Paper Tiger had already premiered at Cannes in May, where it earned strong reviews, and screened at the Locarno Film Festival in August. Still, showing a film at the New York Film Festival meant something personal. Gray grew up in Queens, about nine miles away, and never imagined one of his films would play at Lincoln Center.
The crime thriller stars Miles Teller, Adam Driver, and Scarlett Johansson. Gray described the project as deeply autobiographical, with much of it drawn from his teenage years. He said he cannot fully explain what makes a story move him, and he does not usually make films with festivals in mind. But for this one, NYFF felt like the ideal place to show it.