Paper Tiger Opens the 64th New York Film Festival Tonight

The 64th New York Film Festival opens Friday night with the North American premiere of James Gray's Paper Tiger. The gala screening takes place at Alice Tully Hall, where Gray and members of the cast and crew are expected to attend, according to Film at Lincoln Center, the organization behind the festival.

Presented in partnership with Rolex, the opening night program launches two weeks of screenings across Lincoln Center venues. The festival does not run a competition jury; it programs a curated slate of films from around the world, and the opening night slot is reserved for a title the programmers consider a fitting start to the fall season.

A 1986 Queens story about two brothers and a bad deal

Paper Tiger is a thriller set in Queens and Brooklyn in 1986. Adam Driver and Miles Teller play brothers Gary and Irwin Pearl. Gary is a former NYPD cop; Irwin is an engineer and family man reaching for middle-class comfort. When Gary pulls Irwin into a scheme with Russian criminals who are dumping oil near the Gowanus Canal and skirting environmental regulations, the promise of quick money turns into something far more dangerous.

Scarlett Johansson plays Hester, Irwin's wife, who is working through a private crisis of her own while the deal closes in around her family. Gavin Goudey and Roman Engel play the couple's sons. As Irwin is pulled deeper into a plan he never wanted, he finds himself caught between loyalty to his brother and responsibility to his wife and children, and the forces around him grow harder to control.

Gray wrote and directed the film. In its official description, Film at Lincoln Center calls it a portrait of pollution in several forms, and of the human bonds that can pull people back from the edge. The film runs 115 minutes.

From the Cannes competition to Lincoln Center

Paper Tiger premiered in competition at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival in May, screening for the Palme d'Or. Rather than routing through the Telluride or Toronto festivals, Gray and NEON held the film's North American debut for New York, making the opening night slot the first time most American critics and audiences will see it.

The festival run comes ahead of a commercial release. NEON plans to open Paper Tiger in theaters on November 13, 2026, according to The Wrap, giving the film a clear path from its festival launch to general audiences.

The screenings at Alice Tully Hall and the Walter Reade Theater will be presented on 35mm film, according to the festival's official listing, a format choice that gives the North American premiere a distinctly analog presentation.

Gray's fourth appearance at the festival

This is the fourth time one of Gray's features has been selected for the New York Film Festival. The Immigrant played as a Main Slate selection in 2013. The Lost City of Z served as the closing night film in 2016. Armageddon Time appeared in the 2022 Main Slate and was also chosen as the festival's 60th Anniversary Screening.

Gray has described Paper Tiger as a deeply personal film. In a statement released by the festival, he said it is rooted in New York City, from his upbringing to family experiences that changed his life, and he called it a privilege to present it at Lincoln Center with the cast and crew, many of whom are New Yorkers themselves.

NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim said in the festival's announcement that Paper Tiger is a movie of immense emotional power, at once realistic and mythic in scale, and he called Gray one of the great New York filmmakers of our time.

What the opening night slot means

Opening night at the New York Film Festival has become a reliable early marker of the fall awards season. Films that launch there often spend the following weeks building critical momentum before their theatrical releases, and programmers tend to choose titles with both festival weight and audience appeal.

For Gray, the slot continues a career that has stayed close to New York stories. His earlier films have moved between crime dramas and family sagas, often set in the boroughs where he grew up, and Paper Tiger returns to that ground with a period story about how one compromise can reshape a family.

Festival screenings continue over the coming two weeks, with tickets available through Film at Lincoln Center. More on the full program is published on the festival's official site.