New York Film Festival Will Open With New Richard Linklater Film 'Last Flag Flying'

It's only been a year since Richard Linklater's last film, the criminally-underrated Everybody Wants Some!!, but the prolific director already has a new movie in the can. And his latest film, Last Flag Flying, will open the 55th New York Film Festival this fall.

The festival will take place from September 28th to October 15th at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, with Last Flag Flying kicking things off at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday, September 28th before it opens theatrically on November 17th. Ava DuVernay's The 13th, which is also distributed by Amazon Studios, opened the festival last year.

The Linklater film, which is described as a lyrical road movie, stars Steve Carell, Laurence Fishburne and Bryan Cranston as three Navy vets. Here's the description:

Three aging Vietnam-era Navy vets—soft-spoken Doc (Carell), unhinged and unfiltered Sal (Cranston), and quietly measured Mueller (Fishburne)—reunite to perform a sacred task: the proper burial of Doc’s only child, who has been killed in the early days of the Iraqi Invasion. As this trio of old friends makes its way up the Eastern seaboard, Linklater gives us a rich rendering of friendship, a grand mosaic of common life in the USA during the Bush era, and a striking meditation on the passage of time and the nature of truth. To put it simply, Last Flag Flying is a great movie from one of America’s finest filmmakers.

"It’s always special to be at the New York Film Festival, but to be premiering our movie on opening night, when you look at the half century of films that have occupied that slot, is a wonderful honor," Linklater said in a press release. New York Film Festival Director and Selection Committee Chair Kent Jones was effusive in his praise for the film, calling it "infectiously funny, quietly shattering, celebratory, mournful, meditative, intimate, expansive, vastly entertaining, and all-American in the very best sense."

The rest of this year's lineup has not been announced yet. Tickets for the 55th New York Film Festival will go on sale September 10th. VIP passes and packages are on sale now here.