’20th Century Women’ Selected as Centerpiece of 54th New York Film Festival

20th Century Women, the latest film from writer-director Mike Mills (Beginners), has been announced as the Centerpiece selection at the upcoming New York Film Festival. It will mark the world premiere of the comedy-drama which stars Annette Bening, Greta Gerwig, Elle Fanning, Billy Crudup and newcomer Lucas Jade Zumann. A24 Films recently acquired the late 1970s-set film and is eyeing a December release.

A personal story set in 1979 Santa Barbara, California, 20th Century Women centers around a single mother (Bening) raising her teenage son (Zumann). Apart of this household includes a carpenter (Crudup) and punk artist (Gerwig); Fanning portrays a rebellious teenage neighbor. Mills previously wrote and directed indies Thumbsucker and Beginners, a film which earned veteran actor Christopher Plummer an Academy Award in 2012.

Kent Jones, director of the New York Film Festival commented: “I was taken aback by 20th Century Women. It’s made with an extraordinarily unusual level of craft and attention to detail, human and visual, which is now all but extinct. As someone who actually lived through 1979 in middle-class America, I will testify to the fact that Mike Mills and his remarkable cast approach the level of the uncanny. I felt like I was back there, with all the shared behaviors and worries, the divisions, the look and feel and smell of the world as it was.”

This announcement follows last week’s news that Ava DuVernay‘s documentary The 13th will open the 54th New York Film Festival – that opener is significant as it marks the first time a non-fiction title has ever opened the venerable film festival. This year’s New York Film Festival win run at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from September 30th – October 16th.