What Will The Secret Screening Be NYFF 64? My Three Best Guesses

NYFF has a mysterious gap around October 1 in the schedule at Alice Tully Hall that has regulars speculating hard. Here’s my actual reasoning, not the internet’s.

Film festival mysteries don’t get much smaller than an empty line in a schedule, and they don’t get much more fun to speculate about either. There’s a particular kind of energy that builds around NYFF every year right around this point on the calendar, when the official lineup is set, the badges being are printed. In the case of NYFF 64 the only thing left unaccounted for is the one slot “nobody” can explain. That’s exactly the situation festival regulars and newcomers found themselves in this week. So let me break it down for the uninitiated.

A Reddit thread in r/NYFilmFestival picked up real momentum after a user noticed something odd while checking October 1 showtimes: a blank slot at Alice Tully Hall following a screening of All of a Sudden, ending around 9 p.m., with nothing officially listed after it.

Within hours, the thread has turned into exactly the kind of collective detective work that makes festival season fun in the first place. Of course, I had to get in the mix with theories stacking on theories, half-remembered release calendars getting cross-referenced in real time.

New York Film Festival has plenty of history here but lets use 2025 to explain. Last year’s secret screening turned out to be the world premiere of Marty Supreme, when Timothée Chalamet and Josh Safdie walked onstage unannounced to reveal it, roughly two and a half months ahead of the film’s actual Christmas Day release. And only hours after Josh Safdie had finished editing the films ADR, to be able to screen it in Alice Tully Hall to a sold out theater.

That’s the model worth keeping in mind: NYFF’s secret screenings tend to function as an early, buzzy first look at something with real awards-season heat, not a random festival title.

WITH THAT IN MIND, HERE ARE MY THREE THEORIES, IN ORDER:

1. Digger (Alejandro G. Iñárritu)

My top guess is Alejandro G. Iñárritu‘s Digger, starring Tom Cruise, which opens wide October 2, the day immediately following the mystery slot. A secret NYFF screening the night before a film’s actual theatrical release is exactly the kind of move that made sense for Marty Supreme last year, and it makes even more sense here given Cruise’s specific, well-documented relationship with AMC Lincoln Square.

This isn’t a vague theory. Cruise showed up at Lincoln Square for a private screening of The Odyssey this past July and personally invited the theater’s staff to watch it with him afterward, on his own initiative. One employee called it “an amazing night in a movie theater.”

At the New York premiere of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning at the same theater in 2025, Cruise bought popcorn for the entire AMC staff and spent the full length of the film talking with them, throwing back popcorn of his own the whole time. He’s been vocal at CinemaCon about his belief in the theatrical experience specifically, and Lincoln Square’s IMAX screen, the largest in the Western Hemisphere, is exactly the kind of venue he gravitates toward for a moment like this. Iñárritu is also a past NYFF selection, which only strengthens the case.

2. The Social Reckoning (Aaron Sorkin)

My second guess is Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning, which releases October 9, exactly one week after the mystery slot and right in the thick of the festival’s own run. That timing echoes the Marty Supreme playbook closely: a secret screening well ahead of a film’s actual release, timed to generate exactly the kind of early buzz a serious awards contender wants. Sorkin has his own history with the festival, and a companion piece to The Social Network carries real built-in prestige heading into fall.

3. The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (David Fincher)

My third guess is David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, starring Brad Pitt and written by Quentin Tarantino. This is the longer shot of the three.

The highly anticipated sequal isn’t due in theaters until November 25. And the film’s Netflix streaming debut around Christmas, both dates considerably further out than NYFF’s typical secret-screening window.
However, Netflix has built a real relationship with Film at Lincoln Center and NYFF in recent years, and both Fincher and Pitt have festival history of their own. Netflix’s other release Paper Tiger starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson and Miles Teller will be opening the festival on September 25.

Venice, TIFF, And NYF Running Back To Back

This year in particular, there’s no room to catch your breath on the festival calendar. Venice runs September 2 through 12. TIFF begins September 10 and runs through the 20th. NYFF’s own press and industry section kicks off September 15, with the festival itself opening September 25. Not to mention the Emmys in the mix on September 14. And what you have is one of the most packed stretches the industry sees all year.

There’s also been chatter that Fincher’s Cliff Booth sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood could get its own special screening at Venice Just a week ahead of NYFF, which cuts both ways: it could mean the film’s big festival moment happens there instead, or it could mean Netflix is building a multi-city rollout with New York as a second stop.

I also think NYFF’s Main Slate this year is light on one true non-indie studio title, which is great don’t get me wrong. But if the festival is going to use its secret-screening slot the way it did last year, it’s likely to be for something in that exact lane.

All three of my picks fit that description. Nothing here is confirmed, and there’s a real chance it ends up being a fourth film nobody’s guessed yet.

That uncertainty is genuinely the best part. Whichever film it turns out to be, or if it turns out to be neither, this is exactly the kind of mystery that makes festival season worth paying attention to in the first place.

Once again, between Venice about to begin,I didn’t even mention Telluride, and TIFF gearing up. NYFF’s calendar filling in around a slot thats sure to be a highlight of the festival. The 2026 festival circuit is on a roll with no signs of slowing down in the next few months. But it’s doing what it does best: turning a single blank line in a schedule into weeks of genuine anticipation. We’ll be watching, and we’ll update the second there’s an actual answer.

 New York Film Festival 64: September 25 to October 12, 2026.

Joanthan P. Moustakas

Jonathan P. Moustakas founded The Cinema Group in 2020 during the challenges of the pandemic, after losing the vital ability to find community in theaters and escape through the captivating magic of cinema. Feeling profoundly cut off from the vibrant film community he cherished, he sought to create a welcoming home for dedicated cinema fans while providing engaging, daily curated content that resonates with their passions. Years later, The Cinema Group has blossomed from a small collective of loyal fans into a thriving brand that reaches millions of audiences every month across a diverse array of platforms and mediums.

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