2025 New York Film Festival Highlights: ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,’ ‘Sentimental Value,’ ‘A Private Life’

Scott Cooper’s biographical drama Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, adapted from Warren Zanes’s 2023 best-selling chronicle of the same title, is set at an early-’80s crossroads in Springsteen’s career when, still negotiating the transformative waves of his rising fame, he crafted the personal acoustic songs that would become his mythic album "Nebraska"—at the same time that he was recording the demos for "Born in the U.S.A." which would catapult him to global superstardom.

The Q&A with actor Jeremy Allen White and writer and director Scott Cooper, offered insights into the making of the film, including that Springsteen was on set the majority of the time, flying back and forth while touring, and that White had extensive voice, guitar, harmonica, and movement coaching. They described the overarching themes of the film as memory and myth and regret.

Cooper: “Author Warren Zaynes said that he wrote the book because in Bruce's memoir most chapters were quite lengthy, but the chapter on "Nebraska" was very short. I think it was like a page and a half. So Warren thought, ‘My god, that's the story I want to know. That's the story I want to tell.’  I met with Warren and we both knew of course that Bruce was reluctant. He's always said no to any type of film about his life that isn't a documentary. Warren and I sat down with Bruce and Jon Landau at Bruce's house. I told Bruce that I didn't particularly see the merits of a of a traditional biopic for Bruce, so I said, ‘Bruce, I feel like there's a real story here that's a psychological drama, about the art of creation, and I think it can really give voice to particularly men who often don't give voice to their pain, don't know how to get the help they need, don't understand what it is that they're suffering through. And of course, I never wanted this in any way to be a message movie.'”

Winner of the Grand Prix at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, Swedish writer and director Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value centers on two sisters who must confront their relationship with their estranged father when he reappears after their mother’s death. 

At the New York premiere of his film, Trier discussed his poignant family drama: “I'm now pondering, what is the provocative counter position to a world where everything is very aggressive and divided? And I thought that maybe now tenderness is the new punk, that we actually need to listen to each other. I made a film about reconciliation, you know, and a family. But I think about that in a bigger way as something we need to think about—listen to each other and not make the other the enemy.”

Setting the film at the childhood home of the main characters offers a particular emotional layer of the story. Secrets, generational trauma, and more are explored as they navigate their respective past and current relationships and the future of the pending sale of the house.

Director Rebecca Zlotowski’s unpredictable and sometimes zany murder mystery stars Jodie Foster in her first French-language performance as an American psychoanalyst in Paris whose tightly knit world begins to unravel after the sudden and suspicious death of a patient. Co-written by Zlotowski, Anne Berest and Gaëlle Macé.

A series of twists lead not only to past grievances but past lives. (And even a cameo by the renowned documentary filmmaker Friederick Wiseman whom I interviewed for this publication.) The tonal shifts might be unsettling for some viewers as it moves back and forth from a drama about families, a comedy of remarriage, and a whodunit. Perhaps the true mystery of the story is revealed by the question (no, this is not a spoiler alert): “Why did you leave me?” 

The New York Film Festival runs until October 13th.