NY Film Festival Sets Luca Guadagnino’s ‘Queer’ as Spotlight Gala Selection

The 2024 New York Film Festival has set Luca Guadagnino’s Queer as its Spotlight gala screening, with the U.S. premiere of the film adaptation of William S. Burroughs’ novel of the same name taking place Oct. 6.

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The film, which features a screenplay by Guadagnino’s Challengers collaborator Justin Kuritzkes, stars Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Michael Borremans, Andra Ursuta and David Lowery. The Fremantle film was produced by The Apartment and Frenesy film company as well as Fremantle North America in collaboration with Cinecittà Spa and Frame by Frame.

In the film, Craig plays Burroughs’ alter ego, habitual heroin user William Lee, who, while spending time with gay American expatriates in Mexico City in the late 1940s, falls in love and embarks on an affair with the preppy ex-military Eugene Allerton (Starkey).

The movie features a score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

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“Luca Guadagnino is one of contemporary cinema’s most versatile filmmakers, and one of its biggest risk-takers,” NYFF artistic director Dennis Lim said in a statement. “ Queer is his most fearless, inventive and surprising film, one that brings its subcultural world to brilliant life and creates the role of a lifetime for a tremendous Daniel Craig.”

Guadagnino added, “I am so privileged and elated to present a movie of mine for the third time at NYFF, Queer in particular. It is a very personal movie about the inescapable quest for being recognized in the gaze of another through the lens of the great William Burroughs.”

The 62nd New York Film Festival, presented by Film at Lincoln Center, is set to run from Sept. 27 to Oct. 14.

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