Bradley Cooper’s ‘Maestro’ added to the New York Film Festival lineup as spotlight gala screening

Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro” and the 2023 edition of the New York Film Festival are officially two little ducks in a pond.

On Wednesday, Film at Lincoln Center announced “Maestro,” which Cooper co-wrote, co-produced, directed, and stars in as legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, will screen at this year’s 61st edition of the New York Film Festival as the spotlight gala presentation. “Maestro” joins a list of high-power fall releases in the lineup, including the opening night film “May December,” centerpiece screening “Priscilla,” and the closing night movie “Ferrari.”

But the “Maestro” screening, the film’s North American premiere after it debuts in Venice later this month, will certainly be a big deal. Set to take place on October 2 at David Geffen Hall on New York’s Upper West Side, the premiere screening will be the first of its kind at the venue.

Film at Lincoln Center also provided a little more fodder in terms of what to expect from “Maestro,” just one day after Netflix revealed the film’s first teaser trailer and its release dates (November 22 in select theaters, December 20 on the streaming service).

“In his directorial follow-up to ‘A Star Is Born,’ Bradley Cooper dramatizes the public and private lives of legendary musician Leonard Bernstein with sensitivity, visual ingenuity, and symphonic splendor. Coasting on the boundless energy of its subject’s runaway genius, ‘Maestro’ transports the viewer back to a vividly re-created postwar New York, when Bernstein (Cooper) began his stratospheric rise to international fame as both a conductor and composer, and also when he first met Felicia (Carey Mulligan), the actress whom he would marry and spend his life with,” read a press release. “‘Maestro’ is a tender, often intensely emotional film about the different faces one wears when living in the public eye, depicting Bernstein’s open bisexuality as frankly as it does the complicated yet devoted decades-spanning relationship between Leonard and Felicia. Fueled by Cooper and Mulligan’s perfectly matched duet of towering performances, Matthew Libatique’s balletic cinematography, and, of course, Bernstein’s thrilling music, Maestro is a tour de force for its director.”

New York Film Festival artistic director, Dennis Lim, was similarly effusive about Cooper’s new film.

“Maestro is a bravura achievement for its director and star, a work of conviction and imagination that does justice to the brilliance and complexity of its subject,” Lim said in a statement. “We are honored to have Bradley Cooper’s enthralling film as a gala presentation at this year’s festival, and doubly so to be showing it in a venue that is synonymous with Leonard Bernstein.”

Added Lesli Klainberg, president of Film at Lincoln Center, “The New York Film Festival is proud to present the North American debut of Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s tour de force film about the life of renowned conductor, composer, and musician Leonard Bernstein. It is particularly significant that this is the first film to premiere in the new David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic, which Bernstein famously led for over a decade, and where NYFF began in 1963. This state-of-the-art presentation was realized with the collaboration of our colleagues at the New York Philharmonic and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and supported by our friends at Netflix and Dolby.”

The New York Film Festival runs from September 29 through October 15.

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