N.Y. Film Festival opens with Clooney’s ‘Good Night’

NEW YORK — The New York Film Festival will say hello on opening night with “Good Night, and Good Luck,” George Clooney’s depiction of McCarthyism and TV news in the 1950s.

Clooney directs for just the second time (his first film was 2002’s “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” about game show host Chuck Barris) and costars as CBS News producer Fred Friendly. David Strathairn plays Edward R. Murrow, who scrutinized Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s Communist witch hunt.

Among the other films playing during the 43rd annual festival, which runs from Sept. 23 to Oct. 9 at Lincoln Center, is “Manderlay” by Danish director Lars von Trier. It’s the second in his trilogy of critical looks at America; the first, “Dogville,” played during the New York Film Festival in 2003.

The festival’s centerpiece film is “Breakfast on Pluto” from director Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”). Cillian Murphy stars as a young man in 1970s Ireland who was abandoned as a child.

Closing night will feature “Hidden” from France’s Michael Haneke. The thriller stars Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche and earned Haneke a best-director prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

Other movies on the lineup include the Belgian film “The Child” from brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, which won top honors this year at Cannes; Steven Soderbergh’s murder mystery “Bubble”; and “Capote,” which focuses on the time when Truman Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman) was researching his classic true-crime novel, “In Cold Blood.”