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NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d<\/a> isn\u2019t part of the New York Film Festival\u2019s lineup, but its agitated sense of inheritance and keeping a fighting spirit alive are all over this year\u2019s cinematic convergence at Lincoln Center.<\/p>\n The New York Film Festival kicks off Friday, the same day Anderson\u2019s antic American epic lands in theaters. These aren\u2019t completely separate events. Lincoln Center, which hosts the festival, last weekend screened \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d<\/a> in 70mm. And several of Anderson\u2019s most important colleagues \u2014 Daniel Day-Lewis, Martin Scorsese \u2014 will be prominent at this year\u2019s festival.<\/p>\n But more than that, much of what so energetically animates \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d can be felt across a wide spectrum of the 106 features unspooling across the 18-day festival. A variety of threads can be found in a slate ranging from the opening night film<\/a>, Luca Guadagnino\u2019s \u201cAfter the Hunt,\u201d to the closing film, Bradley Cooper\u2019s \u201cIs This Thing On?\u201d But many of the highlights of the festival are, like Anderson\u2019s film about a former radical (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti), highly concerned with upholding a legacy, of family or duty or both.<\/p>\n That goes for the festival, itself, which has for 63 years been a standard-bearer for the best in cinema. Coming on the heels of the first barrage of fall festivals, the New York Film Festival, which gathers the best of other festivals while mixing in a handful of its own world premieres, has long been an Upper West Side haven for an aspirational idea of cinema.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone who cares about film knows that it is an art in need of defending, like many of our core values today,\u201d Dennis Lim, the festival\u2019s artistic director, said in announcing the main slate.<\/p>\n There\u2019s no lack of urgency in this year\u2019s lineup. That includes Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus\u2019 \u201cCover-Up,\u201d a portrait of the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that doubles as a plea for freedom of the press; \u201cNuestra Tierra (Landmarks),\u201d the first documentary by the great Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel (\u201cZama,\u201d \u201cThe Headless Woman\u201d), about the 2009 murder of Indigenous community leader Javier Chocobar; and Kathryn Bigelow\u2019s \u201cA House of Dynamite,\u201d<\/a> an intense White House procedural about a nuclear missile bearing down on the Midwest.<\/p>\n \u201cA House of Dynamite,\u201d which Netflix<\/a> will release Oct. 10, is part of a rich but specialized cinematic legacy. Like those twin 1964 movies, \u201cFail Safe\u201d and \u201cDr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb,\u201d Bigelow\u2019s film is a warning shot. It posits that time has dulled our concern for the threat of nuclear fallout, and it makes a convincing, anxiety-producing case that it\u2019s time to rekindle a mid-century mindset.<\/p>\n Daniel Day-Lewis returns<\/p>\n Opening day of the festival will feature the rebirth of a cinematic legacy in his own right. In \u201cAnemone,\u201d Day-Lewis returns from an acting retirement<\/a> he announced in the wake of his second film with Anderson, 2017’s \u201cPhantom Thread.\u201d<\/a> He co-wrote \u201cAnemone\u201d with his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, who also directs. The movie, fittingly, is a father-son tale. Day-Lewis plays reclusive Irish man whose brother (Sean Bean) comes to his remote cabin to urge him to return to his son.<\/p>\n \u201cAnemone,\u201d which Focus Features will release Oct. 3, is an assured directorial debut for the young filmmaker that carries with it the very welcome news that Day-Lewis hasn\u2019t lost an iota of his intensely magnetic screen presence in the interim.<\/p>\n The last time Day-Lewis appeared publicly in New York was to celebrate Scorsese last year<\/a> at the National Board of Review Awards. Scorsese, a longtime NYFF regular, will be back at the festival for \u201cMr. Scorsese,\u201d a five-part documentary series on the 82-year-old filmmaker directed by Rebecca Miller (also Day-Lewis’ wife, making the festival a true family affair).<\/p>\n The documentary, which Apple<\/a> TV+ will debut Oct. 17, is a wonderfully up-close look at Scorsese, featuring warmly intimate interviews with him and his collaborators that nearly answers the unanswerable question of how Scorsese does it. Because Scorsese carries with him so much movie history, Miller\u2019s series is both a portrait of a legend and of half a century of cinema.<\/p>\n \u2018Sentimental Value\u2019 and the Stillers<\/p>\n Living with the legacy of a show business families sets the backdrop of both Joachim Trier\u2019s piercing family drama \u201cSentimental Value\u201d<\/a> (in theaters Nov. 7) and Ben Stiller\u2019s highly personal documentary \u201cStiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost\u201d (in theaters Oct. 17, streaming Oct. 24).<\/p>\n In Trier\u2019s film, one of the best of the year, Renate Reinsve, the breakout star of Trier\u2019s \u201cThe Worst Person in the World,\u201d<\/a> plays an acclaimed stage actor estranged from her filmmaker father (Stellan Skarsg\u00e5rd). When he plots a highly autobiographical comeback film, their broken family is brought into uncomfortable proximity, yielding plenty of pain, humor and, maybe, the transcendence of art.<\/p>\n Similar frictions and catharses run through Stiller\u2019s documentary, the actor-director\u2019s portrait of his comedy duo parents, Anne Meara<\/a> and Jerry Stiller.<\/a> Stiller uses the copious amount of letters, recordings and diaries left behind by his parents to find a deeper understanding of their marriage \u2014 one where performing together was both a bond and a barrier to a singular love story. It, too, stretches across generations, pondering how Meara and Stiller\u2019s relationship with work, fame and each other shaped their children, Ben and Amy.<\/p>\n These films and others give this New York Film Festival a sense of preoccupation with where we\u2019ve come from and where we\u2019re going \u2014 a hard-to-grasp divide that \u201cOne Battle From Another\u201d tries so hard to straddle and that a festival entry like \u00d3liver Laxe’s explosive \u201cSir\u0101t\u201d<\/a> is likewise so consumed with.<\/p>\n