New Directors New Films program introducing new crop of innovative directors |

Tonight The Film Society of Lincoln Center and MOMA begins the 39th Annual New Directors/New Films program, which showcases film projects from another new line up of fresh faces on the filmmaking scene.

Pedro Almodóvar, Kelly Reichardt, Atom Egoyan, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Sally Potter, John Sayles, Steven Spielberg, Wim Wenders and Wong Kar Wai were all featured as part of New Directors/New Films early in their careers.

One of the films screening at this year’s event is director Sultan Sharrief’s Bilal’s Stand, which tells the fact-based tale of a generations-old taxi stand. Bilal’s Stand shines a light on a hard-working family struggling to keep a business alive amid both internal and external pressures. For his crew, Sultan Sharrief used many of the students from EFEX, the inner-city outreach program he founded in his native Detroit, as well as many nonprofessional actors, some of them playing themselves.

New Directors/New Films runs March 24th through April 4, 2010 at The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, located at 165 West 65th Street, New York City, New York.

Check out the trailer for Bilal’s Stand below.