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For as long as New York City has been the de facto epicenter of American independent film, there have been scenes where a child that’s wise beyond their years strikes up a bond with a raggedy man on the street who knows a thing or two about life. It’s a quintessential stock scene that highlights everything about New York that filmmakers find so inspiring — the eat-or-be-eaten lifestyle forces everyone to mature and turn into philosophers, but the urban density simultaneously forces people to interact and see each other as humans.

It’s also a surefire sign that you’re watching a New York Movie, a category that only encompasses a small percentage of films that are set in New York. The iconography of directors like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese has permeated culture so deeply that it’s become a rite of passage for certain filmmakers to recreate...

Exclusive: Arthouse distro Circle Collective has acquired worldwide rights to Luca Balser’s (Uncut Gems) NYC anthology film What Doesn’t Float, starring and produced by Pauline Chalamet (Sex Lives of College Girls), and shot by DPs Sean Price Williams (Good Time) and Hunter Zimny (Good Time).

The film is set to make its world premiere at the Lighthouse Film Festival this month and will be released theatrically in the U.S. from September with an international fest tour planned in the fall/winter.

What Doesn’t Float stars Chalamet, genre filmmaker and actor Larry Fessenden (Depraved), and Keith Poulson (Pvt Chat) as New Yorkers at their wit’s end. Script comes from Shauna Fitzgerald and Rachel Walden (Funny Pages) also produces.

The project is the first from NYC-based production company Gummy Films, headed by Chalamet, Balser and Walden who last month attended the Cannes Film Festival with their short film Lemon Tree...