Kent Jones

Kent Jones is one of the rare American film figures whose credibility as a critic, programmer, and filmmaker all feed each other rather than compete. He studied film at New York University, wrote for publications including Film Comment, Cahiers du Cinéma, Artforum, and Cinema Scope, and spent part of the 1990s working as a video archivist for Martin Scorsese before collaborating on film-history documentaries.

That background explains why Jones' directing work feels rooted in cinephile culture without drying out into pure academic distance. He directed Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, co-directed A Letter to Elia, then moved into higher-profile features with Hitchcock/Truffaut, Diane, and Late Fame. The through-line is a filmmaker interested in memory, performance, criticism, and the strange afterlife of artistic ambition.

He also spent 2013 through 2019 as director of the New York Film Festival, which gave him unusual curatorial weight while he continued building his own filmography. In 2026 that reputation looped back into Asia twice: IFFR selected Late Fame, and Jeonju International Film Festival chose it as an opening film. That is exactly the kind of serious film-culture lane where Jones tends to land best.