NYFF: Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis film ‘Miles Ahead’ to close festival

Last year the New York Film Festival chose to close its annual awards-season confab with “Birdman,” a movie about an actor beset by troubles as he sought to stage a Broadway play.

This year the festival is going back to the artistic-process well, announcing that Don Cheadle’s Miles Davis tale “Miles Ahead” will make its world premiere at the festival’s closing night on Oct. 11.

Cheadle directed the film, his first such effort, and also co-wrote the script and stars as its lead character. “Miles Ahead” focuses on a section of Davis’ life, in the 1970s, when the jazz great was facing financial, health and industry crises, trying to navigate the future while being haunted by the past; he wasn’t really leaving his apartment during this time.

Notably, the film does not yet have U.S. distribution, a break from recent tradition in which NYFF world premieres are studio award hopefuls for the current season. In fact, the film was partly financed by an IndieGogo campaign. (It is possible, of course, that a studio can buy the movie ahead of the festival and mount a 2015 campaign for “Miles Ahead.”)

In making his case for contributions, Cheadle explained his motivations and approach.

“I’ve taken my marching orders from Miles’ mandates (“Play what’s not there.” “Fear no mistakes. There are none.”) and focused in on a very specific point in his life to explore his relationship with his muse, his voice, his fears and challenges to come out of his silent period and return to the music. “

Emayatzy Corinealdi stars as longtime love interest Frances Taylor and Ewan McGregor as a man who finagled his way into Davis’ apartment.

“Miles Ahead” is one of several new movies about real-life musicians; the list also includes Hank Williams pic “I Saw The Light,” which Sony Pictures Classics will release in the fall. Last year saw the award-season success of “Whiplash,” another making-the-music tale that referenced a jazz great, in that case Charlie Parker, as well as the release last summer of James Brown story “Get On Up.”

Festival director Kent Jones cited a line from poet Robert Creeley in announcing the “Miles Ahead” selection. “’There is no longer much else but ourselves, in the place given us. To make that present, and actual … is not an embarrassment, but love.’ Jones invoked, then added “That’s the core of art. Miles Davis knew it, and Don Cheadle knows it.”

NYFF opens Sept. 25 with another world premiere, for “The Walk,” Robert Zemeckis’ dramatization of Philippe Petit’s tightrope feat across the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

@ZeitchikLAT