Director Noah Baumbach and Laura Linney on the set of The Squid and The Whale, to be featured at the 43rd New York Film Festival (Photo: James Hamilton)

The New York Film Festival's 2005 line-up is pretty much set now, with films by Steven Soderbergh, Neil Jordan, Lars von Trier and a variety of notable others filling in the 31-title slate.

The festival opens Sept. 23 with George Clooney's period news drama Good Night. And, Good Luck and will screen Michael Haneke's thriller Cache as its closing-night film Oct. 9. Jordan's transvestite-coming-of-age epic Breakfast on Pluto occupies the festival's centerpiece slot, and Jordan is confirmed for a Director's Dialogue appearance as well.

Soderbergh's film Bubble—set for simultaneous theatrical/DVD/TV distribution through 2929 Entertainment and Magnolia Pictures—will premiere at the festival.

New York enjoys a sprinkling of representation with Michel Negroponte's Methadonia, Bennett Miller's Capote and Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale, the latter of which centers on the quirks and quarrels of a Brooklyn clan circa 1986. On the other hand, as Variety points out this morning, the festival line-up is characteristically heavy on Asian films while listing a paucity (read: zero) Latin American films:

After having good runs with the fest in years past, Latin American cinema surprisingly failed to catch programmers' eyes completely."Last year was a good representation of Latin American cinema in the festival," said selection committee chair Richard Pena. "What we saw of Latin American cinema this year didn't make the final selection."

OK, well, I guess I trust him. What the committee saw of Sony Pictures Classics cinema definitely seems to have made an impression, with the distributor's films accounting for six slots this year. Other pictures of note include von Trier's Manderlay and the Dardennes brothers' Palme d'Or-winning L'Enfant.