Director James Gray debuted his semi-fictionalized 1980s Queens crime thriller Paper Tiger at the New York Film Festival in 2026. Distributed by Neon, the film stars Miles Teller, Adam Driver, and Scarlett Johansson, exploring complex interpersonal relationships and family entanglements with the Russian mob ahead of its theatrical rollouts on November 13 and November 20.
The Bottom Line
- The Project: Paper Tiger is James Gray’s follow-up to his semi-autobiographical drama Armageddon Time, shifting away from direct historical recounting toward a pulpier, Hitchcockian narrative.
- The Cast: The film features a high-profile ensemble starring Miles Teller as patriarch Irwin, Adam Driver as older brother Gary, and Scarlett Johansson as Hester, alongside Roman Engel.
- The Release: Neon has scheduled the film for a selective U.S. theatrical release on November 13, expanding to a wider release on November 20.
Diverging From Fact Into Hitchcockian Territory
Following the intimate, highly factual framing of his previous coming-of-age feature Armageddon Time, Gray deliberately pivoted toward a different narrative energy with Paper Tiger. Set in 1980s Queens, the film follows a family whose patriarch Irwin, played by Miles Teller, and older brother Gary, played by Adam Driver, become entangled with the Russian mob via a high-stakes moneymaking scheme.
Speaking after the film’s North American premiere at the New York Film Festival, Gray clarified that the new picture refuses to function as a direct sequel or a strict documentary of his upbringing. “This one is much different. I think that one was much more close to the facts of the case,” Gray noted regarding the contrast with his previous work. “There are many things that my brother, I’m sure, will recognize as from our life, but it’s not a documentary. And I didn’t think it was a sequel. I wanted to make something kind of a little bit … Hitchcockian. … Pulpier is the wrong word, but a little bit more dramatically intense.”
Prioritizing Human Connection Amid Pulp Tension
Beneath the genre elements of a crime thriller sits a deeply domestic struggle. Gray emphasized that the core objective of the film centers on interpersonal stakes rather than pure genre mechanics. “I was trying to make a film in which the personal connection is everything, that love is everything,” the director explained during discussions prior to the premiere. He added that while he hopes audiences experience suspense and intensity, the ultimate resolution points toward catharsis and the bonds that connect people.
This grounding in personal reality shaped the direction given to actor Roman Engel, who portrays the youngest of Irwin’s two sons and serves as a cinematic stand-in for Gray himself. Engel noted that Gray’s primary instruction on set was simple: to remain anchored in his own identity rather than performing an external expectation. “He would mostly just try to tell me to be myself on set and don’t try to live someone else’s experience, try to live your own and do the actions you would do while whatever’s happening to you,” Engel observed.
Rejecting Traditional Closure at the Box Office Horizon
Rather than tying up every narrative thread neatly, Paper Tiger concludes at a point of unresolved tension. As characters Gary, Irwin, and Hester (played by Scarlett Johansson) navigate their individual personal crises, the film cuts off before any character learns the ultimate fate of the others.
Gray defended this deliberate narrative ambiguity during a post-screening Q&A, stating his preference for stories that extend past the final frame. “I love the idea that the life of the movie goes on past the movie,” Gray told festival audiences. “I love the open ending. I love the idea that the film exists past the boundaries of the screen and the time. … With all of the characters, I wanted to make sure that there was a completion to their openness in a way, how open their characters were, and that nobody has the whole picture, because that’s like life, and it’s very untraditional actually for movies. Usually, in a movie somebody has the whole story.”
| Film Detail | Production / Release Specification |
|---|---|
| Director | James Gray |
| Key Cast | Miles Teller, Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Roman Engel |
| Setting | 1980s Queens, New York |
| U.S. Distributor | Neon |
| Theatrical Release Schedule | Select theaters on Nov. 13; wide release on Nov. 20 |
