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The highly anticipated biographical drama Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, directed by Scott Cooper and starring Jeremy Allen White, will have its world premiere as the Spotlight Gala selection of the New York Film Festival (NYFF) on September 28. The screening will be graced by the presence of the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen.
Adapted from Warren Zanes’s 2023 best-selling book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the film takes audiences back to the early 1980s—a pivotal period in Springsteen’s career. At the time, Springsteen was grappling with the pressures of newfound fame while working on two very different musical paths: the raw, introspective acoustic tracks that would form his critically acclaimed Nebraska album, and the high-energy anthems destined for Born in the U.S.A., the record that would propel him to global superstardom.
NYFF describes the film as “graceful” and “exceptionally moving,” noting that White “inhabits a legend and lays bare his beating heart” in portraying a rock icon during a moment of profound artistic and personal transition. The festival emphasizes that the movie captures “the nitty-gritty of Springsteen’s songwriting” while not shying away from the deeper emotional struggles, including familial traumas and personal battles with depression, that shaped the artist’s life.
The film also boasts a strong supporting cast, with Jeremy Strong playing Springsteen’s longtime manager and co-producer Jon Landau, Stephen Graham and Gaby Hoffmann as his parents, and additional performances from Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz, and Odessa Young. The project is produced by Cooper, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Eric Robinson, and Scott Stuber, with Tracey Landon and Zanes serving as executive producers.
Speaking about the honor of premiering at NYFF, Cooper said, “The New York Film Festival has always felt like a spiritual home for the kind of cinema I believe in. To now arrive with a film about Bruce Springsteen—an artist whose music shaped not just a country but my own sense of storytelling—is something I could never have imagined. Getting to know Bruce, to explore his world and his spirit, has been one of the most profound creative experiences of my life. To share that experience with New York audiences, in a city that defines artistic possibility, is both an honor and a responsibility I hold with deep gratitude.”
Springsteen himself, who occasionally visited the set, has already given the film his approval. NYFF Artistic Director Dennis Lim praised the work as having “an intimacy and immediacy that eludes most film biographies” and called White’s performance “revelatory.”
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is scheduled for a theatrical release by 20th Century Studios on October 24, following its NYFF debut during the festival’s 63rd edition, which runs from September 26 to October 13.
