David Fincher’s The Killer has been named the surprise film at the 71st San Sebastian Festival and the Spotlight selection of the 61st New York Film Festival.

Based on the novel by Alexis Nolent (Matz) and illustrated by Luc Jacamon, The Killer stars Michael Fassbender and tells the story of an assassin who, after a fateful near-miss battles his employers and himself in an international manhunt he insists isn’t personal.

With corrosive wit and rigorously precise technique, this mesmerizing new film from director David Fincher (The Social Network, Gone Girl) pares the payback thriller down to its spare but deeply pleasurable essentials. Adapted by Andrew Kevin Walker from a graphic novel by Alexis “Matz” Nolent and Luc Jacamon, and starring a perfectly chilled Michael Fassbender as a globe-trotting hit man of near-ascetic commitment to his craft, it’s an exemplary process movie in which revenge proves unpredictable, character is action (and inaction), and murder isn’t personal — until, suddenly, it is. A Netflix release.

The San Sebastian returned to the tradition of programming a surprise movie in 2019. Preceding The Killer were Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019), Sportin’ Life (Abel Ferrara, 2020), Spencer (Pablo Larraín, 2021) and Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022).

As a Spotlight selection of the 61st New York Film Festival, The Killer screens on October 14 and October 15.