John Turturro and Giancarlo Esposito reunited at the New York Film Festival for a Q and A on October 7, decades after their early collaborations.

The pair co-star in Noah Segan’s The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. They previously appeared together in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing in 1989 and Mo’ Better Blues in 1990.

The festival conversation ranged across their long careers, from Lee’s Brooklyn films to Esposito’s later television stardom and Turturro’s work as a director.

Their reunion on screen has a symmetry that audiences at the Q and A clearly savoured. Both actors spoke about how the industry, and their craft, has changed since those early days.

The film gets a limited release on October 16 before going wide on October 23 through Sony Pictures Classics.

For fans of American independent cinema, the pairing is a small event: two masters of the form, back together where it started.