As the centerpiece of The New York Film Festival, Wonderstruck made its stateside debut on Saturday night at Alice Tully Hall to a thunderous ovation. The Todd Haynes-directed film had already experienced a long road of acclaim since it first graced theaters at the Cannes Film Festival last May thanks to a powerful cast of newcomers and seasoned professionals including Michelle Williams and Julianne Moore.

“Julianne has an intense desire to keep people going to a place she hasn’t gone before,” Haynes told Vogue of his longtime collaborator who has taken part in four of his projects since 1995. “She felt humbled, and overwhelmed, by wanting to do it right and make the deaf community feel that she made something authentic.” In the film, adapted from the 2011 young adult novel by the same name, we see Moore as two characters–the first a lauded 1920s actress, and the second an elderly deaf woman living in 1970s New York City, which she prepared for by interacting regularly with the deaf community that includes her co-star, Millicent Simmonds.

Simmonds’ first-hand experience as a member of the deaf community meant she could directly identify with her character’s persistent struggle to communicate. “This is my very, very first film, so I was nervous. I thought, ‘What if I mess up? What if I make a mistake in front of these famous people?’” Simmonds told Vogue, using American Sign Language through an interpreter. “But Todd and Julianne gave me the courage, and held me up, and made it easier for me.” Next up for the 14-year-old breakout star is another lead role in A Quiet Place alongside John Krasinski and Emily Blunt, due next year.

Following the screening, the cast convened nearby at the American Museum of Natural History, where parts of the film’s production had taken place. “There were really two things that drew me to this project,” Moore later told Vogue, standing beneath the hulking blue whale in The Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, wearing a Chanel couture dress complete with a miniaudiere in the shape of a film camera. “It’s a book I’m familiar with, because I’m friends with the author Brian Selznick, but when Todd [Haynes] called me up to play both of the parts I was, of course, delighted, and the kids were really extraordinary too. This was Millicent’s very first movie, but you never would have known it. She’s so assured, so expressive, and feels like a peer when you’re working with her.”