For several years, Kent Jones has been a high-profile director in two senses of the word. Soon, he will simply be one kind.

Film at Lincoln Center announced Thursday that Jones will be stepping down as the director of the New York Film Festival and as the chairman of the festival’s selection committee. Jones, who also makes documentaries and features, has served as the festival’s director since 2012. He is to step down after this year’s edition, which begins Sept. 27.

“At some point when I was pretty young and already deep into movies, the New York Film Festival became a beacon for me,” Jones said in a statement. “Throughout its history, it has been a true home for the art of cinema — that was how it began with Richard Roud and Amos Vogel, that was how it remained with my predecessor, Richard Peña, and that was how I’ve done my best to maintain it.”

During his tenure, Jones oversaw an expansion of the festival’s programming and an increase in the attention it pays to documentaries; In 2016, Ava Duvernay’s “13th” became the first nonfiction film ever to open the event, which has been running for more than 50 years.