The Tribeca Festival brings its unusual brand of film, music, TV, games, reunions and talks, audio and immersive storytelling to New York City this week, a mix that draws fans to (hopefully) sunny summer weather and the latest The stop is the film community after a short break post-Cannes.
The fest, which runs from June 7-18, will begin on Wednesday kiss the future, a documentary by Nenad Sisin-San, produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Sarah Anthony. It ends with a 30th anniversary screening of a bronx tale, produced by and starring Tribeca co-founders Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, respectively. Just before the fest begins, NYC Mayor Eric Adams – who is attending opening night – will make an arts and culture-related announcement with the actor.
The festival dropped the word “film” from its title several years ago to reflect the expansive nature of the event that followed 9/11 to help revitalize a physically, emotionally devastated lower Manhattan. It skipped 2020 due to the pandemic, but was one of the first successful in-person industry events until 2021, when it moved from April to June, where it remains.
In a Deadline Q&A with Rosenthal and De Niro, and a Zoom press conference with the programming team, founders and director Cara Cusumano weighed in on the 2023 edition, the first domestic festival to unspool during the ongoing WGA strike.
“We support writers 100% with the issues they’re having,” said Rosenthal, who is also CEO of Tribeca Enterprises. She said the organizers sought guidance from the Guild on two programs: “A program involving a call for submissions for writers is something we do. And we’ve decided not to do that at this time. We won’t do that until after the strike.” Will wait. Another was … on a program with industry executives where writers can pitch their programs, and we’ve changed that. And we did that in consultation with the Guild.
Rosenthal said that a “very high profile” writer-director pulled out because of the strike. A WGA former member will “talk about the issues writers are facing” as part of the festival’s creator’s bazaar. program, now in its 8th year, the WGA is moving to a workshop format this year in solidarity with the strike. It is now a two-day event for creators to collaborate and learn about each other’s current projects. Over 60 creators are participating.
Interviews took place this past weekend before the DGA and AMPTP agreed to a tentative deal. But the WGA has different issues and says work will continue to stall. TV was the first hit, but many indie movies big and small — it’s not yet clear how many — have taken off in recent months. The writers were the first but threatened a triple strike when the DGA and SAG-AFTRA got involved when the contract expired at the end of June. SAG-AFTRA members overwhelmingly approved the strike authority yesterday.
“I don’t think anybody’s going to greenlight a movie right now. And I… think, you know, it’s going to be very, very difficult to finance a movie right now because you can’t do rewrites, Rosenthal said. “So it’s a problem … right now, until those issues are resolved. But it will be better for all of us in the industry if those issues are resolved.”
record submission
Product scarcity wasn’t an issue this year for Tribeca as submissions reached 12,000, and were narrowed down to 112 features — the “most curated and selective” festival yet, Cusumano said. Some 70% of helmers are women. Forty-three are first-time directors, including a team of actor-directed films such as Chelsea Peretti’s comedy first time female directorJohn Slattery’s Maggie MooreSteve Buscemi’s audience and David Duchovny’s Bucky f*cking dent.
Other narrative features include Ethan Berger. Line, set in a fictional college fraternity with Alex Wolff and Halle Bailey; Robert Schwartzman’s the good half with Nick Jonas and Brittany Snow; downtown owl by Hamish Linklater and Lily Rabe; And flight by HP Mendoza.
International offers include dead girls dancingthe feature debut of Anna Roller following three German teenagers on a road trip in Italy; Future by Noam Kaplan, about an assassination leading up to Israel’s first mission to the Moon; And love melody, About the impersonation of Michael Jackson in Addis Ababa, by Edmundo Bejarano.
opening nights kiss the future Which was first screened as a Berlinale Special Gala presentation, follows an underground creative community during the nearly four-year siege of Sarajevo (1992–1996). They were encouraged by U2 after an American aid worker made a long-winded pitch to the band to help raise awareness. The group immediately agreed and began a series of live satellite interviews with locals during their 1993 Zoo TV Tour, with the promise of a live concert if the conflict was over. It performed there in 1997.
“This is a topic that is very close to our hearts at Tribeca… artists who work and the power of art and storytelling to heal communities after a trauma, that came from Tribeca, and some It’s something you’ll see threaded throughout the festival,” Cusumano said. “It felt like it set the table for everything we’re doing in a really beautiful way.”
The film also bridges a Tribeca focus on music, adding more docs than ever this year with live events from Carlos Santana, Cyndi Lauper, Gloria Gaynor, Alicia Keys, Indigo Girls, French Montana, Global Bordello and more Is. The Storytellers series stars Paul McCartney, John Mellencamp, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Chance the Rapper, Billy Porter and music producer Diplo.
The 2023 festival hits back at hip hop’s 50th anniversary, which is a centerpiece. Charlie Ahern, Lee Quinones, Fab 5 Freddy and Grand Wizard Theodore reunite for a special 40th anniversary concert wild Style, Ahern’s classic hip hop film. Mario Van Peebles, Michael Mitchell and the Fab 5 reunite new jack cityand for the 25th anniversary of Kevin Sullivan and Angela Bassett how stella got her groove back,
In all up in the bizDirector Sacha Jenkins uses celebrity interviews, archival footage, re-enactments with puppets, and animation to tell the story of Biz Marquee. Anthem sees composer Chris Bowers and music producer Dahi traveling across America to create a new sound that may have inspired the national anthem being written today. Ryan Coogler is a producer.
Some other docs: The Secret Art of Human Happy Clothes: A Film About Patricia Field by Michael Selditch; molded by Nicolas Bruckman about NFT mania; Rock Hudson: All the Heaven Aloud by Stephen Kijak; David Gregory’s enter the clones of brucewhich tracks the history of the Brusploitation sub-genre through the eyes of those who created it; Gulspang Miracle by Maria Fredriksson about devout Norwegian sisters and a shocking revelation; through the rain On a Community in Northern Kenya Suffering from Prolonged Drought, by Andrew H. Brown and Moses Thuranira; And Infectionwhere the documentary Jordan Byrne embeds for the Taliban unit new York Times Because he is going through a gender transition.
The fest’s 75 shorts were chosen from over 8,000 submissions and include Francesca Scorsese’s fish out of waterwhich appeared in Cannes; last Call by Harry Holland, starring his brother, Tom Holland; troy kotsur to my father, misty copeland Flower, alden ehrenreich shadow brother sunday, Xiaopeng Tian’s Animated deep ocean, And spinning By Isabel Vaca and Arturo Mendicuti.
TV has been an official part of the festival since 2016. This year’s premiere is presented The Walking Dead: Dead City, The latest spinoff of the wildly popular zombie universe this time set in NYC, ahead of its June 18 debut on the AMC network, following talks with eps and cast members. long, long nightis a featured indie episodic original created by and starring Mark Duplass and Barrett O’Brien.
Tribeca’s website calls the film the “core” of its program. But Rosenthal notes that the festival will continue to evolve with audiences who have more options than ever. “We have always been a festival that has looked to technology and new ways of storytelling,” she said. “And when you look at a game, it’s kind of a non-linear story… So for us, it was a way of looking at the creators of the game, the way you look at a director, and seeing that through the festival. bring as a share. Immersive has changed over the years since we had it at the festival. He added that artists often “go through all different platforms to express themselves. And that’s what we have done as a festival”.
This makes for a massive event that can be difficult to schedule. A film-industry attendee wished for a star to have, say, three consecutive days dedicated only to one medium, then another, rather than overlapping events. But a consumer-focused cornucopia is Tribeca’s point of origin and kind.
Some industry insiders even preferred the date of the previous April festival for this post-Cannes June spot. It promises to be a season of Ballmer. But, like SXSW in March, April felt like a more timely launchpad for a film that didn’t make it to Sundance. Tribeca moved into June 2021 for Covid to benefit from a larger outdoor footprint, and stayed.
When asked about the move, Rosenthal said, “It would be interesting to talk to me after this celebration. It’s a good date for us because … we’re about to break out, and it’s a great time to be in New York.” It was “fortunate right after Covid … when we made all these theaters out in the parks … luckily we were in rhythm. And, you know, I believe we’ll be here. But you never know ”