The Tribeca Festival takes place every spring in Lower Manhattan and offers a diverse mix of programming that includes virtual reality, concerts, video games, and podcast tapings. What ties all these different media together is the emphasis on storytelling, which is the event’s central theme. This year’s festival, which runs from Wednesday through June 18, takes place against the backdrop of a wider hiatus in storytelling that is characterized by the Writers Guild strike in its second month and a potential SAG-AFTRA strike. The industry is in crisis, and it remains to be seen how the festival will respond to this challenge.
As one of the top film festivals in the United States, Tribeca has always been a platform that showcases big-studio movies as well as independent films. Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental” is the centerpiece of this year’s festival. In the past, the festival has helped launch the careers of many filmmakers, such as Nia DaCosta, who premiered her crime drama “Little Woods” in 2018, and is now directing “The Marvels.”
However, the most exciting titles at the festival are often the discoveries. This year, “The Gullspang Miracle” is a standout documentary that follows two Norwegian sisters and their uncanny encounter with a woman who looks just like their elder sister, who died by suicide decades ago. The film explores the competing pulls of nature and nurture and lays bare destabilizing truths and secrets. “The Line” is another noteworthy film, an incisive college drama that paints a tenebrous, cocaine-tinctured netherworld peopled with the preppy, white members of Kappa Nu Alpha, a fraternity filled with homophobes, racists, and sexists.
For those looking for female-driven narratives, “Richelieu” and “Cold Copy” are two absorbing dramas that center around women with different professional goals. Meanwhile, a large chunk of non-fiction titles focuses on sports and athletes, from basketball and football to baseball, ice hockey, rugby, mixed martial arts, and even IndyCar racing. “The Saint of Second Chances” profiles independent baseball team owner Mike Veeck, a lifelong mischief-maker, while “The League” celebrates the inception, heyday, and superstars of the Negro Leagues and analyzes their legacy. “Break the Game,” a multimedia documentary, explores the internecine tug of war between body and mind by following a former championship gaming player facing online transphobia.
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