Another year, another edition of the Tribeca Film Festival! Beginning today and ending April 28, well over 100 films will be screened across New York City. The festival covers everything from documentaries to feature films, international dramas to domestic comedies, and full-length narratives to short narratives.
Last year was the first time I wrote about TFF, and I look forward to covering it again. The festival is widely popular and many of the screening choices are superb. While I wish I had time to see them all, I’ve narrowed the program list down to these 10 films I believe are most worth your (and my) time. I’m proud to announce my Second Annual Tribeca Film Festival pick list! :
Claudio Giovannesi’s first dramatic feature is an engrossing coming-of-age story following one week in the life of sixteen-year-old troublemaker Nader, an immigrant teenager who stops at nothing to fit in to Italian youth culture despite his family’s insistence that he respect his Egyptian and Muslim roots. He gets into fights, does drugs, steals and pursues an Italian girlfriend against his mother’s threats to disown him. It is a wonderfully non-judgmental study of a young man caught between conflicting states—Arab and Italian, childhood and adulthood, right and wrong—and the lesson he learns. The performances from the non-professional cast, most of whom are playing close versions of themselves, contribute to the work as being a stunning example of Italian Neorealism. Giovannesi won a special jury prize at the Rome Film Festival for this film. (Credit: Dan Hunt)
In Ghana, a small American energy company fights to hold onto its discovery of oil just as a new government comes into power. In Nigeria, where oil has already been discovered, the ramifications of the oil industry have taken their toll on the people, most notably those in the Niger Delta who have seen none of the benefits of this new wealth. As the American company falls under the scrutiny of the new Ghanaian government and the U.S. Justice Department, the contracts for the oil field languish. Jobs are lost, power plays are made and all the while, the Ghanaian people wait to reap the benefits. In the Niger Delta, pipelines are attacked and set on fire as militants continue to demand more of the wealth from their government. With unprecedented access and an unflinching eye, Big Men takes us deep into the African oil industry in Ghana and Nigeria, delivering an exposé on the ambition, greed and corruption that threaten to exacerbate Africa’s resource curse and leave more of its citizens behind. (Credit: Vivian Tse)
Reem is the savvy promoter, Flizzo the undefeated local legend, Jay Donn the innovator with the talent to carry him far away from home, if he can learn to work with the outsiders who want to take him there. What unites them: a competitive dance form of dramatic contortions, simulated violence, seamlessly flowing footsteps and the occasional humorous touch. Welcome to the world of Flex.
Filmmakers Deidre Schoo and Michael Beach Nichols travel to the edge of both Brooklyn and street performance for this portrait of a rapidly growing local dance style. Their ringside view of Flex’s head-to-head battles is only the beginning. Majestic choreographed set pieces by Flex’s boldest artists are set against the evolving futures of Flizzo, Jay Donn and the form itself, showing how these artists define new identities through dance while confronting trouble at home and in their neighborhoods. Flex Is Kings is a sparkling testament to the freeing power of art and a powerful visual celebration of the beauty born when raw energy is directed toward the creative process.
(Credit: Arthur Ryel-Lindsey)
In the 2010 Oscar®-nominated exposé Gasland, director Josh Fox profiled hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the process of injecting a pressurized mixture of water, sand and chemicals down a drilled well, causing layers of rock deep in the earth to crack and release natural gas. The film inspired a national dialogue over the multi-layered environmental dangers at risk. With Gasland Part II, Fox examines the long-run impact of the controversial process, including poisonous water, earthquakes and neurological damage, placing his focus on the people whose lives have been irreparably changed.
Traveling from the Gulf of Mexico to the heart of Texas and back up to the Delaware River basin, he thoroughly investigates the effects of this once-touted energy source, as well as the industry’s equally disturbing reaction to negative claims via smear campaigns and lawsuits. Gasland Part II shows how the anti-fracking movement has done its best to amplify its message while the million-dollar conglomerates employ PSY-OPS tactics to shut it down. Unnerving interviews and shocking data underscore this scathing indictment of unregulated industry in Fox’s powerful, not-to-be-missed follow-up. (Credit: Holly Voges)
Harmony Lessons sheds light on a small village on the lonely steppes of rural Kazakhstan. Bolat and his gang of flunkies rule the village’s main school, a microcosm of Kazakh society. Aslan, a thirteen-year-old living with his grandmother, is a meticulous and successful science student but very terse in his communication. Through the daily schoolyard routine of taunts and humiliations that Aslan faces, Bolat is revealed to be part of a hierarchy led by seasoned criminals raising cash for those in prison. Aslan, silently suffering, methodically prepares his revenge.
In this insightful Kazakh film, symbolism and striking cinematography help us navigate the complicated landscape of a teenager’s mind after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Emir Baigazin wrote, edited and directed this fascinating Darwinist first feature, which, through his still shots, reminds us of Bresson and the best parts of Japanese film noir. (Credit: Frédéric Boyer)
A wall can be a barrier. It can be a structure of limitation or a source of repression. For the Inside Out Project, a wall is a canvas, and so are sides of trains, the arches of bridges and the steps leading to Brooklyn brownstones. This fascinating documentary tracks the evolution of the world’s largest participatory art project, the wildly popular Inside Out. From Haiti to Tunisia, South Dakota to the streets of Paris, French artist JR motivates communities to define their most important causes by pasting giant portraits in the street, testing the limits of what they thought possible. The power of paper turns people who feel without voice into unlikely activists by empowering them with their own images.
Alastair Siddons artfully curates each geographic vignette with a combination of breathtaking urban landscapes and introspective explorations of individuality. Perfectly capturing both the hope and heartbreak within each story, Inside Out is a call to action for anyone who believes in the role that art can play in transforming lives. (Credit: Ashley Havey)
In 2001, Lenny Cooke was the most hyped high school basketball player in the country, ranked above future greats LeBron James, Amar’e Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony. In an era when high school stars were forgoing college hoops in favor of the potential multi-million dollar contracts promised in the NBA draft, Lenny was supposed to be the next superstar. He had the world at his fingertips. But over a decade later, while his peers are taking home MVP awards and championship trophies, Lenny has never played a minute in the NBA. What went wrong?
With incredible access to Lenny’s story as it unfolded over the past decade, filmmaking brothers Joshua and Benny Safdie follow Lenny from his run-down home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to the New Jersey suburbs where he spent his high school career through to the present day, with the friends and family who shared in his dreams and aspirations. Lenny Cooke is a quintessentially American story about dreaming big, the fickle nature of sports celebrity and the unfulfilled destiny of a man for whom superstardom was only just out of reach.
(Credit: Ian Hollander)
Struggling with poverty and unemployment after the demise of its only industry—the mining trade that had historically nourished the local economy—Oceana, West Virginia, has become the epicenter of a drug scourge devastating towns across the country and leaving many good and honest communities forsaken. Known among its residents as “Oxyana” after the OxyContin epidemic quietly washing over this sleepy Appalachian town, Oceana is a tragically real example of the insidious spread of drug dependency in the U.S. today.
Set against the eerie backdrop of abandoned coal mines within the lush West Virginia landscape, to the melody of Deer Tick’s haunting score, Sean Dunne’s unflinchingly intimate documentary probes the lives of Oceana’s afflicted. He turns the camera on its many residents, allowing them to tell their stories in their own words and homes and illuminate how their unique stories have led them each to the same tragic inevitability of pill addiction. Dunne eschews the high-drama mode in which drug dependency stories are often framed in favor of a simple, sympathetic immersion in the day-to-day experience of a town living in the harsh grip of addiction.
(Creidt: Cara Cusumano)
Naïve teen Gili changes schools and is determined to improve her social status at the same time by hooking up with her new school’s coolest guy. Her plan succeeds, and she takes pride in her ability to use her feminine wiles to her advantage. Even when her crush passes her off to his friend, she is happy for the attention. But soon all of the boys know Gili’s reputation, and as each new encounter pushes her limits a little farther, the line of consent begins to blur.
Structured around the eponymous acts of escalating exploitation, Six Acts is an edgy and perceptive portrait of an average girl increasingly consumed by oversexed teenhood. Complicating the simplified way a teen girl’s sexual awakening is conventionally depicted, director Jonathan Gurfinkel approaches his subject with nuance and ambiguity. Gili is certainly not a girl fully in control of her sexual destiny, but neither is she a victim. By probing this intermediate area, Gurfinkel questions conventional ideas of consent, exploitation and complicity in this intelligent and provocative debut feature. (Credit: Cara Cusumano)
The concept of teenagers did not gain widespread recognition until the 20th century, before which childhood and adulthood were two completely discrete phases with nothing in between. In fact, the word “teenager” was not coined until 1945, when two World Wars resulted in thousands of young people being shipped off by adults to fight and die in Europe, and the seeds of a lasting intergenerational conflict were planted. This fascinating documentary illuminates the earliest pioneers of youth culture from this emergent period—from decadent flappers and hipster Swing Kids to brainwashed Nazi Youth and frenzied Sub-Debs—in a visually exciting, historically rigorous and artfully anachronistic piece of work.
Based on a groundbreaking book by the punk author Jon Savage and narrated by actors Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Julia Hummer and Jessie Usher, director Matt Wolf’s compelling collage is crafted from archival material, Super-8 recreations and diaries of actual mid-century teenagers, all set to a post-punk contemporary soundtrack. The result is an unconventional pop historical film about the birth of the iconic, eternally cool figure of the teenager. (Credit: Cara Cusumano)
Tags: best films showing at the Tribeca Film Festival, films to see in NYC this weekend, good documentaries playing in NYC right now, good foreign films playing in NYC right now, NYC film festivals, Tribeca Film Festival 2013
