Tribeca Festival Preview: Live Music, Activism Highlight 2022 Edition That Runs Gamut From ‘Halftime’ To ‘Rudy!: A Documusical’
07.06.2022 - 18:07
/ deadline.com
Tribeca Festival, the event that wants to offer something for everyone, returns Wednesday with its sprawling collection of features and shorts, live music, TV, podcasts, games, and AR/VR. The annual New York City-set fest has moved mostly back indoors this year, but will feature nods to 2021 like free outdoor screenings and an online edition, Tribeca At Home. A rich documentary slate tackles abortion, press freedom and the rise of social media. There’s a first-time award for environmental impact and a series of talks with Blackhouse Foundation centered on POC storytelling.
“We’re an activist festival,” said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder with Robert De Niro and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises. “When you think back to how we founded the festival, we’ve always been political,” she added, a nod to the duo launching Tribeca after the September 11 terrorist attacks to buck up a physically and emotionally devastated neighborhood.
This year, docs like Cynthia Lowen’s Batleground, which follows three women active in the anti-abortion movement; Endangered, intertwining stories of journalists in Brazil, Mexico City and the U.S. fighting to report against lies, misinformation and intimidation; and Alex Winter’s The YouTube Effect, on the ascension of the world’s most popular video-sharing website, show “filmmakers responding to the world we’re in,” festival director Cara Cusumano said. Ditto for Jed Rothstein’s Rudy!: A Documusical, an unusual take on the psyche and circumstances of a man in free-fall.
Music pervades this year’s edition, an intention of organizers, beginning with the opening-night film Halftime, the Amanda Micheli-directed Netflix doc about Jennifer Lopez that will have its world premiere to open the festival. Reps confirmed