I saw reporters crying at Tribeca’s pre-festival screenings. Actually, I heard them sobbing in the dark. Old-timers told me this happened rarely. If ever. Never. So why was I so lucky? Maybe it is the recession, but man’s isolation in his fight against the “machine” is at the festival’s core. “When you’re cut off from social network, you get… Read More

“In 1992, Spain went to her Baile de Debutante. Our country was presented to the global scene,” Alberto Rodriguez, the director of Unit 7 (Grupo 7), tells me over beer and appetizers at the Chelsea Hotel. The film is about a group of cops who break all the rules to clean up Spain’s ghettos in the 1980s. Bearded, in a dark navy coat, Alberto has a… Read More

“Capitalism is not natural; it’s just brainwashed into us,” Antonino D’Ambrosio, director and producer of Let Fury Have The Hour—a documentary about art as a political statement and creative response—tells me in the foyer of Tribeca’s Cadillac Lounge. “Dialogue is the beginning of change,” Antonino says and turns to his publicist who brings him a vegetarian sandwich. In his first… Read More

In part, we owe the Tribeca Film Festival to Al Qaeda. After the 9/11 attacks, Robert De Niro co-founded the festival to raise the spirit and economy of Lower Manhattan. Ten years and five-thousand screenings later, the festival’s Doha Tribeca spin-off is well established in Qatar. Is this De Niro’s way of teaching fanatics a lesson in their own backyard?… Read More