Tribeca may have been the first big in-person film event of 2021, but it wasn’t clear what it told us about the year ahead.
Mostly, outdoor venues at The Battery and a reopened Pier 76 at the Hudson River Park were the main attractions during the festival, which offered 56 world premieres out of 66 feature titles.
The studio also delivered Steven Soderbergh’s light-on-its-feet heist caper “No Sudden Move,” a charming vehicle for leads Don Cheadle and Benicio del Toro, as a Tribeca centerpiece gala on June 18 ahead of its July 1 release.
It’s not the biggest box office draw, but has the sort of stacked cast and genre hook that could do well on VOD.
Closing night of Tribeca marks an audacious interior no-mask, all-vaccinated, full capacity assemblage at Radio City Music Hall of “American Factory” Oscar-winners Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert’s new Dave Chappelle documentary.
As always, the packed documentary selection was more robust than the narrative, as the powerful market festivals Cannes , Venice, Telluride, Toronto, and New York attract the higher-profile titles, even with a hefty backup of films seeking an amplified launchpad.
Theater-committed Sony Pictures Classics co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, who learned the ropes on Premium VOD during the pandemic, returned to Tribeca to showcase Andreas Koefoed’s documentary “The Lost Leonardo” , which finally hits 150 screens on June 25.
At the Battery “Roadrunner” party, CNN’s Jeff Zucker mingled with his media star Brian Stelter and NY1 traffic reporter Jamie Shupak Stelter, documentary czar Amy Entelis as well as Focus Features chairman Peter Kujawski, who is taking Tom McCarthy’s Matt Damon mystery drama “Stillwater” and Korean American saga “Blue Bayou” to Cannes.
As always, Tribeca’s ability to highlight and brand emerging titles and talent was on display.