Tribeca Film Festival 2011: The Great Escape

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Sunday, 13 March 2011 15:58

Written by Laura Blum

Ten years after Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff mounted their first cinema circus to perk up post-9/11 lower Manhattan, the Tribeca Film Festival now celebrates its tin anniversary, April 20 to May 1, 2011.

An unprecedented 5,624 submissions kept Festival programmers hunkered down at their screens while whittling this year's final selection to 88 features and 61short films. The features hail from 32 countries, including many that will wave their flag for the first time in the New York showcase acknowledged today as a worthy stop on the festival circuit.

Ever a work-in-progress, the Festival now straddles two competition sections, World Narrative and World Documentary, and three that are out-of-competition: Cinemania, Spotlight and the debuting Viewpoints.

The 12 titles in the World Narrative Competition run a broad gamut of aesthetics and narratives. Given the current focus on the insurgent Middle East, one film that's sure to entice ticket-buyers is the international premiere of Hesham Issawi's Cairo Exit/El Korough, by way of Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. The Arabic-language drama charts the ordeal of a pregnant 18-year-old as she deliberates whether to flee to Greece with her Muslim boyfriend or remain in Cairo with her Coptic Orthodox Christian family. The loss of both her motorbike and her job forces her to reconsider what she can look forward to as an unwed mother in Egypt.

Another film following a young woman and themes of escape is Artificial Paradises/Paraísos artificiales, which garnered kudos for Mexican director Yulene Olaizola when it world premiered at the 2011 International Film Festival Rotterdam. Though here the incentive for absconding is to overcome drug addiction, this numbing-of-age story reflects displacement anxieties that also play out in co-contenders of the official joust.

Blackthorn provides another example. In it, director Mateo Gil reimagines legendary American outlaw Butch Cassidy (Sam Shepard) 20 years after he was allegedly killed in Bolivia in 1908. According to this co-production uniting Spain, France, Bolivia and the USA, Cassidy aka James Blackthorn teams up with a Spanish mine robber and rides out across the Bolivian frontier for one last time.

A fourth exodus story worth highlighting is the romantic comedy Romantics Anonymous/Les émotifs anonymes. The exile here involves little mileage, as two shy souls who have withdrawn from society come together over their shared attachment to chocolate. The French/Belgian film directed by Jean-Pierre Améris will receive its international premiere at TFF.

This year's awards ceremony will stretch a jot longer than in the past. In addition to the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature, Best Actor and Actress, for the first time the World Narrative Competition will pin ribbons on films recognized for best cinematography, screenwriting and editing.

Also in a departure from previous editions, Best New Narrative Director and Best New Documentary Director awards are now up for grabs to any debut feature filmmaker making his/her North American or broader premiere.

Of the 99 feature directors represented on the 2011 slate, 54 are first-timers and 12 are TFF returnees.

For those who prefer to participate from afar, the Festival's free distribution platform --Tribeca Online Film Festival – will once again post features, short films, special events, talk and red carpet do's.

Industry and civilian guests can plan their agenda with the help of www.tribecafilm.com.

Tribeca Film Festival

April 20 – May 1, 2011
Tribeca Cinemas Ticket Window
54 Varick Street (at Laight Street)

Chelsea Clearview Cinemas
260 West 23rd Street (between 7th and 8th Avenue)

AMC Village VII
(66 3rd Avenue (at 11th Street)

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