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“Shooting in the Fall, Premiering in June”: Travis Wood and Alex Mallis on Their Tribeca Debut The Travel Companion
The Travel Companion
Anxieties surrounding flight credits, male friendship and fraught filmmaking prospects fuel the bittersweet yet always amusing narrative of The Travel Companion, the feature debut from directors Travis Wood and Alex Mallis. Co-written by the duo alongside their Chicago-based buddy Weston… Read more
“Dark, Difficult, Dank Spaces”: Rob Petit on His Tribeca World Premiere Underland
Underland
Based on British author Robert Macfarlane’s non-fiction book of the same name, Underland, the feature debut from Rob Petit, investigates the world hidden beneath our feet. In particular, the film ventures into the depths of a cave system in Mexico… Read more
“A Brutal Honesty That Still Feels Poetic”: Walter Thompson-Hernández on His Tribeca World Premiere Kites
Kites
In the sprawling favela of Santo Amaro in Rio de Janeiro, Duvo (first-time actor Daniel Fernando do Prado Dorea Lima) currently sits at the top of the pecking order. Under the guise of enriching the community, Duvo and his armed… Read more
“Two Strangers Meeting Over Something So Unusual”: Paula González-Nasser on Her Tribeca World-Premiering Feature Debut The Scout
The Scout
Back in 2022, a scrappy feat of independent filmmaking came across my radar. Written and directed by Florida native Justin Zuckerman, Yelling Fire in an Empty Theater is a Mini-DV shot journey of a young woman attempting to create space… Read more
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“So Many Sequins!”: Penny Lane on Her Tribeca-Debuting Docuseries Mrs. America
Kudos to Anonymous Content and Fremantle for putting together a project focused on the most wholesome of beauty pageants and thinking, “We need the director of Hail, Satan? for this!” Indeed, while the idea might seem absurd on its surface, it’s no more so than the notion of married women from 18 to 80 (and up) going toe to toe (or heel to heel) in evening gowns and swimsuits, sacrificing precious time and exorbitant amounts of money for the chance to wear the Mrs. America crown. And veteran filmmaker Penny Lane, whose 2023 doc Confessions of a Good Samaritan followed […]
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“It Became More a Story About How the Artwork, and All the Commotion Around It, Affected His Mental Health”: Ole Juncker on His Tribeca-Debuting Take the Money and Run
Ole Juncker’s Tribeca-premiering Take the Money and Run follows Jens Haaning, a Danish conceptual artist to whom the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg loaned $83,000 — money that was to be tangibly incorporated into a specific commission for their 2021 group exhibition centered on the future of working life. (Which was not so creatively titled “Work it out.”) Unfortunately for the museum, Haaning decided to incorporate the dollars into his own personal life instead, though he did deliver a piece called Take the Money and Run — a pair of empty frames — along with an email explaining the […]
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“The Best is Always Zero Budget”: David Verbeek on Tribeca 2025 Premiere The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard
In a contemporary take on Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), The Wolf, the Fox, and the Leopard depicts a woman who lives amongst wolves being whisked away and plunged into human society. Director David Verbeek presents this jarring story as a kind of apocalyptic fairytale, in which a feral woman learns what it means to be human while humanity itself is bracing for the end of the world as they know it. Mostly set on a repurposed offshore oil rig, the film explores how the interests of men and nature inevitably clash in the face of impending […]
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“‘History’ with a Capital ‘H'”: Mascha Schilinski on Cannes 2025 Award-Winner Sound of Falling
Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling was so rapturously acclaimed upon its premiere on the first full day of Cannes 2025 that some thought they’d already seen a possible Palme d’Or winner. In the end, her film shared the Jury Prize with another adored Competition title, Sirât, whose end-times death-trip might seem to overshadow the ordinary-sounding logline for Sound of Falling: four generations of girls on a farm in Germany. But this film swiftly establishes itself as an equally virtuosic secret history and sustained experiment in female subjectivity in kaleidoscopic form, drawing on scenes and notes from journals and voices from […]
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“There Was No Going Around Gaza”: Raoul Peck on Cannes 2025 Premiere Orwell: 2+2=5
Raoul Peck’s new documentary Orwell: 2+2=5 opens with a credit sequence featuring images of what appear to be microscopic larvae wriggling across the screen. The message seems clear: something nefarious is afoot on this globe, but still in its incipient stages. If we fail to act, it’s going to get much worse. In recent years, the filmmaker has made direct, no-nonsense use of the nonfiction form to address, from various angles, the rot of white supremacy, its historical roots and its unchecked future. Building on I Am Not Your Negro, Silver Dollar Road, the miniseries Exterminate All the Brutes and […]
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“There’s a Reason We Call Them ‘Films’ and Not ‘SD Cards'”: Francesco Sossai on His Cannes-Premiering The Last One for the Road
The film festival world can be so depressingly homogenous that to come across a title straying beyond its aesthetic and storytelling conventions is nothing short of exhilarating. The Last One for the Road is one such film. Conversant as it may be with a long and varied set of influences—from 1960s Italian comedies all the way to Aki Kaurismäki—Francesco Sossai’s second feature synthesizes its touchstones into something that feels bracingly alive. It heralds its writer-director as a new talent to watch, and confirms that the most exciting Italian cineastes working today are those shooting a long way away from the […]
