Though it is one of the neighborhood’s best-known features—and a city institution as well as a critical stop on the independent-film circuit—the Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) is less than 20 years old. Since its launch in spring 2002, when Nelson Mandela spoke at the opening ceremony at City Hall, the film festival has generated as much as $600 million a year for the Manhattan economy, been the site of world premieres for blockbusters and art films alike, and attracted a Who’s Who of luminaries from all spheres of the entertainment industry.
Cofounders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal open the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. Image: brianga/Wikimedia
Film producer Jane Rosenthal, actor Robert De Niro, and real-estate investor (and Rosenthal’s husband) Craig Mitchell Hatkoff announced the founding of the Tribeca Film Festival in November 2001, just two months after the 9/11 attacks, describing it as a way to help revitalize the damaged downtown area. Six months later, the inaugural festival was held, alongside the first Tribeca Family Festival, a street fair with a day of family-friendly—and morale-boosting—movie screenings. In addition to numerous shorts, documentaries, and indie films, studio movies “About a Boy” and “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” had their world premieres at the debut TFF. So did another studio film: “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones.” The screening benefited the Children’s Aid Society, and two private showings were held for children and their families affected by the 9/11 attacks.
While subsequent TFFs may not have been able to top having Mandela open the ceremonies, they certainly came close. Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke at the opening press conference for the 2003 festival, and that year’s opening ceremonies featured a parade down Greenwich Street with music by jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who is also the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Former vice president Al Gore hosted 2007’s opening-night gala, which had an environmental theme. A free outdoor showing of “The Union,” a documentary about the making of the titular album by Sir Elton John and Leon Russell, opened the 2011 festival, and the 7,000 attendees were treated to a free concert by John immediately afterward.
Duncan Jones, the director of “Moon,” and his father, David Bowie, at the 2009 festival. Image: David Shankbone/Flickr
The movies that held their world premieres at TFF have been a diverse lot. In 2007 alone, “The First Saturday in May,” a documentary about the Kentucky Derby, premiered along with “Why Didn’t Anybody Tell Me It Would Become This Bad in Afghanistan?,” an avant-garde Dutch film shot entirely on a cell phone, and hip-hop documentary “Planet B-Boy.” The world premiere of “Shrek Forever After” opened the 2010 festival. U.S. premieres at TFF included “Mission Impossible III” in 2006, “Spider-Man III” in 2007, and “Let the Right One In” in 2008. When “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” premiered at TFF in 2011, an extra screening of the documentary was held to benefit the Japanese Society’s Earthquake Relief Fund, as Japan had been devastated by an earthquake and tsunami just one month prior.
The most emotionally resonant of all TFF’s screenings, however, was undoubtedly the world premiere of “United 93,” which opened the 2006 festival. The film was about the flight hijacked by the 9/11 terrorists that, thanks to resistance efforts of the crew and passengers, did not strike the alleged target, the Capitol in Washington, DC; instead the plane crash-landed in a Pennsylvania field, killing those on board but nobody else. Relatives of the flight’s victims attended the premiere alongside the film’s director and cast, and they received a heartfelt standing ovation afterward.
Actresses Mira Sorvino, Amber Tamblyn, Cynthia Erivo, and Lupita Nyong’o with moderator Michaela Angela Davis at the “Reclaiming the Narrative” panel at TIFF 2018. Image: Rhododentrites/Wikimedia
TFF has long since outgrown Tribeca. Screenings, panel discussions, concerts, and other events for the 2018 festival were held at the Upper West Side’s Beacon Theatre, Gramercy’s School of Visual Arts, and theaters in Chelsea and Battery Park as well as in Tribeca. Television, online, and video game productions are now showcased alongside movies. Nonetheless, the Tribeca Film Festival remains a celebration of both the arts and of downtown’s resilient spirit.