Client: Jacob Roberts – Talent, Producer
The late-spring festival season rolls on with the 2024 edition of Tribeca Festival, bringing fresh films, new TV, cutting-edge tech and gaming, and starry talks to New York City. Now in its 23rd year, the festival founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff is a platform for emerging voices and promising works on the hunt for distribution, along with world and North American premieres of titles with more established bona fides that nonetheless share a special connection to New York.
Running June 5-16, Tribeca kicks off with the world premiere of Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Trish Dalton’s fashion documentary “Diane von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge,” about the life and career of the Belgian-born sartorial icon and mogul. The opening night film sets the tone for a festival teeming with nonfiction titles, from other celebrity portraits like “LIZA: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story” and “Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes,” two showcases of screen legends confronting fame in the 1970s. But Tribeca’s documentary spotlight extends globally, with documentaries hailing from Kenya and Vietnam to the Indigenous corners of the American Northwest. Overall, this year’s Tribeca boasts films from 48 countries.
The festival’s slate of more than 100 films includes plenty of indie fiction premieres, too, with new movies featuring the likes of Kristen Stewart, Michael Cera, Christopher Abbott, Carrie Coon, Lily Gladstone, and many more indie and studio favorites. Tribeca also premieres a quintet of shorts generated by text-to-video AI model Sora, including a film from “Nanny” director Nikyatu Jusu.
Meanwhile, this year’s jurors across the sections include Jusu, David O. Russell, Selma Blair, Asghar Farhadi, Kim Cattrall, Griffin Dunne, Chinonye Chukwu, Noah Hawley, Nisha Pahuja, Sheila Nevins, Francesca Scorsese, Clara McGregor, W. Kamau Bell, Effie T. Brown, and more.
Below, IndieWire picks 30 films you ought to see at this year’s Tribeca.
‘Rent Free’ (US Narrative Competition)
Following the Tribeca success of his 2022 debut ‘Three Headed Beast,’ Fernando Andres is back at the festival with another project about young people navigating unconventional living situations. ‘Rent Free’ stars Jacob Roberts and David Treviño as two young Texans whose dreams of moving to New York to pursue fortune and glory are squashed by their inability to find a place to crash. Stranded in Austin, they embark on a challenge to spend an entire year couch-surfing between their friends’ apartments without paying any rent. The lighthearted comedy could emerge as the latest indie hangout movie hit if it receives a strong reception at the festival. —CZ