North South Man Woman is a documentary focused on a North Korean woman, Yujin, who has made her way to safety in South Korea and who now runs a matchmaking bureau for South Korean men who wish to marry North Korean women. The cameras follow Yujin’s personal life and that …
The director of this documentary about the continuing phenomenon of Rocky Horror is directed by the son of the man who created the phenomenon. Normally this would lead to calls of nepotism, but somehow here the closeness to the material is appropriate. The stories within Strange Journey have clearly been …
This movie is horrifying and shaming and unspeakable but it deserves our attention, because all the horrifying, shaming, unspeakable things within it are happening to human beings. This is often forgotten in prison discourse, that every prisoner is a person too. Regardless of the worst things we have ever done, …
I love it when a film challenges a belief that I feel settled on. The issue of the right to die is one that I have felt pretty secure about for decades. But in his new documentary, Life After, director Reid Davenport has forced me to add some pretty significant …
This documentary, about the director’s mother’s alcoholism and its impact, makes vividly apparent the problem with most documentaries. If it has been anyone other than her daughter Myrid Carten making the film, it’s clear Nuala Carten would not have participated. But director Myrid Carten made the choice to be a …
The fundraising headline of The Gas Station Attendant was clearly that director Karla Murthy’s father, H. N. Shantha Murthy, worked in a gas station while Ms. Murthy was in college. But his life was considerably more complex than the stereotype mainstreamed into American society by The Simpsons. What clearly started …
Nearly a decade ago, American alternative artist and provocateur Joe Coleman painted a door-sized, hyper-detailed self-portrait titled “Doorway to Joe,” which reflects his personal lore, uninhibited fantasies and fetishes, and penchant for the divine and the profane. Later, he figured that the project called for a seven-foot companion portrait of …
Whenever we listen to a hit song on a streaming service, vinyl, or radio, we do not often think about its backstory. Behind a catchy tune are hours of recording, writing, and performing in the booth to deliver a final song that follows us long after its production. Besides the …
In the first minutes of Copan, by Brazilian director Carine Wallauer, we watch her observe her prior empty apartment. Letters on the screen explain where she is. The Copan building in downtown São Paulo is a monument of Brazilian modern architecture. Designed by the legendary Oscar Niemeyer, it is a …
In Deaf President Now!, Nyle DiMarco and Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim join forces to tell a milestone in the education of the deaf community. In 1988, at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C, the first and only deaf people’s university in the world, students gathered to protest. The board of …
Nearly six minutes into We Are Pat, a hybrid documentary from Tribeca alum Rowan Haber, our gaze fixates on a graphic in pink and blue gradient featuring a photograph of the director’s toddler self—naked, sporting a cute red eyewear, and waving their hand—juxtaposed with a larger photograph of Pat, the …
In Yanuni, the Tribeca closer from Austrian director Richard Ladkani, ecocide and genocide are one and the same. From the vantage point of the occupied, the Ecocidal project is decidedly one of ethnic cleansing—it is only through the forceful killing and erasure of Indigenous peoples defending their homeland that the …
Veteran documentary filmmakers Sam Pollard (MLK/FBI and Citizen Ashe) and Daniel Junge (Challenger: The Final Flight and A Lego Documentary) come together to direct I Was Born This Way. Borrowing the title name from the 1975 song by Valentino, globally famous through the voice of Carl Bean in 1977. The …
At times it’s best to encounter a movie as a blank slate, even for film critics like me who have never been put off by any ounce of spoilers. If anything, there’s a different kind of pleasure that arises from experiencing something for the first time, and it’s often ambrosial …
The Peruvian director Augusto Zegarra presents his debut feature, Runa Simi, at the 2025 Tribeca Film Festival. The film narrates the story of Fernando Valencia, an indigenous man from Cusco, Peru. He has been passionate about voice work since he was a young child, inspired by Walt Disney animations that …
In his debut feature, Backside, Mexican director Raúl O. Paz-Pastrana tells the untold stories behind one of the most crucial sports events in the United States, the Kentucky Derby. Every May, more than a hundred thousand people attend the traditional horse racing event at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. Besides …
Romane Bohringer is a French actor who, for her second film as director, has chosen to make an extremely personal story about her search for more information about her mother, Maggy, who left the family before she was a year old and died when Ms. Bohringer was in her early …
In her sophomore effort, Suzannah Herbert premieres her film Natchez at the Tribeca Film Festival. The documentary title borrows its name from the city in Mississippi. In the 1800s, it was the city with the most millionaires in the world; cotton plantations and the slave trade were the main commercial …
Ukrainian directors Alina Gorlova, Yelizaveta Smith, and Simon Mozgovyi present their take on the war with Militantropos. The word, which appears after the title cards, comes from the Latin word Milit (soldier) and the Greek Antropos (human). The film uses the combination of those words to formulate its thesis on …
Independent Dutch director Suzanne Raes’ documentary, Where Dragons Live, revolves around Harriet and her siblings, who, following their mother’s death, begin preparing their stately childhood home, Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire, for sale. Sorting through the house that has become cluttered with forgotten and once-important belongings, stir memories of their childhood. …