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Tribeca Festival · 2009

Tribeca Festival 2009

Discovery Section

Fourteen innovative visions from emerging voices encompass the Discovery section, which includes both stimulating documentaries and moving narratives.

Programme

14 films · 4 reviews

Jump to a film

American Casino

Politicians and the media like to talk about the relationship between Wall Street and Main Street, but investigative journalist Leslie Cockburn’s debut feature gets to the guts of the matter, visiting defectors from Bear Stearns and Standard & Poor’s and other high-level players in the subprime mortgage gamble and, on the flipside, visiting the working-class Americans who were the unwitting chips on the table.

(Country: US; Year: 2009; Director: Leslie Cockburn)

World Premiere, Documentary

Burning Down The House: The Story Of CBGB

Charting the history of iconic New York club and its fight for survival.

(Country: US; Year: 2009; Director: Mandy Stein)

World Premiere, Documentary

Con Artist

Review preview for Con Artist

This excellent documentary is almost as subversive as its subject.

Amber Wilkinson · 4 out of 5
Profile of Eighties New York art scene enfant terrible, Mark Kostabi.

(Country: US; Year: 2009; Director: Michael Sladek; Stars: Wilfredo Arias, Molly Barnes, Jean Michel Basquiat, Andy Behrman, Pope Benedict XVI, Victor Bockris, Mike Cockrill, Jacob Collins, Adrian Dannatt, Fabio D'Aroma) , Official site

Full review See: Tribeca Film Festival: Diary/Movie/Film reviews - Con Artist, North, Mark Kostabi

World Premiere, Documentary

Entre nos

Adoring mother Mariana has toted her two children from Colombia to New York to indulge her husband's whim. But when he abruptly abandons the family, she'll have to rely on her own imagination and courage to survive insurmountable odds during their first summer in the United States.

(Country: US; Year: 2009; Director: Gloria La Morte, Paola Mendoza; Writer: Gloria La Morte, Paola Mendoza; Stars: Paola Mendoza, Sebastian Villada, Laura Montana, Anthony Chisholm, Andres Munar, Sarita Choudhury, Isabel Sung, Lou Martini Jr., Farah Bala, Jacqueline Duprey)

World Premiere, Narrative

Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench

First-time director Damien Chazelle infuses his black-and-white, vérité-style relationship drama with all that jazzy romance of an old-Hollywood musical. Backed by a grand, alternately rollicking and melancholy score, Guy and Madeline tracks a pair of young lovers in Boston after they separate, search for new romance, and perhaps find their way back to each other.

(Country: US; Year: 2009; Director: Damien Chazelle; Writer: Damien Chazelle; Stars: Desiree Garcia, Sandha Khin, Jason Palmer)

World Premiere, Narrative

A Matter Of Size

An overweight, underemployed chef and three close friends abandon their weight-loss group to pursue an activity for which girth is a virtue: sumo wrestling. While training, they discover the soul of sumo, realizing that - fat or thin - love and success will only come from being true to themselves.

(Country: Israel, France, Germany; Year: 2009; Director: Sharon Maymon, Erez Tadmor; Writer: Sharon Maymon, Sharon Maymon, Danny Cohen-Solal; Stars: Shaul Azar, Dvir Benedek, Vivian Brunstein, Itzik Cohen, Shmulik Cohen, Ilanit Dado, Alon Dahan, Levana Finkelstein, Evelin Hagoel, Ra'anan Hefetz)

World Premiere, Narrative

My Last Five Girlfriends

Review preview for My Last Five Girlfriends

Kemp makes a virtue of his ‘going for a ride’ framework, so that the viewer has a short-hand indication of where each of the five segments into which the film is split will take them.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
A suicidal man considers the five women he has loved and lost.

(Country: UK; Year: 2008; Director: Julian Kemp; Writer: Alain de Botton, Julian Kemp; Stars: Brendan Patricks, Naomie Harris, Kelly Adams, Cécile Cassel, Jane March, Edith Bukovics, Michael Sheen, Mark Benton, Chris Gascoyne, Johnny Ball)

Full review See: Tribeca Film Festival film/movie reviews and diary: Outrage, Garapa, Newsmakers , Tribeca Film Festival Movie Reviews/Diary 2009

World Premiere, Narrative

Off And Running

With white Jewish lesbians for parents and two adopted brothers - one mixed-race and one Korean - Brooklyn teen Avery grew up in a unique and loving household. Even so, she can't quell her curiosity about her biological African-American roots and decides to contact her birth mother.

(Country: US; Year: 2008; Director: Nicole Opper)

World Premiere, Documentary

Original

In this fresh and colorful lovable loser tale, Henry has spent most of his life trying to blend in. When his seemingly normal life turns upside down, his friend convinces him to move to Spain and open a restaurant. But before he can break free of the mundane, he gets sidelined caring for his mentally unstable mother, running into a lost-soul feminist who does performance art in a strip club, and a big bag of steroids.

(Country: Denmark, Sweden; Year: 2009; Director: Alexander Brøndsted, Antonio Tublen; Writer: Alexander Brøndsted, Antonio Tublen; Stars: Tuva Novotny, Jesper Christensen, David Dencik, Ghita Nørby, Michalis Koutsogiannakis, Thomas Bo Larsen, Dejan Cukic, Charlotte Fich, Eric Ericson, Helle Fagralid)

World Premiere, Narrative

Playground

This astonishing doc travels to the dark heart of one of the world’s most sinister industries - the child sex trade. Beginning her journey infiltrating brothels in South Korea and Thailand, director Libby Spears soon discovers that the United States is a major player in the human trafficking racket and turns her attention to the homeland.

(Country: US; Year: 2009; Director: Libby Spears; Writer: Libby Spears)

World Premiere, Documentary

P-Star Rising

In the early Eighties, Jesse Diaz was a rising star in the hip-hop world. Now a broke single father in Harlem with two children to support, Jesse finds a shot at redemption in his nine-year-old daughter Priscilla Star, a precocious and immensely talented rapper. Director Gabriel Noble follows four years of father-daughter ups and downs as they navigate the grit and the glamour of the music biz.

(Country: USA; Year: 2009; Director: Gabriel Noble)

World Premiere, Documentary

Swimsuit Issue

Review preview for Swimsuit Issue

The pool routines are a good excuse for a great deal of funny business but it struggles to flesh out the subsidiary characters.

Amber Wilkinson · 3 out of 5
A group of middle-aged sportsman decide to form an all-male synchronised swimming team.

(Country: Sweden; Year: 2009; Director: Måns Herngren; Writer: Jane Magnusson, Måns Herngren; Stars: Jonas Inde, Amanda Davin, Paula McManus, Benny Haag Kalle Westerdahl, Jimmy Lindström)

Full review See: Tribeca Film Festival Movie Reviews/Diary 2009

International Premiere, Narrative

TiMER

Review preview for TiMER

Jac Shaeffer plays around with the ideas of time and relationships like a malevolent matchmaker, finding plenty of laugh-out loud laughs in the process.

Amber Wilkinson · 3.5 out of 5
What would you do if you had a device that told you when you would meet your romantic destiny?

(Country: USA; Year: 2009; Director: Jac Schaeffer; Writer: Jac Schaeffer; Stars: Emma Caulfield, Michelle Borth, John Patrick Amedori, Desmond Harrington, JoBeth Williams, Kali Rocha) , Official site

Full review See: Tribeca Film Festival Diary and Film/Movie reviews: Departures, The Eclipse, Timer, Fish Child

World Premiere, Narrative

Which Way Home

In this unprecedented, revelatory doc, director Rebecca Cammisa (Sister Helen) follows three unaccompanied children on a harrowing odyssey away from their homes in Latin America and through Mexico with one mighty shepherding hope: to reach the United States, where they can either reunite with their own families who made the journey before them, or create new lives for themselves.

(Country: USA; Year: 2009; Director: Rebecca Cammisa)

World Premiere, Documentary