Tribeca2022: Modern Love and Honor at Tribeca Film Festival

NEW YORK – After the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival AWARD WINNERS [25] were named June 16th, the festival heads into its last weekend, which is the last opportunity to take advantage of
TRIBECAatHOME [26] for viewing the fest selections.

The 2022 Tribeca Festival, presented by Crypto Platform OKX, brings artists and diverse audiences together to celebrate storytelling in all its forms, including film, TV, VR, gaming, music, and online work. With strong roots in independent film, Tribeca is a platform for creative expression and immersive entertainment.

The Year Between
Photo credit: TribecaFilm.com

The Tribeca Film Festival was founded in 2002 by Jane Rosenthal, Craig Hatkoff and actor Robert De Niro as a reactive strike back at the September 11th attack in 2001 on New York City and the nearby Tribeca neighborhood.The 2022 edition will show 110 feature films from 150 filmmakers across 40 countries, and will have screenings and awards for U.S. Narrative Films, World Narrative Films, Short Film Competition, Best Documentary, the Spotlight Competition and Best New Narrative and Documentary Filmmakers, among it’s presentations.

FILMS OF TRIBECA: Capsule Reviews

“The Year Between” – Another unique cinematic vision from the Chicago-based production house Full Spectrum Features. Alex Heller wrote and directed her feature film debut, and portrays Clemence, a college drop out who is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Although such mental conditions are hard to capture in storytelling, Heller as Clemence is a marvel, coming home to torture her parents (Steve Buscemi and J Smith-Cameron) and siblings (Emily Robinson and Wyatt Oleff) as she works through the affliction. What is most remarkable about the film is the inherent humanity, and the moments of absurdity when working through an issue of the mind, along with the difficult sorrows, pharmaceuticals and doctors. Each of the supporting characters contribute to Clemence’s ordeal as she bounces off them, but the resilience of family emerges without being overly sentimental or inauthentic … Buscemi is particularly good at achieving this balance. This is a vivid debut from Alex Heller on both sides of the camera.

“My Love Affair with Marriage” – One of the telling characteristics in the digital age of animation, which keeps yielding artistic gold on all levels, is its use as a canvas in farcical introspection. “My Love Affair with Marriage” is a particularly great example as filmmaker Signe Baumane tells the story of Zelma, a somewhat ordinary woman who is steered through her love life by the mysterious inner biology that often fakes her out (explained like a science film by a talking nerve cell) and a inner chorus trio who express the energies of her decisions through fun songs. The film is a nice reminder that we are influenced by ions of evolution, and how we often confuse our natural biology for deeper emotions. The film isn’t cynical about love, just more realistic about that old black magic. The animation is also fun, especially as the characters commingle and how that singing chorus is represented through the years. The maturing of the animated form – something that began long ago as a market for kid’s entertainment – has been one of the more salient art celebrations of the past generation.

“After Sherman” – Since George Floyd, there have been several introspective works of cinema from Black Americans, searching for reconciliation through the storm. “After Sherman” refers to the post Civil-War agreement that William Tecumseh Sherman designed for emancipated slaves in coastal South Carolina … the famous “forty acres and a mule” rights for those freed people. Jon-Sesrie Goff, the son of prominent preacher activist Dr. Norvel Goff, explores the ancestry of this region and its slow dissolution through events like the Great Migration in the early 20th Century, through to the beachfront land grabs for valuable property. The hybrid African “Gullah” peoples are part of the mix, as well as some of the black families that held onto the land. This is mostly a visual prose poem, anchored by the history and challenges – the mass shootings in the Charleston black church in 2015 has a place in the story – as Goff meditates on culture, roots and the continued pushback of race relations in America.

“Three Headed Beast” – Modern love gets another comeuppance as Gen Z is discovering through this one-of-a-kind work of pure cinema by writer/directors Fernando Andrés and Tyler Rugh. It concerns a couple of eight years, podcast loving Nina (Dani Hurtado) and landscaper Paul (Jacob Schatz), who have been living together since college through an open arrangement … they can explore hook-ups outside of their domesticity. Nina was the prime motivator of the arrangement, and was its only practitioner for the first four years, until she encouraged Peter to explore his bi-sexuality with Alex (Cody Shook). Complications arise when Peter and Alex seem to be going deeper than Nina anticipated, while at the same time she wants more stability at home. There is little to no dialogue in the film – save for the lovelorn podcast that Nina listens to – but more of a story told through imagery, including a exposition of three-way split screens between the polyamorous trio. The film communicates that this arrangement needs an adjustment of emotional carriage that mere humans often cannot do, and builds toward a future that may be different for that three headed being.

Trailer for “Three Headed Beast” …

For more capsule Tribeca Film Fest reviews, click here [27] and here [28].

[30]	By PATRICK McDONALD [31] Editor, Film Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com [30]