\u201cArt is the antidote,\u201d an acting coach named Melanie (Ari Graynor) proclaims in Sophia Takal\u2019s \u201cAct One,\u201d a standout at this year\u2019s Tribeca Festival. A wickedly charged thriller, the film follows a teenager who\u2019s inducted into a local theater company. Enthralled by the troupe\u2019s adult promise, she falls under the sway of Melanie, a tantalizing and terrifying mentor who steeps the plays in self-mythology. They are \u201cchange agents,\u201d Melanie crows, with a duty to \u201cshow people the path to living their truth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Takal wants Melanie to sound ridiculous, a spout of highfalutin creative babble. But the character\u2019s rhetoric reminded me a little of the Tribeca Festival itself. For years now, the event has lived in buzzword land. Premieres occur alongside summits, performances and showcases led by \u201cstorytellers\u201d and \u201ccreators.\u201d Some attendees may skip movies for live podcast recordings or video game demos. The festival has long been known for its kitchen-sink m\u00e9lange of high and low, mixed with lots and lots of mushy middle.<\/p>\n
This edition<\/a>, which runs June 3-14, marks Tribeca\u2019s 25th anniversary, a milestone, and an occasion to celebrate the wins. Chief among them is the festival\u2019s track record of elevating first-time filmmakers, some of whom \u2014 like Nia DaCosta and Damien Chazelle \u2014 have gone on to become major Hollywood figures. Founded in the wake of 9\/11 with an aim to revitalize Lower Manhattan, Tribeca was never going to be a Cannes or even a Sundance. But now, securely in early adulthood, Tribeca has become its own known quantity: maximalist and scattershot, but worth moviegoers\u2019 attention.<\/p>\n This year, several highlights center on artists living their truth, to borrow Melanie\u2019s line. That\u2019s certainly the case with \u201cFunk<\/a>,\u201d directed by Aly Muritiba, about a Brazilian music artist dead set on making it big. Freestyling rap lyrics in venues across the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Sabrina (the magnetic Duda Santos) goes head-to-head with chauvinist industry hotshots while boasting a no-holds-barred raunchiness onstage and off. Crackling with energy, the film plays like a Brazilian funk version of \u201cA Star is Born,\u201d if that star spent as much time twerking as vocalizing.<\/p>\n In \u201cAct One<\/a>,\u201d set in the 1990s, Hannah (the captivating Ella Beatty, the daughter of Annette Bening and Warren Beatty) is a friendless 17-year-old thespian who enrolls in Melanie\u2019s acting studio. She becomes teacher\u2019s pet, then watches her boundaries erode as she sacrifices more and more for the cultlike troupe. An erotic freakout, the film hangs on Takal\u2019s knack for baring the dark side of female bonds, or maybe the scarlet side, given that she often ends scenes by fading to red \u2014 a flourish that nods to Ingmar Bergman\u2019s 1972 drama \u201cCries and Whispers\u201d while cuing the carnage to come.<\/p>\n An equally insular artistic program takes center stage in \u201cMother Future Self<\/a>,\u201d the directorial debut of Tori Lancaster, who was the art director on indies like \u201cThe Sound of Silence\u201d and \u201cThe Miseducation of Cameron Post.\u201d A simmering exercise in tension and release, the film takes place at an experimental dance residency in rural Maine, where ex-besties Sofi and Jordan (Imani Jade Powers and Betsey Brown, both entrancing) cross paths and rub salt in old wounds. The film draws from the somatic practice of the dance artist K.J. Holmes<\/a>, who, playing the women\u2019s instructor, inspires them to channel their buried feelings through their bodies, not always in the gentlest ways.<\/p>\n Female friendship and its complexities are also examined in Alisa Kolosova\u2019s \u201cI Spy With My Little Eye<\/a>,\u201d a lovely German drama. It tracks Yalda (Soma Pysall) and Lou (Svenja Jung) after their childhood friend, Solveigh (Saskia Rosendahl), dies by suicide, leaving behind a daughter. As the women sort out post-loss logistics and argue over child custody, long-festering resentments become a blame game. The actresses sensitively portray the three women across life stages, their ages signaled by changing clothing and hairstyles. What emerges is a view of friendship in long exposure, as they grow, and grow apart.<\/p>\n The restless \u201cHere I\u2019m Alive<\/a>,\u201d from Joshua Z Weinstein (\u201cMenashe\u201d), unspools over a more condensed period: a single evening in New York City. Bouncing from an agoraphobic gamer\u2019s online forum to a sugar baby date to a crowded women\u2019s shelter, this ensemble film is part of a tradition of hyperlink cinema. As in \u201cCrash\u201d or \u201cBabel,\u201d the paths of Weinstein\u2019s band of strivers (mostly played by first-time actors) cross only fleetingly before whirling off in different directions. Linking the characters is a preoccupation with social media: a yearning for connection while engaging with the world primarily through screens.<\/p>\n An earlier form of media is collaged into a moving ancestral story in \u201cMexicanamerican<\/a>,\u201d from Eddie S\u00e1nchez. For his feature debut, the filmmaker sifted through hours of home video recorded by his parents, Lalo and Beby, to assemble the tale of their meeting in Mexico and move to Oregon, where they raised their children. The footage originally served as a kind of visual missive, captured by Lalo and Beby to mail to relatives in Mexico. Pairing the video with candid interviews about his parents\u2019 passage to the United States and efforts to assimilate to a new culture, S\u00e1nchez crafts a portrait of diasporic identity that pulls from the past while tilting hopefully toward the future.<\/p>\n