Tribeca Film Slate Boosts Indies

With an eye toward stronger independent and foreign-language titles, the Tribeca Film Festival on Thursday announced the remaining 45 films slated for its 11th edition next month.

Among the higher-profile features in the traditionally glossy Spotlight section are movies starring Chris Rock and Julie Delpy (“Two Days in New York”), Juliette Binoche (“Elles”), “Glee” star Chris Colfer (“Struck by Lightning”) and Oscar nominee Michelle Williams (who co-stars with Seth Rogen in the Sarah Polley-directed “Take This Waltz”).

The festival, which will run from April 18-29, also offers a dozen documentaries in Spotlight, including the world premiere of a new film by Morgan Spurlock (“Mansome,” about male body image), and the New York premiere of “Searching for Sugar Man,” an audience favorite at the recent Sundance Film Festival about a vanished Detroit folk singer who became a cult hero in South Africa.

Festival tickets will be $16 for evening and weekend screenings, and $8 for daytime weekday and late-night screenings. They’ll go on sale next Monday for the general public. Last week, the festival announced that the world premiere of Nicholas Stoller’s comedy “The Five-Year Engagement” will open the event.

Much of the full lineup complements the exploratory spirit of the previously announced World Narrative and World Documentary competition sections.

Established names such as directors Michael Winterbottom (back at the festival with “Trishna”) and Terry George (“Whole Lotta Sole”) draw notice. But so does work from lower-profile independent directors like Ira Sachs, whose autobiographical “Keep the Lights On” tracks 10 years in the relationship of a gay couple in New York, as well as Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang, whose “Headshot” is a fantastical noir in which the hero sees the world upside-down after taking a bullet through the skull.

“There’s a lot of filmmakers we’ve seen over the years who we’ve been following and this year we were excited to see that their films were ready, that we had a great response to them and they accepted our invitation,” said Genna Terranova, the festival’s director of programming. “This year we feel really proud that we’re able to support so many New York filmmakers, so many first-time filmmakers who are in this community. This year we have more films that we’re really excited about.”

The spectrum covers everything from the romantic whimsy of Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s “Chicken with Plums,” starring Mathieu Almaric as a broken-hearted violin player in 1950s Tehran, to Raymond De Felitta’s documentary “Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story,” about civil rights, the American 1960s and a profound encounter in the life of his filmmaker father.

“The range of what we do in this section is sometimes hard to typify. It really does have a mainstream quality, and yet it deals with music, pop culture, with other kinds phenomena,” said Geoff Gilmore, chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises. “But we’re also very comfortable showcasing work that’s a little more challenging.”

Once again, the festival will produce the genre-oriented Cinemania section, which boasts thrillers and horror films from the Philippines, Norway, Finland and France. Among the more outrageous titles is “Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal,” a Danish-Canadian production starring Danish heartthrob Thure Lindhardt, who shows a different side of himself from the one he exposes as the lead in Sachs’s bittersweet “Keep the Lights On.”

The ESPN Sports Film Festival sidebar will feature five documentaries, including the gala selection “Benji,” about 17-year-old Chicago basketball phenom Ben Wilson who was murdered in 1984, and — on the lighter side — a movie called “Knuckleball!”

Wall Street Journal

Tribeca adds over forty pics to lineup
World preem features — including the narrative pic written by and starring Chris Colfer of “Glee” and a new doc from Morgan Spurlock — are among the more than forty movies joining the Tribeca Film Festival’s 2012 lineup.

Chris Colfer

The Spotlight series encompasses some of the fest’s higher profile films and stars, aiming for a broader aud appeal than some of the more esoteric competition sections. “It’s a little more mainstream and it’s got more of a pop culture tilt,” says Genna Terranova, Tribeca’s director of programming. “It adds an entry point to the festival for a lot of general theatergoers.”

Lineup includes both docs such as Spurlock’s “Mansome,” a look at contempo male grooming, as well as Brian Dannelly’s “Struck By Lightning,” the Colfer-penned outing centering on an ambitious teen narrating his own funeral.

Also among the narrative films bowing in the series are “Cheerful Weather for the Wedding,” Donald Rice’s period comedy about an unpredictable wedding; Daryl Wein’s “Lola Versus,” which centers on a woman (Greta Gerwig) who’s dumped by her fiance; Terry George’s Irish crime comedy “Whole Lotta Sole”; Travis Fine’s “Any Day Now,” about a 1970s gay couple (Alan Cumming and Garrett Dillahunt) who take in a mentally challenged teen; and Stefan Ruzowitzky’s “Deadfall,” a thriller starring Eric Bana, Olivia Wilde and Sissy Spacek.

North American and Gotham preems on the list include Julie Delpy’s “2 Days in New York,” Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud’s “Chicken with Plums,” Maiwenn’s “Poliss,” Sarah Polley’s “Take This Waltz,” Michael Winterbottom’s “Trishna” and Lynn Shelton’s “Your Sister’s Sister.”

World premiere docs with slots in the Spotlight series include “Knuckleball!,” a sports doc about the titular style of pitching from Rickie Stern and Annie Sundberg (“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”); “Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story,” in which filmmaker Raymond De Felitta (“City Island”) circles back to the subject of a doc made by his father; Ramona Diaz’s “Don’t Stop Believin’: Everyman’s Journey,” about the new lead singer of the band Journey; and “Evocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie,” chronicling the rise and fall of the reality-TV emcee.

Cinemania series, meanwhile, ranges from Boris Rodriguez’s horror comedy “Eddie — The Sleepwalking Cannibal” to Jeremy Regimbal’s home invasion tale “Replicas” to Finnish outing “Rat King,” Petri Kotwica’s thriller about a young man absorbed in computer gaming.

Also slotted in to the Tribeca sked are the sports docs that will make up the annual Tribeca/ESPN Sports Film Festival, including gala pic “Benji,” Coodie and Chike’s world preem about the tragically short career of a 1980s basketball prodigy, as well as “Knuckleball!” and a trio of other films. Slated for special screenings are Tracie Holder and Karen Thorsen’s doc “Joe Papp in Five Acts,” about the legendary Off Broadway impresario, as well as a pair of music-world portraits, “The Zen of Bennett” and “Queen: Days of Our Lives.”

The 2012 Tribeca fest runs April 18-29, opening with Universal’s upcoming release “The Five Year Engagement.”
Variety.com

Chris Colfer Is Struck by LightningThe Glee star, who’s just 21 years old, wrote the script for and stars in this dark comedy (release date TBD) about teenager Carson Phillips, whose titular encounter with electricity is anything but positive. ”My character dies on page 1,” explains Colfer, seen here with Allison Janney, who plays his mother. ”He gets struck by a bolt of lightning and is killed. Then we journey to my funeral, and then everything else is a flashback to his last year in high school.” As for whether Carson bears a resemblance to Colfer’s TV persona, Kurt? ”Well, they look alike,” jokes Colfer. — Tim Stack

Entertainment Weekly