Tribeca 2026: 25 Years of Great Cinema in Lower Manhattan

By Christine Connallon

This year, the Tribeca Film Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary, proving once again why it’s such an essential fixture of the summer calendar. What started as an effort to bring people back to Lower Manhattan after 9/11 has grown into one of the most exciting celebrations of independent film anywhere. From Spring Studios down to the Village East, the venues were packed, the energy was high, and the programming offered a fantastic mix of big-star premieres, quiet character studies, and urgent documentaries.

Here are the films that stood out from this year’s lineup:

• The Best Summer: A sweet, sun-drenched coming-of-age story that captures how quickly youth slips through your fingers.

• Harvest: Athina Rachel Tsangari’s atmospheric drama offers a moody, gorgeous look at a rural community facing sudden change.

• Lucy Schulman: An intimate profile of resilience that finds real power in life’s quietest moments.

• Jail Time Records: A vibrant documentary following incarcerated musicians who use song to stay connected to their humanity.

• Unidentified: A smart, paranoid thriller that keeps you guessing about what’s lurking just out of frame.

• The Currents: Set against rugged coastal landscapes, this quiet drama digs into the complicated shifts within a family.

• Kids Like Me: An endearing documentary following Oliver—a murder-mystery-obsessed 12-year-old living with Pfeiffer syndrome—who rallies his family and neighbors to help him direct his own ambitious caper film.

• The Haunting of Pennhurst: A thought-provoking documentary following a group of disabled performers who reclaim the notorious, former institutional site of Pennhurst by transforming its commercial haunted house into a space that confronts the location's tragic real-world history.

• Deepfake: Directed by Matt Eames, this sharp, satirical indie comedy follows a rudderless millennial who hires a team of Gen-Z consultants and "friends-for-hire" to reinvent her image, spiraling into a chaotic look at app culture and social media obsession. 

• Mario: Directed by Peter, George, and Teddy Kunhardt, this compelling documentary chronicles the life, political legacy, and moral compass of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, drawing on intimate family interviews and rich personal archives. 

• Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass: Directed by David Wain and co-written with Ken Marino, this raucous, absurdly funny comedy stars Zoey Deutch as a small-town Kansas hairdresser who embarks on a wild Hollywood quest to cash in her own "celebrity pass" with Jon Hamm after her fiancé sleeps with his. 

• Stand Up: A candid, behind-the-scenes look at comic life that captures just how terrifying—and rewarding—open mic nights can be.

• Roar: A high-octane thriller packed with intense performances that grab your attention right from the opening shot.

• Summer of Three: A beautiful  story about friendship and romance over a single, life-changing summer.

• Memorizu: A surreal, dreamlike film that weaves memory and loss into something truly original.

• What is to Come: Directed by Kristin Fairweather, this poignant drama follows a resolute young woman who returns to her rural hometown to care for her aging father, confronting long-buried family secrets and deciding what kind of future she wants to build. 

• Travis Barker: Louder Than Fear: A fast-paced, high-energy bio-doc tracing the drummer’s journey through music, survival, and recovery.

• Mother Future Self: A tender, reflective drama about three generations of women in one family who navigate unspoken grief, secrets, and shifting dynamics as they gather to prepare their ancestral home for sale. 

• The Siege of Paradise: A tense, gripping look at an environmental standoff where local history clashes with corporate greed.

• Caity: Directed by Lindsay Calleran, this tender and funny coming-of-age indie stars Chiara Aurelia as a 16-year-old balancing a new crush, the chaos of running her family's seasonal haunted house, and the heavy toll of her father's (Morgan Spector) ongoing struggles with sobriety. 

• The Long Haul: A moving tribute to long-distance truck drivers, celebrating the quiet camaraderie of life on the highway.

• In the Hand of Dante: Julian Schnabel’s sprawling, star-studded drama features Oscar Isaac in a dual role as a 14th-century poet and a modern manuscript expert navigating a dangerous criminal underworld in pursuit of a lost Divine Comedy text. 

  
  

Twenty-five years in, Tribeca still knows how to put on a show. Through both in person and online screenings, the festival successfully made us feel, think and engage—the exact kind of festival experience that keeps us coming back year after year. Here's to the next quarter-century!

Mike Perciaccante contributed to this review.