The Hollywood Reporter
Tribeca Film Fest unveils lineup
By Gregg Goldstein - March 13, 2007
NEW YORK — The Tribeca Film Festival on Monday unveiled its World Narrative and World Documentary Feature Film Competition lineups and Spotlight section slate.
Filmmakers including Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Apted, John Dahl, Ed Burns and Shane Meadows and stars such as America Ferrera, Ray Romano, Tea Leoni and Debra Messing will be featured.
The announced films from the sixth annual fest come from 25 countries and include 10 world premieres. “The festival, while young, continues to attract films expressing compelling views from filmmakers from around the globe and around the corner,” said fest co-founder Jane Rosenthal.
One of the highest-profile entries among the 18 World Narrative competition films is “Entourage” star Kevin Connolly’s black comedy “Gardener of Eden” starring Giovanni Ribisi and Erika Christensen from producer DiCaprio. Other highlights include Pascale Ferran’s French-language D.H. Lawrence adaptation “Lady Chatterly” (billed as “sensual yet never vulgar”), Paolo Virzi’s biopic “Napoleon and Me” (Lo e Napoleone) starring Daniel Auteuil as the famed emperor and Jose Antonio Negret’s Colombian kidnapping thriller “Towards Darkness” (Hacia la Oscuridad)” starring Ferrera.
The 16 World Documentary films in competition include John Reiss’ graffitti docu “Bomb It” and the Afghani murder mystery “Taxi to the Dark Side” from director Alex Gibney (”Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”). Esther Robinson examines her uncle, Andy Warhol’s onetime lover, in “A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory,” and Paul Taylor looks at a South African AIDS orphanage in “We Are Together (Thina Simunye),” featuriung a performance by Alicia Keys and Paul Simon.
Among the 17 Spotlight films: Writer/director/star Julie Delpy’s romantic comedy “2 Days in Paris” (Deux Jours a Paris), Burns’ romance “Purple Violets” starring Messing and Patrick Wilson, and Zak Penn’s casino mockumentary “The Grand” starring Romano and Woody Harrelson.
Other high-profile Spotlight films are Jim Brown’s folk music docu “Pete Seeger: The Power of Song” featuring Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, Meadows’ ’80s punk coming-of-age take “This is England,” Apted’s soccer docu “The Power of The Game” and Dahl’s hitman comedy-drama “You Kill Me” starring Leoni and Ben Kingsley.
The fest is set to run April 25-May 6 in its namesake lower Manhattan neighborhood. The rest of its 159-feature lineup will be unveiled over the next few weeks.
