The Choices Are Vast at Tribeca 2026

Amid New York City’s crowded festival landscape, Tribeca marches to the beat of its own drum. The festival, started by Robert De Niro in 2002 in the aftermath of 9/11, is now celebrating its 25th Anniversary. This year’s edition, running June 3 to 14, continues Tribeca’s streak of mixing unexpectedly big premieres with a robust slate of smaller-scale, independent films.

In some ways, the festival feels spiritually related to Sundance and SXSW, the two other American independent festivals that take place outside the overcrowded fall film festival season. But it feels easier to get lost within Tribeca’s massive lineup of 118 features and 86 shorts. There are films you didn’t even know existed yet suddenly can’t wait to see. And there’s always a sense of discovery.

While I was hoping to catch more in the first half of the festival (curse you, mysterious early summer cold!), I still managed to catch some impressive features worth a recommendation.

Arguably the most “mainstream” movie I caught, Sara Bareilles: Good Grief is a behind-the-scenes documentary that captures the singer/songwriter’s creative process recording her upcoming album, Good Grief. It’s been nearly 20 years since Bareilles’ major-label debut and first hit, “Love Song.” Director Josh Alexander is given carte blanche to capture the process, leading to deeply emotional interviews and outtakes, even from the first few scenes. The film doesn’t break the music doc subgenre’s conventions by any means, but there are far worse ways to spend 91 minutes.

Another successful documentary, Gar O’Rourke’s The Siege of Paradise explores a problem that not everyone might know about, but few will find surprising: overtourism in Cinque Terre, Italy. The five small seaside fishing villages have become an overnight social media sensation, causing a massive influx of tourism for which the region and residents were not ready. The 82-minute film does a great job balancing the different perspectives on the issue, combining testimonials and interviews with footage of influencers “doing their job,” convincing their followers of the wonders of Cinque Terre. It’s an upsetting film, but one distinctly attuned to the online-powered world we live in.

As a recent Columbia graduate, I related a little too much to the themes explored in Carlos Key’s and Kalijah Rowe’s Kingston, which was shot on Columbia’s campus and is set at a fictional school, Kingston College, that freely borrows from Columbia’s academic and social culture. Weaving three storylines about a freshman starting school, a potential couple tested by modern dating standards, and a professor who takes nepo baby on as an advisee, Key and Rowe explore a dizzying number of themes, ranging from modern dating and legacy admissions to how little elite university administrations care about their students. Though the film takes a bit of time to find its footing, everything comes together cleanly and effectively in its second half, asserting itself as a striking and unforgettable look at modern academic culture.

Though it requires some patience on the part of the audience, Joshua Z Weinstein’s Here I’m Alive is a captivating and hypnotic mosaic of New Yorkers living in a world where the internet isolates and reduces our social battery. The feature uses neo-realist techniques to follow several fictional subjects, including an agoraphobic Discord user trying to stop an online friend from committing suicide and a delivery driver trying to make enough money to see his family. Though the film feels somewhat disparate in its first act, the characters and their struggles come together in a memorable way by the time the film concludes. The feature’s themes have been explored before, but Weinstein’s smart framing and stylistic decisions make it unforgettable all the same.

Nowhere is the Before Sunrise trilogy’s influence felt more than at a film festival. For Tribeca 2026, the “two people meet, talk all night, and fall for one another” film is Shan Jiang’s  Ephemera, a queer love story set in post-pandemic Shanghai. It’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-a-key-moment type of story, as Jiang’s script moves at a rapid-fire pace over the film’s 83 minutes. Despite great performances from the film’s leads and some strong moments of tenderness between the two characters, Yvonne Shuyu Zhang and Shu-Yi, the film sometimes feels overdirected and a bit meandering, with impressive (yet distracting) aesthetic decisions throughout.

Consistently deadpan comedies are rare these days, so it’s exciting that Doron Max Hagay’s She Keeps Me Young commits to the bit for the entirety of its 90 minutes. Adapted from Hagay’s short film of the same name, the film follows a middle-aged woman (Blair Beeken), who befriends a high schooler (Shay Rudolph), much to the dismay of her closest friend (Patti Harrison). You have to really buy into the film’s energy to enjoy it, but seeing it in a packed theater certainly helps; it’s hard not to laugh at the awkwardness eventually. Though the film could benefit from more character development, sometimes sacrificing deeper ruminations for quick jokes, the main trio’s performances and the script are compelling enough to keep you entertained.