By now the Tribeca festival is firmly established as a recognized international film fest with extensive programming platforms meshing with virtually all interests of film goers and beyond.  Held from April 15-26 the festival offered a diversified innovative program. Though the Tribeca fest has no firm profile its eclectic approach beyond the standard fare of other fests is unique. It has retained and expanded its community base but the festival is also constantly embracing innovative thematic areas transcending the scope covered by other major film festivals. From its 5 day inception in 2002 with 140 film screenings, 43,000 tickets sold and 150,000 attendees it has evolved in 2015 to an event showing 161 feature film and short productions in 492 screenings and panels and 138,000 ticket sales. Including the free screenings, community events, such as the drive-in film series and the festival street fair and a large number of free programs and talks for media professionals and other interested parties, the festival’s 14th edition reached an audience of close to 470,000 people.  Altogether 6,223 productions were submitted of which 106 premiered in New York, including 64 world premieres. 40 of the filmmakers made their directorial debut at the fest and 30 of the feature film directors were women. The new central festival location, the down town Spring Studios close to the new principal screening venue Regal Battery Park, had 20,000 visitors housing story capes, the Chanel artist’s awards exhibition, the Games and Media summit, Tribeca Talks Imagination, DEF CON, and other special programs.  12 narrative and 13 documentary productions premiering in North America competed for cash awards totaling $225,000.

Among the many offerings going beyond traditional film festival fare was the three day DEF CON hacking conference. It offered this year interactive spaces, an “open-ended experimentation designed to bring out the hacker in everyone”. Games for Change, a day long program covered the territory of social impact oriented digital games and linear media. Most impressive were the one day Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards including specialized seminars in the awards areas. Focusing on innovations which disrupted product or service sectors from the bottom up the rewards honored successful innovations. They covered a wide range of ideas creating new, or challenging old, modes of thinking. To name but a few recipients, David Lynch for the widespread implementation of Transcendental Meditation through the David Lynch Foundation set up in 2005, Brad Katsuyama for setting up IEX, an equitable trading market place facilitating fair trading;  Dr. Bill Magee for establishing Operation Smile delivering to date worldwide through 5,400 professional volunteers free cleft surgeries to  220,000 young people;  and  the founders of Airbnb for setting up in 190 countries a booking service for private accommodations. Subscription-based Headspace was selected as the 2015 application of the year for enabling brief meditation sessions and related cognitive services.

INDIAN POINT, Ivy Meeropol, USA, 2015

Divergent perspectives   are offered by insiders claiming that Indian Point nuclear power plant is a safe operation and by outsiders emphasizing the risks it poses. Challenging questions about the future of nuclear power in the USA and other countries are raised. In the USA there are currently 61 nuclear power plants with 99 reactors, many built 30 or more years ago, based frequently on older designs .The NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) is in charge of controlling the nuclear energy industry, but for all practical purposes is instrumental in preventing any changes that may impair the profit margin of the industry. Thus the status quo is perpetuated. The former chief of the nuclear regulatory commission, Gregory Jaczko resigned, was blacklisted by the industry, and remains unemployed.

Indian Point is located 35 miles north of New York City next to the Hudson River and was designed more than fifty years ago. It has filed for relicensing by the NCR which would permit operating the plant for another 20 years in spite of numerous reported malfunctions. Of the two Indian point reactors one is operating without a license. The documentary’s message gains plausibility through extensive archival material including detailed coverage of the devastation of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and the lessons it taught us.  Gregory Jaczko's intriguing observations throughout the documentary specify the dangers of operating old nuclear power plants and identify one of the most pressing and unresolved problems   that Indian Point shares with other nuclear power plants in the United States.  Spent nuclear rods cannot be disposed of because nuclear power plants have run out of safe storage space for them. 

New York’s Governor Cuomo is opposed to continuing operating it and a partial month long shut down on ecological grounds is now considered to safeguard the river’s organisms. This responds to concerns that massive use of river water for cooling has devastating impact on the river’s ecology.

AMONG THE BELIEVERS, Hemal Trivedi & Mohammed Ali Nagvi, Pakistan, 2015

This production covers the rise of Muslim fundamentalism in Pakistan and its growth as originally facilitated by funding from the United States and Saudi Arabia to battle the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. With financial aid from Saudi Arabia thousands of religious schools, madrassas, were established guided by the Saudi fundamentalist Wahhabi orientation.  As Among the Believers suggests these religious schools are run by mosques and indoctrinate children to become mujahidins. The most radical ones are presented by the Red Mosque network of 27 schools with about 5000 students. Its leader Abdul Aziz is opposed to modernism and progressive thought because they have failed Pakistan and demands the introduction of sharia law in Pakistan and other countries.

In 2007 the red mosque in Islamabad was stormed by the Pakistan army. Its leader Aziz was arrested in 2007 but subsequently acquitted of all charges by the Pakistan Supreme Court. He has declared his allegiance to the Taliban and the Islamic State and was imprisoned again in December 2014. In mid-2014 the government decided to bring the 20 000 religious schools under its controls.

A NAZI LEGACY: WHAT OUR FATHERS DID, David Evans, U.K. 2015   

This documentary presents a fascinating juxtaposition of two individuals in their seventies who were children of high ranking Third Reich officials.  Nicolas Frank is the son of Hans Frank, Nazi governor of Poland, and Horst von Waechter’s father Otto von Waechter was in charge of a Ukrainian SS Division and governor of Galicia. Both were indicted as war criminals in Nuremberg with Hans Frank condemned to death and Otto von Waechter escaping punishment. They are interviewed by human rights lawyer Philippe Sands whose ancestors perished in the holocaust. While Nicolas Frank detests his father and condemns his crimes Horst von Waechter maintains throughout the documentary the decency of his father denying that he was a criminal, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary.  Nicolas appeared to have no emotional relation to his father and only recalls to being touched by his father once. He describes a problematic family life, noting that he may not even be Hans Frank’s child.  After his mother requested Hitler’s help he vetoed the divorce Hans Frank planned.  Horst Waechter describes his father and mother and recollection from childhood in warm terms. They all visit together scenes of the crimes their fathers committed. Ironically Horst Waechter receives from several Ukrainians a warm welcome since his father’s name still seems respected. A Nazi Legacy is a superbly researched documentary incorporating outstanding archival material. Its link to the current political turmoil in the Ukraine is noteworthy.

PRESCRIPTION THUGS, Christopher Bell, USA 2015

 Bell who directed the expose of steroid use in the United States, Bigger Stronger Faster, which gained credibility because it involved members of his family, took a similar approach with his well-documented Prescription Thugs which takes aim at the American addiction to legal drugs. Bell shows rather convincingly how the drug industrial complex in conjunction with an impotent Federal Drug Administration is fostering this addiction at great expense for the public and questionable value for the health of the population. In the USA 75% of the world’s prescription drugs are consumed, reflecting the lifelong drug addiction of many Americans. Through advertising and many collaborating doctors Americans learn that there is a remedy for any physical or mental problem whether real or made up. Just recall the well-advertised remedies for the shaking leg syndrome.  The pharma industry spent last year $226 million on lobbying, approximately $223,000 per congressman and the industry can for a special fee secure accelerated drug review.  That flawed process rarely results in rejecting a new drug. If penalties are imposed due to blatant abuse, they are tax deductible. Pfizer paid a penalty of $2.3 billion though scoring the same year $8 billion in profits. Cultural factors like the American easy fix and happiness mentality provide the framework for the addiction as does the relatively easy access to legal drugs. Interviews with numerous experts and victims and statistical data provide credibility to Bell’s investigation as does his admission that he was actually hooked on drugs while filming and was engaged in rehabilitation.

TOTO AND HIS SISTERS, Alexander Nanau, Romania, 2014

With the father nowhere to be seen and the mother spending time in prison for traffiking drugs her children, 10 year old Toto and two teenage sisters survive in a rundown apartment which has been transformed into a shooting gallery for neighbors and relatives. One sister, Ana is arrested for dealing drugs and spends time in Jail, the other Andreea takes care of Toto and they spend time in a shelter for homeless children. When their mother is released from prison, Andrea and her brother tell her that they prefer staying in the shelter to living with her. This documentary uses some footage shot by the children and explores in a most realistic manner the disturbing existence of children in drug infested families living in urban slums without an exit except for shelters.

Crocodile Gennady, Steve Hoover, USA 20015

Hoover documents the results of the massive changes in the Ukraine after the breakup of the Soviet Union. It generated a growing population of homeless and drug and alcohol addicted children. Given the breakdown of institutions they are left on their own to perish. Crocodile Gennady portrays the privately run Pilgrim Republic rehab centers which were established over 15 years by  Mariupol based  Gennady  Mokhnenko, a pastor using a tough love approach. The dreadful pathological context these children come from is grippingly demonstrated with uncompromising footage. Given the precarious state of Eastern Ukraine the rehab centers may not survive.

TRANSFATTY LIVES, Patrick O’Brien, USA 2015

This documentary is a most unusual production in which Patrick O’Brien, widely known as TransFatty, provides an unsentimental record of his life suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease (ALS) from its diagnosis in 2005 to the completion of his film. Having turned the camera on himself the audience accompanies him through all phases of ALS from skipping legs and weakening fingers at the age of thirty to paralyzing breathing and swallowing failures. He is totally immobilized at 40 and hooked up to life support systems having spent five years immobilized in bed. His brain can no longer control his muscles but retains creative abilities and he is directing his production crew through movement of his pupils. All phases of ALS are documented. We partake in TransFatty’s life before Patrick turned 30 and his personal story while having ALS.  This includes setting up an ALS foundation and shooting this film but also having a personal life transcending the disease, marriage and becoming a father whose legacy to the son Sean is this film.

THE WOLFPACK, Crystal Moselle, USA 2015

The film maker had unprecedented access to a family which raised their seven children in virtual isolation in a lower east side housing project in New York City. Survival ensured by welfare payments, the children are homeschooled by the mother and kept confined to the apartment by an authoritarian father who wants to shelter them from dangers of city life. Well until their teenage life the children depend on television and films as their link to the world reenacting the plots overcoming isolation and developing their cognitive skills. Their home movies provide a compete record of their past, an ideal visual source for Mostelle’s documentation. Once their confinement is broken after a brother escapes, they are exposed to the outside.  But they do not show any cognitive or social impairment as academic theories of family patterns would have assumed.

Overall the innovative programming of Tribeca remains impressive. The documentary selection is outstanding and continues to be one of the strongest components of the film festival.