The Tribeca Film Festival, co-founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, and presented by founding sponsor American Express, today announced a total attendance of 348,000 at screenings, panels, and free community events, including the Drive-In and Street Fair. Attendance at ticketed events increased greatly over the 2008 event, due in part to fewer screening venues, but also to an overwhelming response from the audience for the program. 2009 saw screenings at capacity, with over 95% attendance to 361 ticketed screenings, panels, and conversations throughout the 12-day Festival.

"Audiences responded overwhelmingly to the Festival this year, and that is reflected in our numbers," said Nancy Schafer, Executive Director of the Tribeca Film Festival. "Theaters were packed, even during weekday matinees, and we are ecstatic at the response to the films and conversations, as well as the great turnout at the Family Festival Street Fair."

The Festival, which ran from April 22 through May 3, screened 85 features and 47 short films from 36 countries.

Festival organizers and NYPD Community Affairs Officer Rick Lee estimated that a crowd of 235,000 attended the popular Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair and Tribeca/ESPN Sports Day on Saturday, May 2. The free community event took place along eight blocks of Greenwich Street and neighboring side streets in Tribeca.

The Tribeca Drive-In, co-sponsored by Snapple and hosted by Brookfield Properties, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation/U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, at the World Financial Center Plaza, drew combined crowds of 12,000 to three evenings of free, outdoor screenings of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and P-Star Rising. All three evenings featured pre-show live interactive entertainment. The Festival also featured six free conversations that drew over 1,000 attendees.

“One of our key goals for this year’s Festival was to further enhance the audience experience and create additional free events for the community. Our film programmers curated a fantistic line-up of films and our free community events were extremely successful," said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival.

Rosenthal continued, “Each year, we seek to give both established and first time filmmakers an opportunity to share their artistic visions and stories with our Festival audiences. The Festival was full of memorable moments that only happen at Tribeca. We had ABT dancer, Irlan Santos da Silva of the documentary Only When I Dance literally dance down the aisles in tears after seeing the film for the first time. And the audience singing so loud with the film at Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful that it was next to impossible to differentiate the audience from the movie. We had a lot of fun at this year’s festival, thanks to the audiences and the filmmakers alike.”

2009 Tribeca Film Festival Factoids:

• 136 out of 141 directors attended the Festival.
• Of those 136 directors, 87 feature film directors and 49 short film directors attended the Festival, hailing from 36 different countries.
• 99% of all feature film directors and 92% of all short filmmakers attended the Festival.
• Oda a la Pina's short film director, Laimir Fano was only able to attend Tribeca because of President Obama lifting the sanction on Cuban citizens coming to the U.S. a week before the Festival.
• Standing ovations took place at screenings for City Island, Entre Nos, Only When I Dance, Rachel, Racing Dreams, Salt of The Sea and more.
• 608 industry delegates attended the Festival. Of the 608, 520 delegates were from the U.S. and 88 delegates hailed from other countries.
• The Festival featured 1224 volunteers. Approximately 800 were from the New York area. Volunteers also came from other parts of the United States as well as 23 countries including: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Denmark, El Salvador, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and Spain.
• 500 New York Police Department barricades were used throughout the Festival.