Though the 2021 Tribeca Festival is set to take place largely in-person across New York City, the fest is making select films available to audiences throughout the U.S. via its newly launched online platform, Tribeca at Home.
The lineup for the Online Premieres section consists of 35 films: 24 features and 11 shorts.
Highlights of the narrative features lineup include Creation Stories about the life of music mogul Alan McGee, whose Creation Records signed Oasis, Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine, and Jonah Feingold’s Dating and New York about a pair matched up on a dating app who pursue a friends-with-benefits relationship, with a cast that features Jaboukie Young-White, Francesca Reale, Jerry Ferrara and Alex Moffat, among others.
The lineup also features the timely Asking For It, directed by Eamon O’Rourke and produced by Kiersey Clemons, Ezra Miller and others, which follows a traumatized young woman, who, after a chance encounter with an acquaintance takes a dark turn, teams up with a group of women who take on frat boys, corrupt police officers and a dangerous alt-right group with a charismatic leader. The cast of that film includes Clemons, Miller, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexandra Shipp, Radha Mitchell, Gabourey Sidibe and Luke Hemsworth.
Docs screening online include films about RuPaul’s Drag Race winner BeBe Zahara Benet (Being BeBe), claymation pioneer Will Vinton (ClayDream), Van Jones (The First Step), the friendship between Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama (Mission: Joy) and how New York City chefs and restaurateurs — including Eric Ripert, Geoffrey Zakarian, Daniel Boulud, Marcus Samuelsson and Jean-Georges Vongerichten — dealt with the COVID-19 crisis (Turning Tables: Cooking, Serving and Surviving in a Global Pandemic).
Juneteenth docs available online include films about Buddy Guy; the community of Ferguson, Missouri six years after the fatal shooting of Michael Brown (Ferguson Rises); and why African Americans suffer from higher rates of chronic disease (They’re Trying to Kill Us, executive produced by Chris Paul and Billie Eilish, among others).
“Tribeca at Home allows us to bring the heart of our festival to even more communities around the country,” Tribeca Festival co-founder and CEO Jane Rosenthal said in a statement. “While we are excited to gather in person this year with our live screenings reaching every corner of NYC, festival-goers and the at-home audiences will have more access to a diverse lineup of storytellers than ever before.”
Festival director and vp, programming, Cara Cusumano, added: “Tribeca first brought the festival experience into audience’s homes in 2011 with the launch of our Tribeca Online Film Festival, and again as the first festival of 2020 to announce virtual programming. Now as we celebrate a return to in-person events in 2021, we are excited to also continue to cultivate our nationwide festival family with this new evolution of virtual programming into a permanent festival section.”
Tickets for the Tribeca at Home virtual screenings go on sale at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT, with more information about this year’s Online Premieres available here.
The 2021 Tribeca Festival is set to run from June 9-20 in New York.