Congratulations to the NYWIFT members included in the 2022 Tribeca Festival line up! We are thrilled to see 33 members of our community will attend the festival with 33 projects this year.
The festival takes place June 8 – 19, 2022 virtually and live in New York. Tickets and packages can be purchased from the official website.
You can click on each title for the festival schedule and tickets to the incredible projects featuring work by NYWIFT members. Projects below are sorted by competition category.
Audio Storytelling
Day By Day
Producer – NYWIFT Member Sue Zizza
Cody, a bitcoin trader with an opioid habit, is mandated to a therapeutic community after a suicide attempt. He joins five other addicts recovering with a controlling female counselor.
I Was Never There
Project Creator/Host/Executive Producer – NYWIFT Board President Jamie Zelermyer
Take a trip into the countercultural movements swirling through West Virginia in the 1970s and 80s. Jamie Zelermyer and her mother Karen investigate the shocking disappearance of their friend Marsha “Mudd” Ferber and explore her evolution from suburban housewife to back-to-the-land hippie to drug-dealing bar owner. As mother and daughter venture deeper into the mystery of Marsha’s disappearance, the two process their own history: Jamie reflects on her nontraditional upbringing and Karen reckons with the joyful and complicated consequences of her decisions.
Tribeca TV
THE CAPTAIN
Producer – NYWIFT Board Member Alex Cirillo
The Captain is a compelling narrative revealing the man behind the icon – Derek Jeter. Amidst a time of great change in New York City, Derek Jeter’s arrival to the New York Yankees returned a struggling franchise to its traditional perch amongst baseball’s elite. Viewers will be enthralled by the professional and personal triumphs and challenges that not only created a dynasty, but a legend.
NOW Showcase (Narrative Episodic)
The Green Veil
Producer – NYWIFT Member Alessia Gatti
The Green Veil is a scripted anthology series about oppression in America from John Leguizamo and Aram Rappaport.
Tribeca Online Premieres/ Feature Narratives
The Courtroom
Executive Producers – Anne Carey and Gena Konstantinakos
In this powerful drama from director Lee Sunday Evans and writer (and Succession breakout star) Arian Moayed, the legal thriller is given a bold and innovative new twist. Adapted verbatim from court transcripts, The Courtroom follows the harrowing journey of Elizabeth Keathley (Kristin Villanueva) a Filipina immigrant who mistakenly registers to vote while on a K3 visa, a crime punishable by deportation.
U.S. Narrative
God’s Time
Additional First Assistant Director – NYWIFT Member Katherine Filaseta
Actors, best friends, and fellow recovering addicts, Dev (Ben Groh) and Luca (Dion Costelloe), find their bromance tested on a COVID-era New York City odyssey as they race across town to prevent Regina (Liz Caribel Sierra)—their mutual crush from recovery—from killing her ex-boyfriend. This madcap romp blends self-aware, 4th-wall-breaking comedy with a healthy dose of adrenaline straight to the heart.
Spotlight Documentary
American Pain
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Amy Entelis
Producer – NYWIFT Member Carolyn Hepburn
A jaw-dropping true crime documentary, American Pain tells the story of twin brothers and bodybuilders Chris and Jeff George, who operated a franchise of pain clinics in Florida where they handed out pain pills like candy. The brothers haul in trash bags full of cash each day as their business grows, to the point that lines of people wrap around the block and busloads of new patients arrive from surrounding states daily.
The Big Payback
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Marco Williams
Funded by a tax on cannabis, Evanston, IL, earmarked $10 million to compensate descendants of enslaved Africans for 400 years of unpaid labor. Alderwoman Simmons leads her constituents through this historic campaign for reparations for the Black community.
Body Parts
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Ruth Ann Harnisch
An eye-opening investigation into the making of Hollywood sex scenes, shedding light on the real-life experiences behind classic scenes of cinema and tracing the legacy of exploitation of women in the entertainment industry.
Endangered
Directors – NYWIFT Members Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
With riveting access and kinetic visual flair, Endangered is a sobering look at the erosion of democracy & freedom of the press in the United States and abroad.
Leave No Trace
Producer – NYWIFT Member Sara Bernstein
In February 2022, The Boy Scouts of America reached a $2.7 billion agreement over sex abuse claims, the largest such settlement in history. Leave No Trace explores how this all-American institution went so horrifyingly wrong.
The YouTube Effect
Producer – NYWIFT Member Gale Anne Hurd
YouTube has garnered over 2.3 billion users and is worth up to $300 billion dollars. At its center is its algorithm, something that threatens to destroy not only the platform, but the entire Internet.
Documentary Competition
Battleground
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Ruth Ann Harnisch
Co-Producer – NYWIFT Member Steffie van Rhee
Heading distinctly different anti-choice organizations, three women lead the charge in their single-minded quest to overturn Roe v. Wade, as they face down forces equally determined to safeguard women’s access to safe and legal abortions.
Hidden Letters
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Lois Vossen
In modern-day China, two women strive to preserve Nushu, an ancient secret language that bonded generations of Chinese women together through centuries of oppression in a clandestine support system of sisterhood and survival.
Katrina Babies
Producer – NYWIFT Board Member Audrey Rosenberg
Executive Producers – NYWIFT Members Eileen Tavarez and Jess Jacobs
Katrina Babies is a first-person account of the short-term and long-term devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, as told by young people who were between the ages of 3 and 19 when the levees broke.
My Name is Andrea
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Ruth Ann Harnisch
A rousing portrait of feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, one of the most controversial and misunderstood figures of the 20th century, who fought passionately for justice and equality for women.
Spotlight Narrative
Somewhere in Queens
Casting Director – NYWIFT Member Stephanie Holbrook
An Italian-American dad from Queens gets increasingly involved in ensuring his son’s high school basketball success in Ray Romano’s directorial debut.
Jerry & Marge Go Large
Actor; playing supporting role of Mindy – NYWIFT Member Lindsay Rootare
In this charming, feel-great comedy inspired by a true story, recent retirees Jerry and Marge discover a new sense of drive (and a whole bunch of money) when they find a legal loophole in the lottery system.
International Narrative
My Love Affair with Marriage
Director/Producer/Screenwriter/Animator –
NYWIFT Ravenal Grant Awardee Signe Baumane
Some people spend their lives wondering why a marriage didn’t last. Signe Baumane set out to get some answers. The result is this animated film, which combines ancient mythology and contemporary neuroscience.
Viewpoints
Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Lori Cheatle
Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel is a counterculture legend as well as a brick-and-mortar structure. Dreaming Walls documents a critical juncture in Chelsea’s history, as it prepares to evict longtime residents and transform into a luxury hotel.
Land of Gold
Co-Producer – NYWIFT Member Rose Harwood
When truck driver Kiran hears pounding on a shipping container and finds a young Mexican-American girl inside, his already tumultuous life takes a drastic turn as he seeks to reunite her family.
Sansón and Me (Sansón y Yo)
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Lois Vossen
Tracing a young immigrant’s path from coastal Mexico to a life sentence for murder in California, this deeply compassionate documentary utilizes evocative recreations to explore the meaning of a life fragmented by poverty, borders, and incarceration.
Midnight: TRIBECXPLOITATION!
Tenement
Director – NYWIFT Member Roberta Findlay
The sordid story of a South Bronx apartment building ruled by a gang of crazed, junkie punks.
Special Screening LGBTQIA+ Shorts: See Me, Feel Me
Inner Wound Real
Editor – NYWIFT Member Veronique Doumbe
Executive Director Black Public Media – NYWIFT Board Member Leslie Fields-Cruz
Inner Wound Real relays the story of three BIPOC folks who self-injure, then find new ways to cope.
Shorts
Let Me Go (The Right Way)
Executive Producer / Production Counsel – NYWIFT Member Diane Krausz
Producer – NYWIFT Member Gilana Lobel
Co-Producer / Production Counsel – NYWIFT Member Rosemarie Tully
Let Me Go (The Right Way) is a psychological thriller about a young veteran whose sense of reality is fraying, and the psychiatrist who treats him.
Paint & Pitchfork
Director – NYWIFT Member Christine Turner
This profile of celebrated artists Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley provides insight into why they make art and their unique perspectives on painting portraits.
Vodka
Producer – NYWIFT Member Sophia Loren Heriveaux
A 16-year-old girl deals with loss, humor and reincarnation through drinking vodka for the first time on the day of her grandmother’s shiva.
Chicken
1st Assistant Director – NYWIFT Member Sophia Loren Heriveaux
In a Bronx juvenile prison, a 16-year-old boy faced with losing custody of his child must discover what it takes to be a father through raising a chicken.
Tribeca Critics’ Week
After Sherman
Executive Director Black Public Media – NYWIFT Board Member Leslie Fields-Cruz
After Sherman is a story about inheritance and the tension that defines our collective American history. An exploration of coastal South Carolina as a site of pride and racial trauma through Gullah cultural retention and land preservation is violently interrupted.
Feature Documentaries
Hazing
Executive Producer – NYWIFT Member Lois Vossen
Executive Director Black Public Media – NYWIFT Board Member Leslie Fields-Cruz
Weaving his own personal experience with hazing into larger narratives, director Byron Hurt posits the function, politics, and consequences of pledging rituals.
Movies Plus
Game Change Game
Creator/Producer – NYWIFT Member Christina Norman
With unfettered access to the NBA, Game Change Game documents a tumultuous, and at times surreal, basketball season plagued by once unimaginable circumstances.
Unfinished Business
Producer – NYWIFT Member Carolyn Hepburn
An intimate look at the past and present of the New York Liberty, one of the WNBA’s flagship teams as they play for acceptance, respect, and the future of basketball.
Immersive: New Voices
Black Movement Library – Movement Portraits
Executive Director Black Public Media – NYWIFT Board Member Leslie Fields-Cruz
The Black Movement Library-Movement Portraits serves as a way to learn about the lives of performers contributing their movement data to the Black Movement Library, taking viewers on a journey through each portrait. What happens when we ritualize the archival process of data collection and invite the community as a witness? Using motion capture and Unreal Engine, performers send their movement data to be translated into visuals in real-time.
