Editor

Tribeca Film Festival founders Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff joined SOS campaign founder Kevin Wall today to announce that seven SOS short films will premiere on the Festival’s opening evening of April 25, 2007. SOS is the campaign behind the Live Earth global concert series on July 7, 2007. The mission of the SOS Short Films Program is to create a series of educational and compelling short films that highlight the
problems of, and engage people with solutions for, the global climate crisis.


Tribeca’s opening night gala, hosted by former Vice President Al Gore, will be held at the BMCC TriPAC and will include musical performances by Live Earth music acts. This event marks the official launch of the SOS Short Films Program. The evening is being sponsored by General Motors (GM) with additional support coming from National Geographic.

“Global warming is a generational challenge requiring both U.S. leadership and a global response. The SOS Short Films Program harnesses some of the world's most creative minds to educate, inform and inspire people across the globe to solve the climate crisis," former Vice President Gore said. "Premiering the SOS films at Tribeca will ensure that these pieces will be viewed all over the world for years to come – and hopefully they will help spur to action the next generation of international leaders to join the effort to solve the climate crisis."

Gore is co-chair of the Live Earth concerts that Kevin Wall is producing.

“The global climate crisis is the paramount challenge facing humanity, and the goal of the SOS campaign and Live Earth concerts is to trigger a groundswell of people worldwide who will make solving the climate crisis a priority and make meaningful changes in their lives,” said Kevin Wall, founder of the SOS campaign and producer of Live Earth. “Tribeca provides the ideal audience and platform for the SOS message. Just like music, films have the power to inspire people to change themselves and the world around them.”

“The Tribeca Film Festival was founded with a mission to collectively improve our community.
The very concept of SOS – entertainment effecting social change – is at the roots of our festival and we can’t think of a better way to open this year than by world premiering the SOS Short Film Program,” said Jane Rosenthal, Co-Founder of the Festival. “Films have the ability to take an issue and galvanize people to act. We commend SOS for reaching out to filmmakers to use their medium to bring awareness to the climate crisis. We are proud to be a part of this and hopeful that SOS will inspire significant environmental changes.”


SOS has commissioned 60 award-winning filmmakers from wide-ranging genres and mediums, including feature films, documentaries, music videos, commercials and animation to create provocative shorts of no more than 10 minutes in length. The films range in tone from factual and dramatic to fictional and comedic. The Tribeca Film Festival will select seven of these films to premiere at the festival, which will be announced at the opening press conference for the
Tribeca Film Festival on April 22, 2007.

SOS has engaged many of the industry’s most prominent filmmakers including:

Jonathan Glazer, Director, Birth, Sexy Beast;
Kevin MacDonald, Director, Last King of Scotland;
Abel Ferrera, Director, King of New York;
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Directors, Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp;
Aardman Animation, Producers, Wallace and Gromit;
Amy Berg, Director, Oscar-nominated Deliver Us From Evil; and
Ari Sandel, Director, Oscar-winning, West Bank Story.