Tribeca Film Festival

This year's TFF 13th edition welcomed over 120,000 movie-goers over 12 days of screenings and panels with a total attendance of over 400,000.

The 2014 Tribeca Film Festival co-founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, and presented by AT&T, announced that  during the Festival’s 13th edition more than 400,000 people attended screenings, panels, talks and free community events – including the Tribeca Drive-In series, Family Festival Street Fair, Tribeca/ESPN Sports Day, as well as the first-ever Tribeca Innovation Week which featured the Storyscapes installation at the Bombay Sapphire House of Imagination, the Future of Film series, Games for Change, the Tribeca Disruptive Innovation Awards, Tribeca Hacks <Mobile>, and TFI Interactive.
 
From April 16 through 27, the Festival hosted nearly 400 screenings and panels with more than 95% attendance. A total of 89 features and 57 short films from 40 countries were screened for more than 120,000 movie-goers and panel attendees during the course of the 12-day Festival. For the first time ever, thanks to  AT&T, an entire day of film screening tickets were free through “Film for All Friday”, where over 8,000 tickets were claimed for the screenings on Friday, April 25th.
 
“The response to the films and all of our events throughout our 13th edition has been incredible. We have some of the best audiences in the world and it was great to see them embrace the filmmakers, creators and our new Innovation Week over the last 12 days,” said Jane Rosenthal, co-founder, Tribeca Film Festival.
 
Audiences from across the country received front row access to exclusive Tribeca content through the fifth annual Tribeca Online Festival (TOF), which returned with free streaming of a selection of four features and four shorts. TOF also hosted the juried #6SECFILMS Competition for a second year, along with the new Tribeca Interactive & Interlude: A Music Film Challenge in collaboration with The Lincoln Motor Company which invited storytellers to create interactive music films for Damon Albarn, Aloe Blacc and Ellie Goulding.
 
The free community events returned with the Tribeca Drive-In movie series on the Hudson River, which featured the classic Mary Poppins, celebrating 50 years, followed by a 30th Anniversary screening of Ron Howard’s Splash, and a screening of the documentary Next Goal Wins. Despite the unseasonably cold weather, more than 3,200 visitors came out for the free, outdoor films and participated in games and activities, including a “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” spelling contest, Samoan drumming, face painting, and soccer games.
 
Festival organizers and Lieutenant Rosenburg of the NYPD First Precinct estimated that even with a rainy afternoon a crowd of 275,000 enjoyed the signature Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair and Tribeca/ESPN Sports Day on Saturday, April 26, which included Games for Change Public Arcade, the Million Dollar Arm pitching contest, live performances from the casts of Broadway shows including Wicked, Motown: The Musical, Rock of Ages and others.
 
The 2014 Festival closed with John Carney’s comedy, Begin Again, starring Keira Knightley, Mark Ruffalo, Hailee Steinfeld, and Adam Levine.

-Lia Fietz-

Photography by Mustafa ÖNDER