Alice Wu’s ‘The Half of It’ wins Tribeca Fest honor
‘The Hater’ best narrative
LOS ANGELES, April 30, (AP): Alice Wu’s “The Half of It,” a teenage spin on Cyrano de Bergerac, has won the top award from the Tribeca Film Festival.
Organizers announced winners Wednesday for the festival, which had been set to take place from April 15 through April 26 in New York City. The coronavirus pandemic forced the festival to reschedule, but jury members were able to view the films electronically and vote on winners.
“We are fortunate that technology allowed for our jury to come together this year to honor our filmmakers,” said Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca Film Festival co-founder and CEO, in a statement. “Despite not being able to be together physically, we were still able to support our artists.” Festival director Cara Cusumano added that, “The jury chose to recognize a daring, innovative, entertaining, diverse group of films and filmmakers, and the festival is pleased to honor all of them with our first ever virtual awards ceremony.”
Lucas Hedges, Terry Kinney and Cherien Dabis made up the jury for the US narrative categories, and selected Assol Abdullina (“Materna”) as best actress and Steve Zahn (“Cowboys”) as best actor.
Best documentary feature went to Bo McGuire’s “Socks on Fire,” which McGuire describes as a “transgenerational docudrama couched in the battle royal for my Nanny’s throne.”
In the international competition, the Polish film “The Hater,” from director Jan Komasa, was selected as the best narrative feature. Jury members included Danny Boyle, William Hurt, and Demián Bichir.
Shira Haas, of the series “Unorthodox,” picked up best actress for the Israeli mother-daughter drama “Asia.”
“Asia,” from director Ruthy Pribar, also won the Nora Ephron Award, from a jury that included Gina Rodriguez, Regina Hall and Lizzy Caplan.
Pandemic
The Tribeca Film Festival, postponed by the pandemic, moved some elements of its annual New York event online.
Tribeca organizers has said that much of its programming will be available either to the public or to the film industry over roughly the same days that the festival would have taken place in April. That maintains a showcase for the filmmakers and artists who were relying on Tribeca’s platform for exposure.
Film festivals give not only upcoming films an opportunity to make a splash but exhibit many smaller movies that are seeking distribution deals. Of the largest festivals canceled by the pandemic — Cannes, SXSW, Tribeca — each has taken a different approach to the crisis.
France’s Cannes Film Festival, scheduled for May, is aiming to postpone to June or July. South by Southwest, in Texas, was closed by the city of Austin just a week before its mid-March opening. On Thursday, it announced plans to stream participating films for a 10-day period later this month on Amazon Prime.
Tribeca is still hoping to hold a festival in the fall, but Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca’s co-founder and chief executive, acknowledged that would be a smaller scale event taking place over fewer days. The 19th Tribeca had been scheduled for April 15-26.
“What we do later in the year would clearly be a differently programmed festival than what we would have done in April,” Rosenthal has said in a phone interview recently.