Have film- fest fun separating real from fake

T HE making

of sake. A tense road trip to New Orleans. And the history of spit.

Those are just some of the films that will — or may not — be in this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, which starts Wednesday and runs through April 26.

The TFF has hundreds of new films, old films, short subjects, documentaries, blockbusters, panel discussions, interviews with celebrities, talks with people who wish they were celebs, reality experiences, live performances and stuff that’ll later make you say, “Damn, I should have gone!”

Personally, I enjoy the TFF so much that I like to get involved each year. So I have, in my own silly way.

Five of the 10 films I’ve listed below won’t be in the festival because I just made them up. Yes, that’s right. Made. Them. Up.

See if you can guess which ones are fakes.

1. “An Oral History of Spittle”

This 2015 documentary, made for under $ 1 million — first shown at the American Dental Association’s annual convention in Dry Gulch, Okla. — delves deeply into the history of oral lubrication.

Call it spittle, spit, expectorant, drool, phlegm or simply by its lush sound — ptooey — this exercise in human waste reduction has gone underappreciated since the demise of the spittoon. ( 34 ¹ / ₂ mins.) 2. “The Adderall Diaries” This is the story of an author who is paralyzed by writer’s block and an escalating drug dependency who is sucked down the rabbit hole of a highprofile murder case.

As Elliott, the writer, becomes increasingly obsessed with his own nightmarish childhood memories, his estranged father returns with his own story to tell.

Fact and fiction become blurred in an amphetamineinduced haze. ( 90 mins.) 3. “Shut up and Drive” Jane is left with a massive hit to her codependent nature when her livein boyfriend, Austin, leaves for an acting gig in New Orleans.

Spurred by Jane’s need to get out of the house, she and Laura, Austin’s childhood friend, pack up the car and hit the road toward New Orleans — struggling to deal with roadblocks and strange occurrences along the way. ( 90 mins.) 4. “Yup, Continuated” In the first film in this anticipated fivepart series, produced in 2014, Vinnie “The Yup” breaks free of his claustrophobic Brooklyn neighborhood with its monolithic and monosyllabic ways to attend Harvard — thanks to a dictionary he stashed in the back of his mom’s shoe closet.

All is smooth for The Yup until he meets Silvia, who cleans the dorm’s bathrooms. Yup discovers he has stolen her thesaurus and her dreams. ( 212 mins.) 5. “Branded” When they first met, Edward Morrow and Brandé Nümanchick didn’t miss the wonderful combination that their two names would make.

All their friends called them Branded. But then it happened: Branded broke up. ( 92 mins.) 6. “Birth of Sake” An ode to the 2,000yearold art of sakemaking introduces audiences to the Tedorigawa brewery and the small brotherhood of highly dedicated and painstakingly trained artisans who bring the ancient spirit into existence year after year.

Exquisitely shot over a year, “Birth of Sake” takes the viewer on a rare tour of the Tedorigawa brewery to reveal a culture and tradition that finds a quiet and natural beauty in its delicate process. ( 98 mins.) 7. “Havana Motor Club” This film takes to the roadways of Havana for a fascinating glimpse at the resilience, ingenuity and passion of the competitive spirit.

Auto racing was a Cuban tradition for decades, typified by the Cuban Grand Prix of the late ’ 50s.

Fidel Castro declared the practice elitist and outlawed racing indefinitely. Still, an underground automotive pulse still beats on the island.

Punctuated by a lively Cubann soundtrack. ( 84 mins.)

8. “I Used to Dress Trashy Until I Put Moron”

Cynthia was a lot of things — but bright wasn’t one of them.

Cynthia’s life is turned upsidedown one day when a woman — a total stranger — blames her for contributing to what is wrong with men.

If only people like Cynthia would dress better, this stranger says, the world would be a better place. ( 45 mins.)

9. “If You Watch This Movie You’ll Make My Mom Happy”

Made on a tight budget and financed through a Kickstarter campaign that relied solely on donated centsoff grocery coupons, documentarian Paul B. Era delves into the life of impoverished Fine Arts graduates looking for their big break.

Director Era shamelessly uses mothers’ guilt as a marketing tool and recently told the New York Times, “Cancel my subscription, the paperboy keeps throwing my copy in a puddle.” ( 50 mins.) 10. “Stung” In a remote country villa set amid foggy rural farmlands, the elderly widow of a pharmaceutical magnate holds an annual gardeng party for the local elite in honor of her late husband.

But the festivities take a grisly turn when a plague of giant killer wasps is unleashed on the unsuspecting partygoers, leaving the caterers Julia and Paul pitted against the sevenfoot mutant predators in a deadly fight for survival. ( 87 mins.)

( If you can’t tell on your own, the fakes are 1,4, 5, 8 and 9.)