Tribeca’s top films; festival sets record

The narrative audience award at the Tribeca Film Festival, which ended Sunday, went to The Divine Order, directed and written by Petra Volpe. The documentary award was given to Hondros, directed by Greg Campbell.

“It is always exciting to see what resonates most with the audience, and this year both the narrative and documentary winners represent smart filmmaking” and moving storytelling, said Tribeca Film Festival’s Paula Weinstein.

Runners-up were the narrative

Saturday Church, directed and written by Damon Cardasis, and the documentary Shadowman, directed and written by Oren Jacoby.

The Divine Order is a captivating film about regular people demanding their right to an equal voice.

Hondros, which begins with the

war in Kosovo in 1999, follows award-winning photographer Chris Hondros, who served as a witness to conflict for over a decade before being killed in Libya in 2011.

Saturday Church concerns 14-year- old Ulysses, an effeminate teen being raised in the Bronx by his strict Aunt Rose. He has a rich fantasy life through music, dance, and a vibrant transgender youth community.

Shadowman takes a look at Richard Hambleton who, in the early 1980s, was New York’s precursor to street artist Banksy.

The festival had a record-setting estimated attendance of more than 153,000 to 531 screenings and talks, with an additional 3,800,000 people participating in 15 talks and post-film conversations from afar via Facebook Live. With so many choices, I didn’t manage to see any of the audience choice winners. But I saw plenty of other films. These are favorites at the festival this year:

Thumper, a tense narrative concerning Kat ( Eliza Taylor), a newcomer to a high school where drugs and violence are the norm, who makes friends with sweet Beaver (Daniel Webber) before attracting the unwanted attention of menacing dealer Wyatt (Pablo Schreiber, Orange is the New Black). You won’t figure out where this

one is going.

No Man’s Land is a finely assembled documentary that makes clear the confusing timeline of what happened in Oregon when armed protectors occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January 2016.

Aardvark, an unpredictable narrative in which emotionally challenged Josh ( Zachary Quinto) shows a variety of responses to his none-too-dependable therapist (Jenny Slate) concerning his relationship (or lack thereof) to his famous TV actor brother Craig ( John Hamm).

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story; who knew that 1940s starlet Hedy Lamarr invented a secret radio technology intended to help the Allies beat the Nazis? This documentary explains all.

Dog Years, an otherwise conventional melodrama made special by the presence of Burt Reynolds as Vic Edwards, a onetime sexy movie star, and Ariel Winter of

Modern Family as often inappropriate Lil, who’s stuck chauffeuring Vic around Nashville when he’s invited to be a special guest at a small-time film festival there. Archival footage of Reynolds as a onetime sexy movie star makes it worth seeing.