Exciting news Contra Zoom readers! After covering a number of film festivals on my own, I’ve finally gotten an official Press Pass for this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Now, it is a virtual press pass, but still moving up in the world of film festival coverage. In any case, as is the case when you get these sort of things, I’m here to give a quick overview of the films that interest me most from this year’s festival that you can look forward to reading about.
If you’ve read any of my previous reviews, you know that I am really enthusiastic about covering films from the Asian continent as well as those about the Asian diaspora. Fortunately for me, Tribeca has a number of films that fit the bill.
Directed by: Elizabeth Ai
Why I’m Excited: When I’m doing work, I often like to listen to something. If I’m working in spreadsheets, podcasts (like Contra Zoom Pod) are fine, but when writing out reviews, hearing English words interferes. My genre of choice is Japanese City Pop, a genre that arose in the 70s and 80s. So when I read the description of Elizabeth Ai’s in-competition documentary New Wave about the eponymous music scene popular with Vietnamese American teens in the 80s, I was intrigued. Based on the description of how this music is just a jumping off point for a personal quest of cultural identity, I am even more sold.
Directed by: Vera Brunner-Sung
Why I’m Excited: While Asian diaspora stories often focus on larger groups like Korean, Filipino, or Japanese, there are also groups such as the Hmong people, an ethnic group from China and Southeast Asia that has a large diaspora here in the States. Director Vera Brunner-Sung explores this diaspora in the American West in her film Bitterroot, which is in competition for US Narrative films. Following Lue, a recently divorced Hmong man who lives with his widowed mother in Montana, the film looks to bring together these disparate elements of Asian American representation in the West that you wouldn’t expect to see elsewhere.
Directed by: Qiu Yang
Why I’m Excited: Fresh off of winning the Special Jury Prize at Berlinale Encounters with his feature debut, director Qiu Yang will have the North American debut of his film Some Rain Must Fall as it competes in the International Narrative category. Telling the story of a mother who accidentally injures the grandmother of her daughter’s classmate, this drama explores ideas of family, class and self identity. Watching the trailer, I was immediately enraptured by Yang’s use of lighting, color and shot composition to give his film a noir-esque look and am excited to see it in full.
Directed by: Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan
Why I’m Excited: There are two docs that deal with issues of globalization specifically from the Asian/African perspective, something I don’t see a lot of. First there is the In Competition Made in Ethiopia from directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan, which follows three individuals in Ethiopia as a farming town is converted into an Chinese-backed industrial park – the Chinese director in charge of the expansion, one of the factory workers, and a local farmer. This reminds me a lot of the Oscar winning documentary American Factory, as it tackles these questions of globalization and capitalism.
Directed by: Kosai Sekine
Why I’m Excited: The other documentary is Dust to Dust from director Kosai Sekine following Japan’s only active haute couture designer Yuima Nakazato who is on a quest to reduce the waste of his industry by researching and investigating fashion’s production issues across the world and specifically Kenya.
Directed by: Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg
Why I’m Excited: Another documentary making its World Premiere at Tribeca is a bit closer to home – just over the East River in Brooklyn in fact. Emergent City, co-directed by community members Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg follows the development of Industrial City in the predominantly working class and immigrant Sunset Park neighborhood.
Directed By: Yen Tan
Why I’m Excited: Thus far we’ve been looking at a lot of films that perhaps don’t have a lot of household names. The next film up, All That We Love from director Yen Tan has some big names in its cast. Comedian Margaret Cho plays Emma, a woman facing a midlife crisis after her family dog passes, alongside her best friend played by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) and her daughter played by Alice Lee (My Adventures with Superman). To add to the comedy, her ex-husband, played by Kenneth Choi (Sons of Anarchy) returns from overseas to try and win her back. I’m looking forward to seeing how this film balances the down parts of life with its comedic moments that only a seasoned cast like this can deliver.
Family Guide To Hunting and HongFu Hotel
Why I’m Excited: I’d be remiss to not mention the Asian American Shorts Family Guide To Hunting and HongFu Hotel that I’ll also be screening and reviewing. Family Guide To Hunting also features Margaret Cho, and is about a Korean American doom-prepper who goes on a hunting trip with her parents and boyfriend when things go from bad to grisly. Meanwhile, HongFu Hotel follows the son of a retiring Chinatown hotel manager who faces the literal ghosts of his family’s legacy in a film that combines Chinese mythology with modern day New York. I’m normally not a fan of horror films but I could see these two changing my mind about that.
Now as much as I love writing about Asian and Asian diaspora films, that’s not all I’m interested in. Here are a few more films from Tribeca that have caught my eye.
Directed By: Jess Jacklin
Why I’m Excited: While I don’t identify as a gamer per se (unless you count my crippling Magic the Gathering addiction), I love the narratives that come from following the esports scene. In Competition documentary Quad Gods from director Jess Jacklin is one such story, following the first all quadriplegic esports team who use competition not just as a hobby but as a form of therapy.
Directed by: dream hampton
Why I’m Excited: Last year was the 50th history of hip hop, and with Tribeca being in the city where it all began, it’s only right that It Was All a Dream screen here from director dream hampton, director of the documentary Surviving R. Kelly and co-writer of Jay-Z’s memoir. There is honestly no one better to usher us through the golden era of hip hop with intimate access to the likes of Notorious BIG, Method Man, and Snoop Dogg.
Directed By: John James and Bill Mack
Why I’m Excited: If you read my review of SIFF’s documentary Admissions Granted, you’ll know that I have a lot of thoughts about affirmative action in the Ivy League. It seems as though directors of the documentary Black Table from directors John James and Bill Mack do as well. Following students from Yale’s largest class of Black students in the 90s, it centers on how a particular table in the common table hall came to be a space of their own in a university that sometimes didn’t see them.
Directed By: Charles Todd and Matt Mitchener
Why I’m Excited: Finally, I may not be a basketball guy, but I am a bit of a memelord. So when a documentary dives into the mystery that haunts NBA twitter with a title like Memes & Nightmare (directed by Charles Todd and Matt Mitchener, executive produced by Lebron James among others) crosses my consciousness, you know I’m going down that rabbit hole.
What movies are you most excited to see at Tribeca this year? Let us know on Twitter and Instagram. Look for more great festival coverage coming your way!
