With Cannes having barely left our minds-eye, Tribeca storms in. The 25th Anniversary no less. Tribeca was born out of 9/11. With Lower Manhattan reeling - Islamophobia, paranoia, a downtown neighbourhood gutted - Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff launched the festival in May 2002 to memorialise the attacks, reassert New York as a filmmaking capital, and pump life back into the area.

Pulled together in 3 months with 1,300 volunteers, the inaugural edition ran 150 films, a dozen panels, and a family festival with an outdoor concert across venues from local theatres to Stuyvesant High and Pace University. It drew an estimated 150,000-plus attendees, and Nelson Mandela spoke at the opening, he argued that film is one of the most powerful tools for building understanding across differences. Here here.

This year RecDek House takes stage Sunday 7th at 7.30pm. RSVP via the app. Also, together with our pals at Imgn (app.imgn.co) we’ll be hosting a focused Producers happy hour over the weekend. If you’re a Producer/line producer/production manager and are in NYC this weekend and would like to come, HMU by way of reply to this email.

Look out for our Saturday eve get together in partnership with our Big Screen Hack. In the RecDek app too.

RecDek is about independent entertainment discovery. Curate your film and tv watchlist across all platforms, from opinions that matter to you. RecDek House is for the do-ers of the indie film world, our events supports the industry across all the major markets.

OUR TRIBECA 2026 EIGHT FILM RUNDOWN

Alotta music docs and live sets this year, lovely and fitting given the Birthday celebrations. Here are the 8 shows we are excited about and I think most them are looking for distro.

Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That's the Weight of the World) - Opening night, and the music doc everyone's circling. It's Questlove's follow-up to his 2025 Sly Stone film and the Oscar-winning Summer of Soul, built on rare archival access and centred on the vision of founder Maurice White. The Beacon Theatre premiere is followed by a live set from the band and The Roots, (this one is heading to HBO later this year).

The Last Day - Rachel Rose takes a swing at Mrs. Dalloway, transplanted to New York, with Alicia Vikander, Victoria Pedretti, and Wagner Moura. It's a Killer Films job, so the prestige stamp is already on it. Moura turning up as the old flame will get everyone will be talking about.

The Accompanist - Zach Woods directs his first feature. And it's not a comedy - it's a drama about a nine-year-old pulled from her grandfather's care and dropped on Susan Sarandon. Aubrey Plaza's in it too.

The Leader - The Heaven's Gate cult, done as a proper drama rather than the usual streaming docuseries. Tim Blake Nelson, Vera Farmiga, Simon Rex, and - yes - Jim Parsons. Grim subject, very good cast, and the rare true-crime story that's been handed to actors instead of talking heads.

Iconoclast - Gabriel Basso (the Night Agent one) writes, directs, and stars in a thriller about a loner fixating on a livestreamer, then reinventing himself via weights, guns, and the algorithm. Centineo and Kiernan Shipka co-star. Could be a debut to watch, could be a vanity project, worth finding out which.

Next Life - Drake Doremus, back after years away, with Emilia Clarke as a jazz musician falling through alternate realities on a train. Edgar Ramírez and Jack Farthing along for the ride. Doremus back in the tangled-romance territory he made his name on — make of that what you will.

Odyssey - Avi Belkin (Mike Wallace Is Here) builds an Apollo 13 immersion out of 2,500-plus hours of archive, centred on Jim Lovell. The third Moon landing that became a rescue mission. The doc here with the broadest reach - bring anyone.

Mineshaft: The Cruising Murders - Jeffrey Schwarz on the 1977 killing of a Variety critic that fed into Friedkin's Cruising, and the fury that film provoked. Essential if you're deep on Friedkin or queer film history, riveting either way.

OK bubi now.

Ed