Tribeca Film Festival 2025: The Best Things We Saw

The 24th annual Tribeca Film Festival is now in the history books, but it’s safe to say that the state of cinema remains alive and thriving in downtown Manhattan after these past two weeks. Located in the neighborhood between Soho and the Financial District, Tribeca also stands at the crossroads between the future and the past, the innovation of daring new voices in independent filmmaking and legacies no less storied than the festival’s co-founder Robert De Niro.

This year we were able to see an eclectic range of first time films and daring reinventions at Tribeca—although as with all festivals, it was never enough to cover everything offered or that we wanted to attend—and below is an alphabetic collection of our staff’s favorites. Enjoy.

Oh, Hi

A couple travels to idyllic upstate New York for a weekend getaway despite not clearly labeling their four-month old relationship. What could go wrong? 

The fact that director Sophie Brooks paints the opening scene of Oh, Hi like a cabin in the woods horror movie suggests a lot! Cut to 33 hours earlier where we properly meet Iris (The Bear’s Molly Gordon) and Issac (Percy Jackson franchise star Logan Lerman). They’re a couple who is about to see their blossoming romance take a detour when an innocent-enough experiment in bondage unlocks a deeper disconnect on the status of the relationship. 

Brooks’ script deftly navigates the ping-pong match between Iris and Issac’s competing perspectives on modern dating while maintaining an unrelenting joke pace throughout, culminating in a riotous second act with Thunderbolts’ Geraldine Viswanathan and the always welcome John Reynolds (Search Party) showing up when the tension escalates. 

The headliner here, however, is the tour de force range from Gordon. No matter what the scene calls for, and Brooks asks a lot, Gordon is able to conjure something charming, vulnerable, laugh-out-loud funny, and maybe a little bit manic—with all that can imply in the indie film space. She levels up every time we screen her work, from complementary roles in some of our recent festival favorites like Booksmart, Good Boys, and Shiva Baby, to co-writing and starring in the excellent 2023 indie comedy, Theater Camp. With a “story by” writing credit and a breakout lead performance in Oh, Hi, Gordon is firmly building a case that she’s one of the more exciting talents of her generation.  – Chris Longo

Our Hero, Balthazar

Sometimes a logline can capture a cultural and political moment. In Our Hero, Balthazar, a trust fund teen aims to impress his school crush by catfishing a suspected school shooter in rural Texas. Sounds like 2025, right? 

This twisted, darkly comic view of male loneliness centers on Jaeden Martell’s Balthazar, an aggressively medicated private school kid with a talent for making himself cry on command. Unfortunately he puts that skill to use by insincerely crying out for help on the internet in the wake of another mass shooting at a high school. His viral post garners the attention of an online troll (Asa Butterfield), who claims to be plotting the next mass shooting. Balthazar opportunistically seizes the chance to become a hero in the eyes of an activist classmate and flies to Texas to confront the online troll face-to-face. 

After producing films like Good Time and Uncut Gems with Benny and Josh Safdie, Oscar Boyson jumps into the director’s chair for his debut feature with Balthazar. You can see the Safdie talent tree blooming in real time. Boyson not only has a command for balancing plot tension, with a looming threat of mass violence hanging over the film, but he also uses it to explore the emotional tension of two young men of polar opposite means struggling to grasp their place in society.

To cut through both tracks with biting dark humor and social commentary is skillful work for a first time director, even if Our Hero, Balthazar proves ultimately a little gun shy on diving into bigger ideas on our country’s inability to reckon with the mass shooting epidemic. Still, Boyson manages to pull out Martell’s deepest work to date and cashes in on an equally gripping turn from Butterfield to pull off a magic trick by the final act: you may actually be rooting for this unlikely friendship to pan out. – CL

Relay

There is a certain mythology that comes with the cinematic idea of a whistleblower. It involves grand acknowledgements of courage and bravery, and maybe sometimes a nod toward the isolation. It’s the image of the lone hero standing up to do what’s right. In other words, it can feel pretty far removed from what’s going on in the world right now. Which might be why director David Mackenzie’s (Hell or High Water) throwback to 1970s paranoia cinema hits with bleakly honesty right now.

Relay is not about the whistleblower putting up the good fight, but the whistleblower who lived long enough to regret (almost) dying the hero. Now she just wants to find a way to take it all back. Thus enters the story of Sarah (Lily James), a PhD at a pesticide conglomerate who took records about her company burying disturbing test results. By the time we meet her, however, she’s desperate to return them after months of harassment and surveillance. Unfortunately the company’s goons want more than just the documents to guarantee her silence. Hence she finds herself working with Ash (Riz Ahmed), a fixer she is never supposed to meet in person and who has a knack for giving whistleblowers the best they can hope for: a tomorrow without looking over their shoulder.

What’s striking about Relay is how little its two leads share a scene. Until the third act, Sarah and Ash communicate strictly through a technology so antiquated that you, like the corporate muscles, are stunned it still exists: a telecommunications service that interprets calls between those who are hearing-disabled and those who are not. Mind you, in this film Ahmed’s character hears just fine. Still, his experience at playing a deaf person in Sound of Metal comes in poignant handy since he must once again portray a person so alone in the world he barely has a reason to speak. His eyes are screaming though, crying out bottomless rage and endless regret, especially as he looks longingly at James through her windows. It’s a bit like if Gene Hackman entertained ideas of romance in The Conversation. Some late third act plot contrivances overplay their hand, but Relay is a taut cat and mouse game where the entire board is run out of a kitten cafe. – David Crow

Tow

Often “ripped from the headlines” stories end in heartbreak or catastrophe. So when one comes along that inspires hope, we have to share it in full. In 2018, The Seattle Times wrote about a woman named Amanda Ogle in a piece titled “A $21,634 bill? How a homeless woman fought her way out of tow-company hell.” The piece only begins to scratch the surface of Ogle’s perseverance, but thankfully it’s explored in-depth in Tow, which had its world premiere at Tribeca. 

Helmed by veteran television director Stephanie Laing, the inspired-by-a-true story film centers on Ogle’s plight as an unhoused individual fighting a broken system after her car is stolen, towed, sold, and then held hostage by a towing company for over a year as they added charge after charge to her bill.  Laing and screenwriters Jonathan Keasey, Brant Boivin, Annie Weisman are smart to widen the aperture beyond the legal battle through an examination of society’s preconceived notions about addiction and homelessness. Helping their case is a tremendous lead turn by Rose Bryne, who brings Ogle’s story through an affecting exploration of a mother’s will to reunite with her estranged daughter.

As Ogle picks up the pieces of her life at a women’s shelter, each supporting role in a deep ensemble adds layers, from Octavia Spencer as the shelter manager to The Holdovers’ Dominic Sessa as a young lawyer on a mission to win her car back, and Ariana DeBose and Demi Lovato’s characters who are at different points of motherhood and wrestling their own demons. – CL

Sovereign

There is something to be said about telling stories based on true events that depict a specific point of view. In the past, we all knew what was “right” and what was “wrong.” These days the line somehow has blurred, and it’s a brave thing to put the likes of Jerry (Nick Offerman) and Joe Kane (Jacob Tremblay) as the protagonists of your film. 

As a father and son who believe in the sovereign citizenship movement, Jerry and Joe’s beliefs, while maybe shared by many, are flawed, to put it mildly. And as the bank tries to take back their home after unpaid mortgage payments pile up, Jerry falls back on a strict regiment of talking points that scream anti-government and anti-establishment. In other words, he retreats into an extreme point of view.

While Sovereign is in no way trying to use its beliefs as the basis of a morality play, the film becomes a deeply impactful study in the importance and power of parental guidance, and just how quickly it can go wrong—even for those on either side of the fence. Offerman and Tremblay are at their best, too, in this soul-searching tragedy that needs to be seen. – Matt Schuchman

A Tree Fell in the Woods

Now don’t be shocked when I say that A Tree Fell in the Woods is not necessarily an exceptional film. It is funny, quirky, and heartfelt. But this story is nothing new and certainly not life-changing. Sure, the fact that a tree actually does fall, and this isn’t just one big allegory for philosophers to argue over, is a nice early twist. But why this film needs to be mentioned is due to its performances.

Daveed Diggs, Josh Gad, and Ashley Park all hit it out of the park in see-sawing character revelations at every turn. Still, Alexandra Daddario (who has never been a bad actress), simply kills it in a performance that just oozes with pitch perfect delivery. From calm, cool, and collected, to manically cynical and sarcastic, she shows some chops that have gone greatly underappreciated. This is Daddario’s showcase and she needs to be recognized for what she pulls off in a small group of A+ talent. – MS