Best of this year’s offerings at Tribeca Film Festival include ‘The Eclipse,’ ‘Racing Dreams’

The films that highlighted this year’s Tribeca

NEW YORK — Slimmed down to 85 films, the eighth annual Tribeca Film Festival, which wrapped Sunday, nevertheless had one of its most successful years — at least in terms of the films screened.

Moviegoers stumbled across quality films with ease and distributors even found a few movies worth acquiring — a notable feat in the current climate of independent film.

Woody Allen’s new one (”Whatever Works”) premiered and Steven Soderbergh showed his latest, “The Girlfriend Experience,” a modest film shot with nonprofessional actors.

“City Island” won the audience award. The comedy stars Andy Garcia as a prison guard who hides his secret love — acting — from his family, who live in the New York City fishing community of City Island.

“Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi,” about the kidnapping of an Afghan hired by foreign journalists, was acquired by HBO, and its director, Ian Olds, won the prize for best new documentary filmmaker.

PBS bought Spike Lee’s “Passing Strange” — a documentary of the rock musical by the same name. Lee’s Kobe Bryant documentary, “Kobe Doin’ Work,” was also screened at the festival.

But a handful of films stood out even among this group. Here are the five films from Tribeca that most impressed this writer.

“THE ECLIPSE”: Possibly the hottest property at Tribeca, it may have also been the best. Director Conor McPherson, the Irish playwright of “The Seafarer” and “The Weir,” is already one of the most admired figures in theater. “The Eclipse” is a fully realized cinematic equivalent of the haunted tales he’s created on the stage. Ciaran Hinds (HBO’s “Rome”) stars as a father and widower who begins to see ghosts at the same time he meets a writer of ghost stories (Iben Hjejle). Hinds won best actor at the festival, and Magnolia Pictures purchased the film.

“RACING DREAMS”: Directed by Marshall Curry, “Racing Dreams” won for best documentary at Tribeca. It follows three young racing enthusiasts who — though several years shy of being eligible for a driver’s license — dream of growing up to be NASCAR drivers. The story of these pint-sized Jeff Gordons is in many ways simply about childhood, about 12-year-olds balancing their race to adulthood with simply wanting to be a kid. Curry’s last film, “Street Fight,” was nominated for an Academy Award.

“IN THE LOOP”: This ultra-dry political satire built on its positive reception at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by British TV veteran Armando Iannucci and co-starring James Gandolfini as an army general, “In the Loop” portrays Beltway insiders and Downing Street politicians in a rush to war. Most are comical, unknowing puppets yielding to the more powerful. Call it a “Dr. Strangelove” for today’s times.

“ABOUT ELLY”: A hit at the Berlin Film Festival, “About Elly” won best narrative film at Tribeca. The fourth film from Iranian director Asghar Farhadi (who won best director at Berlin) follows a group of college friends taking a weekend trip from Tehran to the Caspian Sea. Everything falls apart, though, after a tragic accident. But it’s not the event that leaves a mark so much as the group’s reaction, which illuminates the complicated gender roles of Iranian culture.

“BLANK CITY”: Recessions aren’t all bad. That’s part of the lesson derived from “Blank City,” a documentary about the No Wave and Cinema of Transgression films that came out of ’70s New York — specifically the East Village and Lower East Side scene that coincided and overlapped with the music of the Ramones, Television and Blondie. In “Blank City,” downtown filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch, Steve Buscemi, John Lurie and Nick Zedd discuss what made ’70s New York — dangerous and poor — so inspiring.

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