Al-Qaeda to Zonad: Highlights from the Tribeca Film Festival

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Al-Qaeda to Zonad: Highlights from Tribeca Fest

NEW YORK — If there was one film that reflected the ninth annual Tribeca Film Festival, it was the story of a young man who pursues his peculiar, nearly insane vision until his determination wins over everyone.

“The Trotsky” stars Jay Baruchel (”Undeclared,” ”Tropic Thunder”) as a Canadian high schooler, Leon, who believes he’s the reincarnation of Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky. It may not be a great film (its conceit is stretched as far it will go), but it’s original and charming.

Leon’s union-forming quest is quixotic, not unlike the journeys of so many of the 85 filmmakers who brought movies to Tribeca, which wrapped up Sunday. Finding an audience for independent films and documentaries has rarely been more difficult, yet wonderful movies are still being made around the world.

Tribeca’s offerings can be a mixed bag, but this year’s edition seemed more likely than previous festivals to entertain a moviegoer wandering into a randomly picked screening. There was the poetic (the Iranian fable “White Meadows”), the crowd-pleasing (the rock band documentary “Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage,” which won the audience award), the difficult to categorize (”The Arbor,” a fusion of fiction and documentary) and the brutal (”Dog Pound,” the violent and highly memorable story of a youth correctional facility).

There were many more, and surely some that slipped by. But here are a handful of the highlights from the festival:

GIBNEY’S SPITZER: Alex Gibney, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker of “Taxi to the Dark Side” and “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” was ubiquitous at Tribeca, where he had three films. None was more anticipated nor captivating as his yet untitled documentary about Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York. Spitzer participated in the film and hearing him speak, clad in a tailored suit and talking straight to the camera, is riveting. Gibney’s “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” a cinematic adaptation of Lawrence Wright’s stage play that was picked up for distribution by HBO Documentary Films, was also fascinating — and in a very different way from the Spitzer film, haunting.

MICMACS: Jean-Pierre Jeunet (”Amelie,” ”Delicatessen”) may be the only filmmaker who rivals Wes Anderson in colorfulness of palate. The French filmmaker, also like Anderson, delights in the nostalgia of old objects. “Micmacs” is a surreal comedy about a group of homeless who refashion junk into whimsical creations, and use their creativity to bring down a pair of weapons dealers. It’s a little like Calder’s “Circus” made into a movie, with a revenge plot added in. It’s also the most surprising film to include a Robert De Niro impression — a fitting designation considering the actor co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival.

FREAKONOMICS: Just as inventiveness trumps might in “Micmacs,” ”Freakonomics” celebrates smarts. The closing night film of the festival, “Freakonomics” (to be released by Magnolia Pictures this fall), is the quirky adaptation of the best-selling book by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner. Just as Dubner constructed Levitt’s analysis into storytelling for the book, “Freakonomics” further enlivens the same subjects, turning to a handful of directors: Gibney, Morgan Spurlock, Seth Gordon, Eugene Jarecki, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady. It creates a domino-like effect, where one person’s creativity inspires another’s and another’s.

ZONAD: Shocking in its absurd comedy, “Zonad” likely led Tribeca in jaws dropped. It was co-written and co-directed by the Irish brothers John and Keiran Carney. John last directed the indie hit musical romance “Once,” and “Zonad” couldn’t be further from it. “Zonad” follows an overweight drunk who, after fleeing a rehabilitation clinic, takes refuge in a small Irish town where, thanks to his vinyl red suit, is taken for a spaceman. Oh, and it’s set in the ’50s. It would be difficult to do justice to the movie’s fun offbeat style; the Carneys have described it as John Ford’s “The Quiet Man” by way of Mel Brooks. It’s the stuff of cult and doesn’t yet have distribution, but expect to see it playing to raucous crowds at midnight somewhere in a year or five.

TWO ESCOBARS: ESPN has commissioned 30 documentaries for its “30 for 30″ series. Some have been good and some have been bad, but “Two Escobars” is its triumph. The movie tells the story of the early ’90s Colombian national soccer team, which came into the 1994 World Cup with high expectations and quickly exited partially thanks to an infamous own goal. “Two Escobars” explores that tale by charting the paths of two people: Andres Escobar, the player who committed that own goal and who was later killed; and Pablo Escobar, then the country’s most power drug lord. Few movies have better documented both the good and bad of sports.

Eds: SUBS 6th graf to CORRECT that ‘My Trip to Al-Qaeda’ was picked up by HBO, not the Spitzer doc.