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Some of the titles we’re most looking forward to, from docs about pranksters to revivals of Abel Ferrara classics.

2022 is the year that film festivals are dipping their toes back into full-fledged in-person events — though thankfully, more than a few are keeping their hybrid components for those who either a) don’t want to risk COVID or b) don’t want to risk bankrupting themselves to fly out of town. Still, the Tribeca Film Festival has so far seemed to learn all the right lessons from the last two years, boasting both a full line-up of IRL screenings and a hefty Tribeca at Home catalog so everyone can follow along at home.

Whether you’re seeing this latest crop of new and exciting films from legendary and novice artists alike, we wanted to highlight some of the titles we’re most jazzed to see at this year’s festival. And look out for reviews and dispatches throughout the festival, which runs from June 8-19. [Clint Worthington, founder and editor-in-chief]

Chop & Steele

One of the quirkier, more appealing corners of New York comedy is the Found Footage Festival, a melange of chintzy VHS tapes curated by Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher. But in their off-hours, they also pull pranks on unsuspecting morning shows, including one that actually lands them in legal trouble. This doc is a charming, lighthearted ode to the lengths people will go for the gag, and what happens when a lifelong friendship starts to clash against the priorities most grownups have to contend with. [CW]

Corner Office

Post-Mad Men Jon Hamm has had an interesting career, one defined by frequent dips into comedy with the occasional chiseled-jaw supporting role. But in Corner Office, we might well see Hamm reach his full potential once more, this time as a rigid office drone bristling against the complaining of his coworkers in a slick, surreal office satire from Joachim Back. Hopefully, it’ll give off Severance vibes in the best possible way, with a workplace as tackily decorated as its politics are inscrutable. [CW]

Dreaming Walls: Inside the Chelsea Hotel

It used to be home to counterculture visionaries like Patti Smith and Bob Dylan; now the infamous Chelsea Hotel is a crumbling artifice of brick and mortar whose decade-long attempts at renovation both invigorate and piss off its eclectic band of current occupants. Directors Maya Duverdier and Amélie van Elmbt give us an immediate, immersive look at these characters, honing in on their eccentricities while reminding us through artful projections of the ghosts that still linger in those hallowed halls. [CW]

Lynch/Oz

Over the course of his previous films, documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe has explored the profound cultural impact of such films as Psycho (78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene), Alien (Memory: The Origins of Alien) and The Exorcist (Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist). For his latest work, he takes another classic piece of cinema, The Wizard of Oz, and examines its legacy via the influence that it has had on filmmaker David Lynch over the course of his own considerable career. [Peter Sobczynski]

Ms. 45

Okay, this one is a bit of a cheat, I suppose, since it is a retrospective screening of Abel Ferrara’s 1981 exploitation classic about a mute garment worker (the late Zoe Lund in an incredibly charismatic performance) who, after being attacked and raped twice in one day, snaps and begins cruising the sleazy streets of New York to murder men with her titular weapon. Sort of the Promising Young Woman of its day—only good, of course—this is a strange and unnerving work that knocked grindhouse viewers for a loop back in the day and still packs a mighty wallop today. As an added bonus, Ferrara himself is currently scheduled to appear at the screening as well. [PS]

Official Competiton

You can hardly call yourself a film festival without featuring at least one entry about the filmmaking process itself—preferably featuring big stars poking fun at themselves. That slot appears to be filled here with this satire from Mariano Cohn and Gaston Duprat in which an internationally celebrated auteur (Penélope Cruz) and a big Hollywood star (Antonio Banderas) are among the high-powered talents brought together by a billionaire hoping to break into the film business in a big way. [PS]

Rounding

As an outlet largely based in Chicago, we’re always excited to see local boys make good – that’s certainly the case for Rounding, the newest from Saint Frances director Alex Thompson. Set in a rural North Carolina hospital, the film stars newcomer Namir Smallwood as a burnt-out doctor hoping for a fresh start in a new place, only to be beset by nightmares, bureaucracy, and the lingering guilt that’s now reflected in his current patient, a young asthma sufferer played by Never Rarely Sometimes Always breakout Sidney Flanigan. [CW]

Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb

The working relationship between Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Caro and his longtime editor Robert Gottlieb—one that has gone on for over 50 years and is still going strong as they work on the final entry in Caro’s multi-volume biography of Lyndon B. Johnson—is examined in this documentary from Lizzie Gottlieb that also includes commentary from the likes of Bill Clinton, Ethan Hawke and Conan O’Brien. Although I am eager to see this film, I must admit that a part of me is going to spend much of its running time quietly pleading for the two to stop yakking and get back to work on the book. [PS]

The Wild One

This documentary from Tessa Louise Salome takes a look at the fascinating life of Jack Garfein, who survived imprisonment in Auschwitz at the age of 13 and relocated to America, where he helped to change the face of acting as one of the key members of the Actor’s Studio and went on to direct two ahead-of-their-time independent features that dealt with such then-taboo subjects as racism and homosexuality (1957’s The Strange One) and rape (1961’s Something Wild). In addition to Garfein himself, who passed away in 2019, the film also includes commentary on the man and his impact from the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Willem Dafoe, and Patricia Bosworth. [PS]

A Wounded Fawn

Between The Girl on the Third Floor and last year’s stunning horror-comedy Jakob’s Wife, Travis Stevens is proving a horror director to watch. And in a bloated field of male filmmakers trying and failing to prove how much they ‘get’ patriarchy through the lens of horror (looking at you, Alex Garland), his latest, A Wounded Fawn, might just break the curse. Shot with fuzzy, evocative 16mm grain to evoke the folk horror of the ’70s, Stevens cribs from Greek mythology and theatrical artifice to turn a serial killer’s (Josh Ruben) latest kill into a psychosexual dark night of the soul. It’s as wild as it is unpredictable. [CW]