My Father, Dark Side Finish on Top at Tribeca

By S.T. VanAirsdale

So it's May 4, and the festival ends May 6, and the party occurred in Chinatown, but Thursday night's Tribeca Awards Show wasn't necessarily about rhyme or reason -- it was about hardware and oversize fortune cookies with winners' names tucked inside and Tribeca getting the whole awards thing over with a few days early so as to move onto its last weekend with as much momentum as possible. (And maybe the massive Jing Fong restaurant costs more to rent on Saturdays? I don't know.) At any rate, the fest offered up a slew of prizes, including the top narrative award to My Father My Lord (reviewed by Eric Kohn here on The Reeler) and the top documentary prize to the grim torture expose Taxi to the Dark Side (also reviewed by Kohn).

Class of '07: The Tribeca prize winners in attendance at Thursday's awards show and party (Photo: STV)

"The note was struck earlier about the origins of this festival," Gibney said during his acceptance speech. "I can remember being here in the days after 9/11 as the caissons rolled by St. Patrick's Cathedral, thinking that out of the wreckage downtown, there was a sense of hope. There was a tremendous sense of solidarity and determination, and people all over the world looked around and said, 'We're all New Yorkers.' There was that sense. And yet I feared along the way that sense of purpose and that sense of hope for a better world was hijacked by some people who played on our fears and in a way took us on a journey to the dark side, as Dick Cheney reminded us in the days after 9/11. So it's my hope that this film will be something of a prod to have us change drivers in our national taxi -- turn the taxi around and take us back in the other direction that was originally part of the hope and determination that this festival represents and that New York is very much a part of."

Meanwhile, the New York awards went to The Education of Charlie Banks for narrative and A Walk Into the Sea for documentary. The Reeler hears that a distribution deal is imminent for the latter film; Charlie Banks director Fred Durst fled town before he could pick up his prize or distribution (his star, the gregarious Jesse Eisenberg, accepted in Durst's stead). For more with Durst and Walk Into the Sea director Esther Robinson, visit our ReelerTV and Director Spotlight sections respectively.

The full list of winners follows the jump; all of them screen at least once more in the days ahead, so check the Tribeca schedule for dates and times.

• The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature – My Father My Lord (Hofshat Kaits), directed by David Volach (Israel)

• Best New Narrative Filmmaker – Two Embraces (Dos Abrazos), directed by Enrique Begne (Mexico)

• Best Actor in a Narrative Feature Film – Lofti Edbelli in Making Of (Akher film), directed by Nouri Bouzid (Tunisia, Morocco)

• Best Actress in a Narrative Feature Film – Marina Hands in Lady Chatterley, directed by Pascale Ferran (France, Belgium)

• Best Screenplay – Making Of (Akher film), written and directed by Nouri Bouzid (Tunisia, Morocco). Honorable Mentions: Lost in Beijing (Ping Guo), screenwriters Li Yu &Fang Li, directed by Li Yu (China). Half Moon (Niwemang), screenwriter/director Bahman Ghobadi (Iran, Iraq, Austria, France).

• Best Documentary Feature – Taxi to the Dark Side, directed by Alex Gibney (U.S.A.)

• Best New Documentary Filmmaker – A Story of People in War & Peace, directed by Vardan Hovhannisyan (Armenia). Special Jury Mention – Documentary - We Are Together (Thina Simunye), directed by Paul Taylor (U.K.)

• “NY Loves Film” - Documentary – A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and The Warhol Factory, directed by Esther Robinson (U.S.A.)

• “Made In NY” – Narrative – The Education of Charlie Banks, directed by Fred Durst (U.S.A.)

• “Made In NY” Special Jury Recognition – Narrative – The Killing of John Lennon, directed by Andrew Piddington (U.K.)

• Best Narrative Short – The Last Dog in Rwanda (Den sista hunden i Rwanda), directed by Jens Assur (Sweden)

• Special Jury Prize for Best Narrative Short – Super Powers, directed by J. Anderson Mitchell & Jeremy Kipp Walker (U.S.A.)

• Best Documentary Short – A Son's Sacrifice, directed by Yoni Brook (U.S.A.)

• Student Visionary Award – Good Luck Nedim (Sretan Put Nedime), directed by Marko
Santic (Slovenia)
.
• Student Visionary Award – Someone Else's War, directed by Lee Wang (U.S.A./Philippines)

• Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award – Documentary – Dee Rees for her documentary work-in-progress, Eventual Salvation, which follows an 80-year-old grandmother who returns to Liberia to rebuild her life and community after years of civil war. Honorable mention – Ultimate Christian Wrestling by Jae-Ho Chang and Tara Autovino

• Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award – Narrative – Ben Rekhi for his current screenplay, Waste, co-written by John Campo, which tells the story of a widowed NYC sanitation worker who must negotiate his relationship with his son after he becomes a key figure in a labor dispute.

• Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award – Screenwriting – Marilyn Fu for her screenplay, The Sisterhood of Night, an adaptation of the short story by Pulitzer Prize winner Steven Millhauser. Caryn Waechter is attached to direct. Honorable mention - Last Road Home by Roberto Marinas

• Recipient of the 2007 Tribeca/Sloan Screenplay Development Program Grant – David Freeman for A First Class Man

• L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Vision Award – Cherien Dabis for her screenplay Amreeka

Posted at May 4, 2007 12:39 AM