Curtain goes up on 2024 Tribeca Festival, with tribute to Robert De Niro

The Tribeca Festival returns to screens and event venues across New York City on Wednesday, showcasing 114 feature-length narrative and documentary films — many of them world or New York premieres — along with shorts, revivals and restorations, filmmaker Q&As, audio storytelling, and music performances.

This year marks the 23rd edition of the festival, which was launched in 2002 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff to help revitalize a city wounded by 9/11. Since then it has grown into a major event for film lovers and media figures that also encompasses non-cinematic art forms: podcasts, demos of role-playing games, immersive art, and virtual reality/augmented reality exhibitions. This year's film slate was selected from more than 13,000 submissions, more than ever before.

Tribeca was conceptualized as a storytelling festival, said festival director and VP of programming Cara Cusumano, "and that's been kind of our guiding light and the root of where all these other programs evolved from. Where is the most interesting storytelling happening? How are audiences today consuming stories? Increasingly it's not always a 90-minute feature film experience."