Tribeca Festival Features Directorial Debuts From Michael Shannon, Chelsea Peretti and More

For more than 20 years, the Tribeca Festival has given up-and-coming directors a star-studded New York City showcase. This year, though, the fest is offering well-known actors a chance to show up as directors. Michael Shannon, David Duchovny, Chelsea Peretti, Jennifer Esposito, John Slattery, and partners Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater all directed movies that will world premiere there, with Rabe and Linklater, Shannon, Peretti and Esposito making their feature directorial debuts.

In addition to those selections, Tribeca will feature the North American and New York premieres, respectively, of Steve Buscemi’s The Listener, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Venice Film Festival, and Randall Park’s Shortcomings, which debuted at Sundance. And the festival will close with a 30th anniversary screening of A Bronx Tale, the directorial debut of Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro.

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While Tribeca didn’t set out to showcase all these actor-directed films, festival director and vp programming Cara Cusumano says the phenomenon is in line with its support of interdisciplinary storytelling. “Seeing folks crossing in front of and behind the camera and between different storytelling spaces felt like the kind of thing that we’re excited about,” she tells THR.

This year, Tribeca’s storytelling arrives amid the writers strike, and Cusumano says the festival is monitoring things but has not yet had to adjust plans in response to the work stoppage.

Read on for more about this year’s actor-directed world premieres.

Bucky F*cking Dent

Duchovny writes, directs and produces this film adaptation of his novel about a Yankee Stadium vendor and aspiring novelist (Logan Marshall-Green) who returns home to care for his terminally ill, Red Sox-loving father (Duchovny), against the backdrop of the 1978 baseball season, when Bucky Dent ended the Red Sox playoff run. Stephanie Beatriz, Pamela Adlon, Evan Handler and Daphne Rubin-Vega also star.

Downtown Owl

Based on Chuck Klosterman’s novel, Rabe and Linklater’s feature directorial debut follows characters played by Ed Harris, Henry Golding, Vanessa Hudgens, August Blanco Rosenstein, Finn Wittrock and Rabe as they prepare for a historic blizzard in small-town Owl, North Dakota, in 1984, which has them partly isolated from contemporary pop culture. Linklater also wrote the script.

Eric LaRue

Shannon steps behind the camera to helm this adaptation of Brett Neveu’s 2002 play about a mother (Judy Greer) reckoning with her son murdering his high school classmates as she and her husband seek solace in church and she’s urged to meet with the mothers of her son’s victims. Alexander Skarsgard, Tracy Letts and Alison Pill round out the cast.

First Time Female Director

Peretti makes her feature directorial debut with this ensemble comedy she wrote, produces and stars in. After her male predecessor is fired for inappropriate behavior, Peretti’s newly appointed Glendale theater director struggles to stage her Southern rural drama. The cast includes Megan Mullally, Max Greenfield, Blake Anderson, Megan Stalter, Kate Berlant and Amy Poehler, who is also one of the producers.

Fresh Kills

In her feature directorial debut, Esposito focuses on the women of the Larusso Staten Island crime family as they deal with their turbulent world and its unspoken rules in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Esposito also wrote, produced and stars in the film, which features Annabella Sciorra and Domenick Lombardozzi.

Maggie Moore(s)

Slattery’s dark comedy stars fellow Mad Men alum Jon Hamm as a police chief in a small town where two women with the same name are murdered days apart. The film, which also stars Tina Fey and Ted Lasso‘s Nick Mohammed and was written by Paul Bernbaum, sees Hamm’s character trying to solve the case as he deals with nosy neighbors, contract killers, cheating husbands and lonely individuals.

This story first appeared in the May 31 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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