With the 2015 Tribeca film festival entering its final stretch, concluding over the weekend with the world premiere of The Bomb, an installation about today’s nuclear threat, the event gave out its awards on Thursday night.
The big winners were comedian Demetri Martin’s directorial debut Dean, Craig Atkinson’s documentary look at police culture Do Not Resist and Junction 48, a film set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. All three won the top awards in their respective categories, which each come with $20,000 in prizes.
Winning the trophy for best narrative feature was Dean, a comedy starring Martin as a man whose father (Kevin Kline) is in the midst of selling their family home following his mother’s death. Community actor Gillian Jacobs stars as Martin’s love interest.
Do Not Resist topped the world documentary competition. Atkinson’s film, which took the first-time film-maker over two years to complete, explores the rapid militarization of the police in the US.
A second documentary award, the Albert Maysles’s new documentary director prize, went to David Feige for Untouchable, which looks at the effect of strict sex offender laws in the United States.
The Israeli film Junction 48 scored the award for international narrative feature. The title refers to the 1948 Palestine war, the aftermath of which looms over the film, which centers on an aspiring rapper.
Additional awards went to Priscilla Anany, who won the prize for best new narrative director for her Ghanaian film Children of the Mountain, about a woman shunned by her community when her child is born with birth defects, and Rachel Tunnard, winner of the Nora Ephron prize, for her dark comedy Adult Life Skills.
Actors were also singled out for honors, with awards given to Dominic Rains (The Fixer), Mackenzie Davis (Always Shine), Alan Sabbagh (The Tenth Man) and Radhika Apte in Clean Shaven – one part of the anthology film Madly.
