The Audience Votes "Give Up Tomorrow" Best Film of 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

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And the votes are in. The 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival (TFF) announced the documentary film 'Give Up Tomorrow' as the winner of the Heineken Audience Award. The film’s director, Michael Collins, will receive a cash prize of $25,000.

Give Up Tomorrow which also received a Special Jury Mention in the World Documentary Competition at this year’s TFF reportedly played to rapturous response and standing ovations.  The film was also supported by the Tribeca Film Institute’s Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, and the filmmaker is an alumnus of the Tribeca Film Institute’s Tribeca All Access program. {jathumbnail off}

2011 Tribeca Film Festival: One on One with director Eva Mulvad of The Good Life

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The Good Life premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by Eva Mulvad, the film documents "How do you cope with being broke after having lived a life of luxury and privilege? This is the fundamental question facing spoiled Anne Mette and her mother, a once-rich family now living off a small pension and struggling to adapt to their new situation in a coastal Portuguese hamlet. A Grey Gardens for the current financial era, The Good Life is a character study at turns touching and frustrating, but ultimately poignant."

Interview with director Eva Mulvad of "The Good Life" {jathumbnail off}

One-One with the Filmmakers & Stars of taut legal drama "Puncture"

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The film “Puncture” is a smart, wonderfully grown-up and wound tight courtroom drama-slash-political thriller, driven in part by a tour de force performance from Chris Evans playing hot-shot and hot-headed, drug-addled attorney Mark Weiss. The film also boasts the steady, balancing hand of co-director and co-star Mark Kassan. Mark co-directs with his brother Adam. (They formerly brought the unusual and beautifully well-acted “Bernard and Doris,” starring Susan Sarandon, to HBO recently.)

I sat down with Chris Evans, the brothers Kassan, and the lovely Vinessa Shaw, who plays the film’s heart beat and literal face of the movie’s subject- the terrifying fact that front-care and ER healthcare workers were once infected by AIDs and Hepatitis C on a daily basis  by accidental needle stabs. When an engineer develops a non-reusable needle that is literally “accident-proof,” the movie heats up as law partners Paul Danziger (Mark Kassan) and Mike Weiss (Chris Evans) take on the case to battle the largest manufacturer of plastic needles in the world. Billed as a “David & Goliath legal drama,” the film world premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. {jathumbnail off}

2011 Tribeca Film Festival Winners; She Monkeys, Bombay Beach Win Top Jury Awards

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The 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival announced the winners of its competition categories tonight at a ceremony hosted at the W Union Square in New York City. The Festival runs through May 1, 2011 including screenings of all winning films.

Following are the 2011 winners:{jathumbnail off}

Tribeca Film Festival: One-on-One with “Treatment” Co-Directors and Star Steven Schardt and Sean Nelson

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What if you are a struggling screenwriter that needs a real break? What if your favorite A-list star just checked into rehab, and you decide all you need to do to pitch him your movie is get yourself duly check-in there? Sean Nelson and Steven Schardt co-direct Treatment, this sweetly wry and generationally pitch-perfect tale of friendship, creative delusion and celebrity obsession. Starring Josh Leonard, Sean Nelson, Ross Partridge, Jessica Makinson and Brie Larson, from a script conceived by Schardt and written by Nelson, Vimooz.com had the luck to sit down the film’s two directors (and writer/star!) – Steven Schardt and Sean Nelson. You can see the film at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival this week on Friday, April 29th at the AMC Loews Village at 4 pm. {jathumbnail off}

Tribeca Film Festival: One on One with Mateo Gil, director of western, “Blackthorn”

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The Tribeca Film Festival’s lineup describes Mateo Gil’s blazing new western, “Blackthorn” as about “...the final years in the life of legendary bandit Butch Cassidy, which are shrouded in mystery, from his rumored death in a Bolivian military standoff, to his escape from South America to die quietly on a Nevada ranch the 1930s. In Mateo Gil's intimate and adventurous Western, a re-imagined and aged Butch Cassidy (Sam Shepard) is living under the assumed name James Blackthorn, in a secluded village in Bolivia, 20 years after his disappearance in 1908. Surviving humbly off the land, and finding occasional comforts with a local woman, Yana (Magaly Solier, The Milk of Sorrow), he longs to end his personal exile and return to the US to see his family. Reluctantly joining forces with a Spanish mine robber (Eduardo Noriega) who promises him a cut of the loot, Blackthorn sets out on one final adventure… and discovers he's not the only one harboring a deep secret.”  Stephen Rea also gives a sensational performance as an ex-Pinkerton cop, who never quite got over having never brought Butch and Sundance to custody.

The film has an incredible depth and quiet beauty, and Sam Shepherd  gives the performance of his career. {jathumbnail off}

The Weinstein Company picks up 2011 Tribeca Film Festival documentary THE BULLY PROJECT

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The Weinstein Company (TWC) announced today that it has acquired THE BULLY PROJECT, the new documentary from Emmy and Sundance award-winning filmmaker Lee Hirsch (AMANDLA! A REVOLUTION IN FOUR PART HARMONY) that premiered at the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival on Saturday, April 23.

THE BULLY PROJECT is directed by Lee Hirsch, produced by Hirsch and Cynthia Lowen, and written by Lowen and Hirsch. Cindy Waitt is the executive producer. {jathumbnail off}

Filmmaker Alma Har’el discusses her gorgeous and groundbreaking new documentary “Bombay Beach”

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I met with the amazing, charismatic and riveting documentary director Alma Har’el, to discuss her first film, the documentary “Bombay Beach,” which is shaping up to be the surprise runaway hit of the Tribeca Film Festival. Shot on a $600 consumer camcorder (using 35 mm lenses), Har’el discusses her background in photography, music videos,  video/concert imagery, and PSAs, how she secured three Bob Dylan songs, and her obsessive love for the band Beirut, whose music comprises most of her magical soundtrack. {jathumbnail off}

Documentary Highlights of 2011 Tribeca Film Festival

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Being overwhelmed at Tribeca is not unusual; there is a huge amount of cinema to choose from. Vimooz is here to help! Here are some films that we find to be highlights of the fest, either hidden gems we’ve mentioned, films generating a buzz, or films that are simply not to be missed. These are some documentary feature highlights, put into general categories to give an idea of what kinds of films they are. Of course, many of these films crossover into different categories, and could be included in any or all of them, as complex as they are. But when delving through the many choices Tribeca offers, it helps to have an idea of what subject a film fits into.

Tribeca Film Festival: director Michael Collins documents the plight of 19-year-old suspect Paco Larrañaga in 'Give Up Tomorrow'

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Making its international premiere at the the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival, the documentary film 'Give Up Tomorrow' from director Michael Collins, documents the plight of 19 year-old Paco Larrañaga.