Tribeca Film Festival 2018: TV and N.O.W. Announcement

The Tribeca Film Festival, presented by AT&T, will debut highly anticipated TV shows and introduce audiences to online storytellers without boundaries in its Tribeca TV and N.O.W. (New Online Work) sections. The Tribeca TV line-up includes 18 shows made up of eight series premieres, three season premieres, one mid-season premiere, two feature documentaries and five indie pilots.
The 5th edition of N.O.W. includes 12 programs in the Episodic and Short Form Showcases, in addition to the Creators Market. N.O.W. will also present five The New York Times Op-Docs. The Tribeca Film Festival takes place April 18-29.
This year’s Tribeca TV lineup includes world premieres of new series, including Rest In Power: The Trayvon Martin Story, from Executive Producer Jay-Z, based on the timely book of the same title; Sweetbitter, a coming-of-age series about a young woman working the restaurant industry in New York City and Cobra Kai, with Ralph Macchio reprising his iconic role from The Karate Kid franchise.
Two feature films exploring iconic television shows will World Premiere: Freaks and Geeks: The Documentary, looking at the fan favorite with a dedicated cult following, created by Paul Feig and executive produced by Judd Apatow and Mr. SOUL!, which focuses on the groundbreaking show Soul!, which presented the breadth of black artistry and culture for the first time to nationwide audiences via the medium of television. National Geographic’s acclaimed Genius series returns to Tribeca with Genius: Picasso, starring Antonio Banderas, on the heels of the series’ world premiere at last year’s festival. The star-studded cast of HBO’s hit series Westworld, Evan Rachel Wood, Thandie Newton, Jeffrey Wright, andJames Marsden will be in attendance for the New York premiere of season two’s premiere episode. Tribeca TV also presents the best in new independent voices in episodic television with its Pilot Season section with five new unaffiliated projects.
“Tribeca TV has become a destination for some of the most highly anticipated and well-received shows on television,” said Cara Cusumano, Director of Programming at the Tribeca Film Festival.  “While we continue that tradition with an exciting slate of new and returning series premieres, we also sought to pay homage to the rich cultural history of TV through two feature documentaries about groundbreaking shows of the past, and all-new episodes of a true-crime trailblazer.”
The N.O.W. Showcase features the latest work from 18 unique online creators who are using their platforms to tell original stories. In the Episodic Showcase the projects range from coming-of-age stories about gender non-conforming friends in Dinette, to Snugglr, a comedic series about a young Turkish woman who takes up the strange profession of cuddling with strangers for profit, to an animated series based on the Oscar^®-nominated short film Pig: The Dam Keeper Poems.  Some of the works in the Short Form Showcase include a documentary about the devastating water crisis in Flint, Michigan called Flint is a Place; a film set in the dystopian future wherein an aging fisherman in Vietnam discovers an android woman from his past called The Last Fisherman; and Crime Cutz, a hybrid documentary-music video all set to the music of the band Holy Ghost!
These online creators, as well as an additionally curated 15 participants – including, for the first time, VR and immersive filmmakers – are invited to take part in the Tribeca Creators Market – a private industry market that brings creators together with distributors, brands, and MCNs to pitch and discuss their latest work.
“We started Tribeca N.O.W. five years ago to recognize a truly unique brand of storytellers emerging from the online space,” said Liza Domnitz, Senior Programmer, Tribeca Film Festival.  “Here were creators who found the Wild West landscape of the web the perfect playground for their hysterical, provocative and moving visions. Tribeca is proud to be a leader in recognizing these diverse filmmakers who, this year, have created vastly different work ranging from an episodic, dark comedy about addiction, to a visual extension of a popular podcast, to a serial version of a beloved Oscar^®-nominated animated short film.”
The Tribeca Film Festival continues to serve as an artist’s launching pad across platforms. Last year, the Tribeca TV section featured the world premieres of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, USA Network’s The Sinner, and National Geographic’s Genius. In 2016, HBO’s The Night Of and AMC’s The Night Manager series premiered at the Festival. Highlights from the past five years of the N.O.W. program include High Maintenance from Ben Sinclair and Katja Blichfeld, which was picked up by HBO, The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo from Brian Jordan Alvarez, which went on to receive a Breakthrough Series – Short Form nomination at the Gotham Awards and You’re So Talented by Samantha Bailey which was nominated for a Gotham Award.