Tribeca Film Festival Award Winners

The Tribeca Film Festival wound down yesterday, with awards going to Chinese film "Green Hat" for best narrative film and best new narrative filmmaker (Liu Fen Dou), documentaries "Arna's Children" (Israel) and "The Man Who Stole My Mother's Face" (South Africa & Australia) sharing best documentary, and Paulo Sacramento ("The Prisoner of the Iron Bars: Self-Portraits") for best new documentary filmmaker. What's interesting is that last year's narrative winner, Blind Shaft, was released without much hoopla in February. Does winning in Tribeca mean that much, if the U.S. distributor can't drum up an audience for it? Gothamist hopes that this means that these films will find audiences in the U.S. Chances are that Green Hat (pictured left), which Times film critic A.O. Scott likened to Reservoir Dogs, will get a healthy push whenever its released.

Gothamist got the chance to see the Audience Award winner, Every Mother's a Son, a 52-minute documentary about mothers whose sons were victims of police brutality: Iris Baez, mother of Anthony Baez who was choked by a police officer in 1994 when his football accidentally hit a patrol car; Katiadou Diallo whose son Amadou was shot at 41 times; and Doris Bush-Doskey, mother of Gary "Gidone" Busch who was shot by police in Boro Park for holding a ceremonial hammer. A moving documentary about the double-edged sword about wanting a safer city at the expense of civil rights and how these three women have become advocates and symbols of combatting police brutality, it also speaks to these three women from very different backgrounds, the Puerto Rican Bronx, African immigrant in Harlem, and a white Jew, having this terrible common cause to bring them together and help each other. The Daily News reported that Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly went to one of the screenings, which seemed to be a different tack than his predecessor, Howard Safir, would have taken. Commissioner Kelly's statement said, "The documentary involved the New York City Police Department, so I thought it was important that I see it. I have children myself, and I am empathetic to any parent who loses a child. Usually, they are parents of police officers killed in the line of duty." Commissioner Kelly has been praised by the community, though damned by the police union, for his handling of the shooting death of Timothy Stansbury, by a police officer on a Brooklyn rooftop.

Every Mother's Son will air this August on PBS's P.O.V. Watch the trailer here. And filmmakers Tami Gold and Kelly Anderson have been making this film for the past few years.

Did you go to the Tribeca Film Festival? What did you think?