Tribeca Film Fest line-up includes Allen and Soderbergh

A streamlined line-up for the Tribeca Film Festival was announced this week, headlined by movies from Woody Allen and Steven Soderbergh.

Allen’s Whatever Works, his new Larry David collaboration, will open the festival April 22. Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience, which premiered at Sundance to muted response and follows a high-end New York hooker, will play out of competition.

The condensed line-up (there will be fewer than 100 movies screened this year, a reduction of nearly a third) has been attributed both to economic worries and calculated artistic choices. The festival also froze ticket prices at $8-$15.

Among the less boldface titles that will screen include Easy Virtue, a comedy about a man (Ben Barnes) who takes his American fiancée to meet his very English parents; Stay Cool, a comedy from the Polish brothers (Twin Falls Idaho) with Winona Ryder; and About Elly, an Iranian drama that was a major hit at the Berlin fest.

The vaunted documentary series will include Fixer, about the Taliban’s kidnapping of an Italian man who was an invaluable resource for journalists in Afghanistan, and Outrage, from Kirby Dick (This Film is Not Yet Rated), about the uniquely American phenomenon of anti-gay officials who turn up in bed next to people of the same sex.

The Tribeca festival, which runs April 22 through May 3 in New York, was founded in the wake of Sept. 11 in part to revitalize the Lower Manhattan neighborhood. Check out the full line-up here.

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