The 10 Best Movies of Tribeca 2022

The 2022 edition of the newly-christened Tribeca Festival (no longer Film Festival) is in the books, and we saw over 40 feature films—from earnest depictions of Holocaust-survivor film directors to tales told in gibberish about a trip to a nudist colony (and that one was only one of two films we saw this year set in naturist establishments). But only a few made the cut to receive special consideration.
Here were our ten favorite films from Tribeca 2022:
1. Of Medicine and MiraclesDirector: Ross Kaufmann
In Ross Kaufmann’s poignant Of Medicine and Miracles, two story strands eventually become interwoven. In the first, a generationally brilliant medical researcher stumbles upon a shocking new approach to stimulate the body into healing itself. In the second, two parents struggle to find treatments that could possibly save their six-year-old daughter from a particularly virulent form of leukemia. Both strands are incredibly compelling; this is a film with both head and heart. The strands, of course, intertwine in more or less the way you’d expect, but Kaufmann keeps us in suspense as to the final outcome. This is the work of a master storyteller.
2. The DropDirector: Sarah Adina Smith
There’s an event early in The Drop that gives the film its name, but it’s so funny and horrifying that it’s best you don’t know about it beforehand. That moment shapes nearly everything that comes afterward. A group of friends have traveled to a Mexican resort for the marriage of Peggy (Jennifer Lafleur) and Mia (Aparna Nancherla). And as in most such indie movies, all the relationships between the characters will be tested by the trip. But Sarah Adina Smith (Buster’s Mal Heart, The Midnight Swim) is so adept at handling character, and she and co-writer Joshua Leonard have produced such natural dialogue, that none of the exchanges feel stale. Each character, and each conversation, feels essential to telling the story. It’s also hilarious.
3. American PainDirector: Darren Foster
Are you down to spend nearly two hours with some of the most loathsome hustlers you’ll ever come across? You’d think that would be a slog, but in the hands of the Emmy-winning Darren Foster (Science Fair), the story of twin brothers who create a Central Florida empire of pain clinics centered around the laughably easy prescriptions for and distribution of pain pills, it’s a ride you won’t mind taking. Foster takes us inside the loathsome brothers’ family history and rise to power and fortune, and also the lives of those who benefited from their perfidy, including hillbilly family crime operations who drive busloads of people from states away to supply their own pill pushers. You won’t be edified, but you’ll certainly be entertained. And as much as you’d like to, you won’t be able to look away.
4. Four SamosasDirector: Ravi Kapur
An Indian American wannabe rapper, Vinny (Venk Potula), finds that his ex-girlfriend Rina (Summer Bishil), who he never got over, is engaged. The engagement wakes him up to the reasons the relationship didn’t work out, so he enlists his friends in a misguided plan to stop the wedding and help his friends finance their dreams. There is never a dull moment in the madcap romp that’s also surprisingly moving.