Robert De Niro recently opened up about how the Tribeca Film Festival, one of the most popular film festivals, came to be. She shared details on how the event started in the aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy and how De Niro and a few others took the lead to make it happen despite everything going on at the time.
Robert De Niro talks about the origins of the Tribeca Film Festival
While in conversation with PEOPLE, the veteran actor looked back on his early years in the industry. He shared, “We had talked about maybe doing a festival. It wasn’t really a serious conversation. We were sort of kicking it around. And then when 9/11 happened, we wanted to revitalise the neighbourhood, to say the least. And so we talked about actually doing it, and we said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Just made the commitment.”De Niro’s partner, Jane Rosenthal, aimed to create a space to bring the community together after the division 9/11 caused. During the interview, she added, “I mean, we felt we had to do something because I keep saying we weren’t firefighters or steel workers, so what could we do to help? Put on the screening, put on a show, and try to provide a new memory.” Rosenthal further shared that it was the “producers’ mentality” at the time that made them confident enough that they would be able to finish working on a film festival in three months, the way they were able to make a film in three months.De Niro and Rosenthal recently starred in ‘Tribeca 25,’ a documentary film about how ‘The Intern’ actor and Jane Rosenthal created the Tribeca Festival from scratch, especially around the time of the 9/11 attacks when resources were scarce to bring the community back together.The outlet shared an excerpt from the ‘Goodfellas’ actor’s segment in the movie, where De Niro added that they had bare-minimum resources compared to many other film festivals. He recalled, “We had 120 days, 1,300 volunteers, no money, no blueprint, just an idea and a neighbourhood that needed people back in it. This wasn’t just about movies; it was about whether downtown was coming back.” In the segment from the film, Rosenthal mentioned, “Some of the toughest things were figuring out what movie theatres we could go into. We had to go in wearing hazmat suits.”The festival was announced in November 2001 and commenced for the first time on May 8, 2002. For the first edition of the film festival, they received around 10,000 submissions, out of which only 150 were selected and played on screens over the course of five days.
Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal shared that they had a constant reminder of why they were doing this
During the film, De Niro said, “You looked out the window, and [the site of the Twin Towers] was still smoking. That kept things in perspective,” while Jane shared that even when things became hard, she just reminded herself to “look left” to remember why they had put together the film festival in such a rush in the first place.The documentary film has been released on Netflix and will be available for streaming.