Once again, the annual Tribeca Festival premiered dozens of features, shorts and documentaries—the latter are what I concentrated on, and as always, the films made for interesting, informative and at times exasperating viewing. 

 

In Shoshannah Stern’s perceptive portrait of the first deaf performer to be nominated for and win an Oscar—for best actress in Children of a Lesser God (1986)—Marlee Matlin (above) lays herself bare, as a deaf person, an actress, and an advocate for the hearing-impaired community. She is remarkably candid about her upbringing, her addictions, her volatile romantic and professional relationship with William Hurt, her uneasiness at becoming the global “face” of the deaf community after winning the Oscar and her satisfaction at the nearly four-decade career she’s had despite many saying she was a one trick pony. Stern also speaks with Aaron Sorkin (who wrote a part in The West Wing specifically for Matlin), Henry Winkler (a close friend for many years), Lauren Ridloff (who played the same role in Lesser God a few years ago and received a Tony nomination) and Randa Haines (who directed the Lesser God film), all of whom illuminate the subject as a performer and, even more importantly, as a person.

 

Everybody knows that Churchill Downs is where the Kentucky Derby has been run for more than 150 years, but director Raúl O. Paz Pastrana focuses his camera on those whom the millions of visitors to horseracing’s most famous race never see—or even knew about. It’s the many workers behind the scenes (at what is considered the track’s “backside”) who groom and clean and pamper and feed and ensure that the horses are ready for training or racing. Pastrana takes his cue from the great Frederick Wiseman for this fly-on-the-wall record of the people (several of whom are migrants) who get no glory but are indispensable in keeping a booming industry going.

 

Briskly directed by Angela Lynn Tucker, this is an edifying examination of Barbara Jordan (above, center), who was a political trailblazer in many ways, including her being the first Black Southern woman elected to Congress, in 1972, which also enabled her to become a clear and articulate voice of reason during the Nixon impeachment hearings. Tucker not only uses well-chosen archival clips of Jordan herself but also conducts new interviews with admirers from Dan Rather to Jasmine Crockett. Narrator Alfre Woodard provides Jordan’s strong, eloquent voice.

 

 

The Mississippi town that still clings to the fantasy of antebellum—that the South before the Civil War was a beautiful and glorious place, ignoring that it was built on the backs of its enslaved people—is chronicled in Suzannah Herbert’s thoughtful documentary that contrasts the booming antebellum tourist business with how local residents and officials are dealing with what’s often been an unspoken history. In this look at a wide array of people on all sides of the divide, Herbert’s camera displays the observational muscle of a Frederick Wiseman, which is high praise indeed.

 

Although not a documentary per se, Jim Sheridan and David Merriman’s tantalizing hybrid tackles a vexing criminal case: in 1996, a French woman was murdered in rural Ireland, and journalist Ian Bailey was a prime suspect who never faced an Irish jury. Playing off 12 Angry Men, the film posits a theoretical trial with evidence presented, actor Colm Meaney playing Bailey, Sheridan himself as the frustrated foreman and the amazing Dutch actress Vicky Krieps as the lone “not guilty” holdout who tries to convince the others that contradictory evidence and witnesses make a conviction anything but clear-cut. 

 

 

In this “visual album” based on her just-released eponymously titled recording, Miley Cyrus (above) and codirectors Jacob Bixenman and Brendan Walter look for some variety in what are basically videos for all 13 songs, mixing straightforward performance clips with elaborately staged and costumed fantasy trips. I’m not a Miley fan, finding her songs repetitive mindless pop, but she does have a good singing voice and a real onscreen presence, so it’s too bad that this comes off as slight and self-indulgent instead of slight and fun. 

 

 

In this devastating short, director Carlos Garcia de Dios follows Victoria Lopez (above), a Minnesota mother of four sentenced to a stupefying 88 months in jail for selling meth, who sees her kids before surrendering to the authorities and starting her jail term. (I’d love to know what sentence that judge would give to a white male frat boy for the same offense). Even though Lopez had her sentence commuted after a year in prison, the film still mortifyingly displays how our unfair justice system affects so many people, including family and friends of those convicted.