When the actor Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal held the first Tribeca Festival in May 2002, memories from the Sept. 11 attacks eight months before were still fresh.
“I just remember thinking we had to get people back downtown,” said Rosenthal, an Academy Award- and Emmy-nominated producer who worked with her longtime producing partner De Niro and her then-husband, Craig Hatkoff, to plan the first event.
More than 150,000 people attended the first Tribeca Festival, a remarkable turnout for an event organized in only a few months. The five-day showcase featured 150 films, included an appearance by the former South African president Nelson Mandela and generated more than $10 million worth of economic activity for New York City.
Over the nearly 25 years since then, the now-annual event has expanded to 12 days, screened more than 5,000 films from 126 countries and yielded more than $1 billion for the city. The 2026 edition, which runs Wednesday through June 14, will feature more than 118 feature films and 86 shorts from 44 countries, including 103 world premieres.
The success of the festival is undeniable, but change is inevitable. Last fall, Tribeca Enterprises, the media and entertainment company that owns and operates the event, hired a new chief executive, Rebecca Glashow, and Rosenthal became a chair of the company’s board alongside James Murdoch. This will be Glashow’s first festival.
In separate conversations by phone and video call last month, Rosenthal and De Niro, and then Rosenthal and Glashow, reflected on the legacy of the festival, how artificial intelligence is reshaping the film industry, and the films they’re most looking forward to this year. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.
Robert and Jane, you both lived in the city when Sept. 11 happened. What do you remember about that time?
ROBERT DE NIRO I was in a meeting in Midtown, and my son Raphael called me and told me that a 747 had hit the World Trade Center. I had been supposed to go to Los Angeles that day, but instead, I went back to my apartment in TriBeCa and watched what was happening from my window. I saw the South Tower fall first, and I had to turn on CNN to confirm what I was seeing with my own eyes.
JANE ROSENTHAL I was racing downtown for a staff meeting at 9 o’clock. My driver stopped at a yellow light on West Street, a block and a half from where the first tower was hit. I turned around and tried to go back to the office — I was also downtown in 1993 when the towers were hit the first time, and nobody thought it was what it was. Then we heard more information, and I stood in line at a pay phone to call my husband and make sure he could pick up my daughter. It only got scary when I heard they hit the Pentagon. I watched the first tower fall from South Street.
Of all the ways you could try to help a grieving city, why a film festival?
ROSENTHAL Because we’re filmmakers, and that’s what we knew how to do. It was about trying to give the community something to look forward to. Before we did the festival, we had done a series of dinners downtown, which were basically having people go to all these restaurants in Chinatown and Little Italy that were suffering. It was that sense of, how do you get people to come back downtown, and how do you get normal back? And so, it was like, OK, let’s put on a show.
It’s grown so much.
ROSENTHAL At times, I’m awe-struck by it, and by the artists who have come out of, and who have shown their first films at, the festival — from Ryan Coogler in 2009 with “Locks,” to Jon M. Chu’s short film, to Nia DaCosta, A.V. Rockwell. We’ve won Academy Awards with so many of our short films. I’m very proud not only to see the filmmakers recognized on that level, but also to have had such a diversity of storytelling over the years.
DE NIRO I’m proud that it’s lasted this long and that people really want to be part of it. It’s become a fabric of the city, if you will, and we hope it will be here forever.
What is your favorite Tribeca memory?
DE NIRO The first one was really special and exciting with Mandela and [Michael] Bloomberg, [Bill] Clinton, Francis Ford Coppola, Barry Levinson, Whoopi Goldberg, Hugh Grant.
ROSENTHAL To have Mandela there to say it was OK now to go watch movies was really humbling. My other favorite was watching “Goodfellas” in the Beacon Theater in 2015. The audience knew all the lines, and they started talking back to the screen like you would if you were at “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” It was wild.
Rebecca, this is your first festival as chief executive. Why did you want this job?
REBECCA GLASHOW I was 25 and lived in downtown New York when the towers went down. I came to the first festival, and it really impacted me. Bob and Jane have talked about their intent to bring people back downtown, to use filmmaking and storytelling as an act of defiance, and it really felt that way. So it was a dream to be called by these guys to be a part of this family. As part of the process, I got to spend time with Jane, who’s a legend and a powerhouse woman. That’s always a draw, to work with someone who has paved the way for so many.
I’ve spent many years at large media companies, and the barrier is often resistance to change. So it’s incredibly exciting to work for an organization that has continued to ask, what is connecting with audiences? Where’s the creativity happening? What’s going to bring people in a very crowded, noisy New York City in person?
This year, nearly 50 percent of competition films are directed by women, and 50 percent by filmmakers who are Black, Indigenous or people of color. How have you worked to make the slate of filmmakers more diverse at Tribeca?
ROSENTHAL We’ve always looked to work with new, diverse filmmakers. We did a rap musical film in 2001 with Darnell Martin and Q-Tip called “Prison Song” that was ahead of its time. Our company, Tribeca Enterprises, is almost 70 percent women. We have always looked to have diversity in storytelling, because that’s what’s interesting about what we get to do every day. Why tell the same old story the same way?
This year’s festival will see the premieres of several films made using A.I. tools. How are you feeling about A.I.? Excited? Wary? Both?
GLASHOW It’s fair to be scared whenever there’s a change in how we’re using technology, and there’s always an adjustment, but A.I. is here. It’s part of our everyday lives, and so it’s inevitable that it’ll impact how people tell stories.
DE NIRO We’ve yet to see where it’s going to go. I recently saw an A.I. commercial that I didn’t do — it was me, dressed in the clothes I wore at a particular interview, but I was saying things that were totally different. I must say, they did a pretty good job.
ROSENTHAL What Bob says is concerning, but I’m also excited about the potential of A.I. I worked at “Wizard of Oz” at the Sphere, and we were working with Google DeepMind’s early Veo models before they had come out. A.I. can be a partner, a new collaborator, and that gets exciting. There’s a new creative class coming into the world that’s now able to tell stories because they have access to a computer. It’s exciting to see a new art form, if you will.
What are you most looking forward to at this year’s festival?
DE NIRO Doing the Q. and A. about “Taxi Driver” for the 50th anniversary.
ROSENTHAL There’s a wonderful documentary about Noga Erez, who is an Israeli rapper and singer. She was at Coachella this year, and has blown up since we first saw her documentary. I’m looking forward to seeing her film with an audience, and then seeing her perform. She’s absolutely electric.
GLASHOW I’m going full throttle. I want to experience the shorts, I want to see some of the Storytelling Summit. I want to go to some of the free outdoor screenings, because I think so many people were impacted by what we did post-Covid, of bringing back the festival in the park. I want to see some of the smaller films as well, and I want to talk to people in lines and understand why they’re there. I want to touch every part of the festival.
Fill in the blank: Ten years from now, Tribeca will be _________.
ROSENTHAL Tribeca.
GLASHOW The must-attend kickoff of summer for the greatest, most surprising cultural experiences happening in New York City.
DE NIRO Who knows where it’ll wind up or where it’ll go, but it’ll certainly be interesting. I hope it’s a good place.
