CineManiax: Podcast Transcripts

Tribeca Festival 2026

Wednesday, September 30, 2026

Intro

[upbeat music plays]

If you're an influencer, you need to have control over your brand and how people perceive you, and I told her very clearly, I said, look, you're not going to have control over your image here. But I made sure that she understood what the vision of the film was going to be and what we were going to explore, and it was going to be a film about overtourism and the challenges that come with that and the opportunities that come with that.

CHRIS REED:

Hello, and welcome to the CineManiax podcast. I'm your host, Chris Reed, Editor at Film Festival Today and Lead Film Critic at Hammer to Nail. On today's show, we'll talk about New York's 2026 Tribeca Festival and our favorite films from it.

Joining me on the show is Stephen Saito, who is based in Los Angeles and is the Founder and Editor of The Moveable Fest, a site devoted to covering arthouse and foreign cinema. It's great to have you here, Stephen. Thanks for joining me.

STEPHEN SAITO:

It's great to be here. I'm so excited to do this.

CHRIS REED:

And where are you joining us from in Los Angeles?

STEPHEN SAITO:

I am in Burbank. We're going to be talking about independent films, but I'm right in between Warner Brothers and Disney out here.

CHRIS REED:

That is so cool. So what were your three faves from Tribeca? And I know you didn't go in person, but it's pretty cool that you were able to cover from afar. So what were your three faves?

STEPHEN SAITO:

One of my favorites was this movie, Caity, that really feels like one of those kind of movies that could only play at Tribeca where you've got a bunch of really great actors. A lot of them have been on Broadway. And it was a drama from an up and coming director named Lindsay Calleran. It was about a teenager who grows up with a father who is in the haunted house business. So it's a fantastic setting for a movie, and she has to deal with the fact that he may be going out of his sobriety. He may have fallen off the wagon.

But it really is less about that and more about how she's able to navigate the situation when she was too young to really remember how bad it got, and the rest of her family is well aware of it and wants nothing to do with them.

CHRIS REED:

Now, you said, Caity. Can you spell it for our listeners and viewers?

STEPHEN SAITO:

It is an unusual spelling. It's C-A-I-T-Y. Audiences may be familiar with the father in it. He's played by Morgan Spector, who's in The Gilded Age. And yeah, it was just a really, really great showcase of actors. And Lindsay Calleran, the director, is really talented and does things with editing that I haven't seen in a movie before.

CHRIS REED:

Interesting. Yeah, I really like Morgan Spector. I've seen the first two seasons of The Gilded Age, and he's quite good. So what next? What else you got?

STEPHEN SAITO:

One of the unusual things about this Tribeca was how many fun documentaries there were, and one of the most fun was House of Criticism. It's about the married art critics, Roberta Smith of The New York Times and Jerry Saltz of New York magazine. Anybody that writes reviews for a living probably is going to connect with this movie. But it's a real romance, and the fact that these two critics, their opinions differ on everything, and that's what makes them compatible, it's a really great love story.

CHRIS REED:

I would love to see that. I remembered reading something about it, but somehow I missed it. Going back to your comment about documentaries and really fun docs at Tribeca, in general, I find that docs at film festivals tend to land with me more than the narrative selections. The selections within the fiction categories tend to be very specific to a programmer's personal tastes, and I often find that the documentaries are more universal in their appeal. This is just my very loose and general take on the films that play at festivals in general, and so I always find documentaries almost a safer bet for me than some of the narrative choices.

STEPHEN SAITO:

I would agree with that, particularly at Tribeca. They've always had a very, very strong documentary slate.

CHRIS REED:

And a very particular kind of narrative film slate. Speaking of documentaries, I know that your third film is a movie that I also like, so tell us about it.

STEPHEN SAITO:

I was hugely bowled over by this film, The Siege of Paradise. It's a great movie about Italian tourist spot named Cinque Terre. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong, but I'm so glad that I got to go on vacation there because the whole plot of the film is that they don't want tourists anymore, or at least the locals don't, because as good as it is for the economy to bring all these tourists to the beautiful, beautiful part of the country, at the same time, it's sort of destroying what culture previously existed there. But it's both hilarious and a little bit heartbreaking, and it's just a wonderful film.

CHRIS REED:

Yeah, I think the area in Italian is called Cinque Terre, but I'm so jealous that you've been there because it looks amazing. And now I would feel self-conscious traveling there based on everything you just said but, like you, really enjoyed this movie.

There is an American influencer in there who's our stand-in for all of these tourists who are flocking to the place and then some really delightful locals who talk about their culture and how they're worried about that going away and this sort of plague of sameness that happens when tourists overrun spots and how everybody wants that exact same selfie that they see on Instagram. And so I think the film hits some very important topics, and yeah, it was great and beautiful to look at.

STEPHEN SAITO:

It was absolutely one of the most beautiful films I saw at the festival.

CHRIS REED:

I've got three, and I think you've seen some of them. And they're actually all documentaries, so I'm consistent with what I said earlier. So for my first film, I'd like to talk about the documentary How to Feed a Dictator from Director Andrew Neel. This is a film that's based on Journalist Witold Szabłowski's 2020 non-fiction book of the same title. That book covers slightly different people than the film, but this movie profiles the personal chefs of five former dictators. And they are North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Uganda's Idi Amin, Chile's Augusto Pinochet, and Cambodia's Pol Pot.

The book, interestingly, covers Albania's Enver Hoxha and Cuba's Fidel Castro instead of Kim and Pinochet, so I'd be curious to read the book just to see what they're like. But this movie uses this entry point of food and what these horrible people like to eat to bring us into a discussion of why we as the human race seem to so often find ourselves not just being subjugated by horrible people but often willingly subjugated.

And some of these chefs still sing the praises of their former employers while some of them see them a little more clearly, but it's a really fascinating documentary. What were your thoughts? I think you've seen this one.

STEPHEN SAITO:

Yeah, no, I would agree, and ironically, it does make a very, very difficult subject more palatable. You just see how people can become comfortable in such a horrific, atrocity-filled environment.

CHRIS REED:

They're just like the worst examples of vile humanity, and of course there are some parallels to rising fascism today. So next up, I've got, changing gears a little bit-- this is a far less horrifying, in fact, not horrifying at all documentary called Kids Like Me.

And this is directed by Jon Cohrs and Cynthia Lowen, and it follows a young boy named Oliver who has severe physical disabilities. We find out what exactly he has in the film, but he's much smaller than people his own age. He's got bones that don't grow right, a skull that sort of traps his brain.

But he's a supremely intelligent kid and super into murder mysteries. And so while we're following his story, we're also getting these scenes from a movie that he's directing, his own murder mystery. And thanks to the documentarians, he's got access to a soundstage and access to a certain actor whom he admires greatly who makes a fantastic cameo in the movie. And so this was really a delightful portrait of a very special kid. I can't say enough about how much I like this movie.

STEPHEN SAITO:

You've got me really, really intrigued about it. I wasn't able to catch it myself, but it sounds fascinating.

CHRIS REED:

I think the cameo-- and I don't want to spoil it, but it's pretty easy to figure out shortly into the film who might be showing up later. But it makes it all even more special.

So finally, I've got the documentary Time Warp from Director Allison Berg, and this takes place in Wyoming, the state where over 20 years ago, sadly, Matthew Shepard, a young gay man, was killed. And it follows a group of young thespians who are in rehearsals to be the shadow cast of a couple of screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

And Wyoming's a very red state. There's a lot of homophobia. But you'd be surprised at the support they get. Perhaps it's because there's also a libertarian streak there. They get support even from the town council. In fact, there's a member of the council who is playing Rocky in the shadow cast-- super buff guy, so that makes sense-- wearing fishnets and heels. And yeah, it's a heartwarming portrait of these folks as they put on a great show.

STEPHEN SAITO:

And I love this one. I was really moved by it myself and thought that it really depicted life in a place like this-- it was able to show it in a way that you understood where the connections were that coalitions could be built.

CHRIS REED:

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's important in our day and age not to-- if you believe one set of things, to not write off people on the other side and to try to reach a common ground. It's possible. At least this film makes me believe that is the case.

I do want to chat about what your thoughts are from the festival of films that might do well outside it, but before then, I just want to quickly mention the opening night film since I was on the ground in person. And although I have some issues with the documentary-- it's got a very long title, and that speaks to some of my problems with the film in that it's very long. It's a documentary by Questlove called Earth, Wind & Fire, To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World. And this was the opening night film.

But even though I thought that Questlove could edit it down by about 30 minutes, it was really great to be there because the surviving members of Earth, Wind & Fire came out on the stage afterwards and played a set with the members of The Roots, which is, of course, the band that Questlove is a drummer for. So there was Questlove, the director of the documentary, playing drums afterwards, and so that was really a highlight of the festival even if the film could use some trimming.

STEPHEN SAITO:

The nice thing about recommending this one is it's on HBO now. That's the way I saw it. And boy, I would have loved to have been there in the crowd for that.

CHRIS REED:

Any films that you heard about or saw that you think really have a shot for either awards contention or just reaching a wide swath of people?

STEPHEN SAITO:

I saw one called The Last Day that was really good. I was not high on it going in because it had probably the highest profile of any movie going into Tribeca with Alicia Vikander and Victoria Pedretti. It's the directorial debut of a visual artist named Rachel Rose. It had the scent of perhaps being not accepted at other festivals, and perhaps that may be true.

But it was a really, really strong movie. Victoria Pedretti specifically in this is really remarkable. It's a really clever takeoff on Mrs. Dalloway, following two mothers that are coming to terms with the fact that that's what their role in life is and how they imagine themselves doing something else. Also, it was a really, really good movie.

CHRIS REED:

Excellent. Well, thank you for that recommendation. I remember reading something about it, but I missed it. So I'll take that under advisement, and when perhaps it begins its roll-out theatrically later, I'll know to check it out. So thank you.

STEPHEN SAITO:

Were there any that we didn't mention that you liked?

CHRIS REED:

I was surprised by how much I liked the documentary Mario, which is about Mario Cuomo. It's a very fine portrait of Mario Cuomo, who I think was really a great politician, even if his children have been a little disappointing or at least his sons. Well, look, thanks for being on the show and for sharing your thoughts about Tribeca, Stephen. It was great to have this conversation. I really enjoyed it.

STEPHEN SAITO:

Absolutely. Same here, and thanks so much for having me.

CHRIS REED:

Absolutely. Next up, I'd like to share my interview with Irish Director Gary O'Rourke, who made The Siege of Paradise. Let's check out a clip from the trailer.

[non-english singing]

- In your state, do you have wine?

- No, we have corn, and we have hot dogs.

- Hot dogs, yeah.

CHRIS REED:

As we just discussed, this was a film Stephen and I really liked. I actually recorded the following interview at DC/DOX, the very next festival after Tribeca, which takes place every year in our nation's capital. In the documentary, O'Rourke examines the toll that rapidly rising rates of tourism take on Italy's beautiful Cinque Terre region.

Comprised of five separate villages along the northern Mediterranean coast south of Genoa, the area is famed as much for its culture as its landscapes. Both are, as the title suggests, under siege from the large number of summer visitors who severely strain the community's infrastructure.

Gar O'Rourke, director of The Siege of Paradise, thank you for chatting with me here at DC/DOX, although I saw your film at Tribeca 2026, and thanks for joining me on the CineManiax podcast.

GAR O’ROURKE:

Thank you very much. Very nice to be here.

CHRIS REED:

So how did you first come across Cinque Terre?

GAR O’ROURKE:

Yeah, how did an Irishman find his way onto the northern Italian Riviera? Well, my closest connection to Cinque Terre was that I used to date a girl who was from that area a few years ago now. She's an ex-girlfriend. But she was my entry drug into Cinque Terre, and so that's where I learned about the situation there. That's where I heard about what was happening. I didn't really have any prior knowledge of Cinque Terre other than the iconic coastal images of the houses that we all know very well. So she was the person that kind of brought me into that world initially.

CHRIS REED:

Why do you think there's been such an exponential rise in tourism? Does it track globally, or is it specific to this area, that sort of huge increase?

GAR O’ROURKE:

With regards to Cinque Terre, it began-- think about all the different shifts in media that we've had over the years. So at the beginning, you would have had your guidebooks or your-- one of the big first fulcrum or the big points that got everything moving was there was an article in The New York Times by Rick Steves where he had discovered Cinque Terre, and that really brought Cinque Terre into the consciousness in North America, for sure, but also in Europe as well. And that's when the first wave of tourism came.

But then, of course, once that happened-- it might have been before or just after-- the Italian tourism in that part in Liguria, they started to really try and market Cinque Terre to the outside world. They knew they had a good thing going. So they were like, right, we need to start paying for advertising. So they really marketed their region a lot, but probably the real peak in tourism did not happen until really within the last 20 years, 15 years. And it's the advent of social media. It's the advent of smartphones.

It went from seeing the image in a travel agent's in the early '90s-- you'd see the shot of Cinque Terre and be like, God, I'd love to get a ticket there-- to seeing it all the time on your phone. Your cousin went. They'd share a photo. And with social media now, everyone is just exposed to all of these beautiful places in the world all the time, so I think social media has probably been the biggest factor in tourism in Cinque Terre and the rest of the world.

CHRIS REED:

Well, you certainly talk about that in your film, but let's go back and talk about how you recruited the subjects of your film. I'm curious if you had any additional people that you originally were planning on profiling and then you lost them in the edit. But whether or not that happened, how did you pick these people?

GAR O’ROURKE:

Yeah, the way that I go about that is it's quite organic. So with all the local characters, when I decided or when I first started thinking about this as maybe it could be a great film to make, you have to go there. You have to spend time there. You have to meet people there.

So I would go, and I'd have a glass of wine with the local old boys sitting on the steps. Or I'd see the ladies out there. And being Irish, we talk to everybody, and Italians like to talk as well. So I'd always have a translator. My Italian is still pretty rough right now, but I made an effort of, I guess, trying to talk to as many people as I possibly could over a year and a half, two years of the research that I did.

And you look at your characters in the film kind of as a football team, and everybody needs to offer something slightly different or a different perspective or speak truth to something that's a little bit different to somebody else. So there's a lot of brilliant people and lovely people in Cinque Terre. It was difficult to actually decide on the final number of people that you film with.

And with our tourists, we were looking for people who were there already, but also we found the influencers, like Grace and Izabel, kind of one of the main people in our story, actually, that was a long process to try and find influencers. It was quite difficult actually because it's pretty hard to intercept influencers it turns out. They're not as easy to catch as you think.

And we had a team multiple people doing research trying to reach out to influencer agents and travel agencies and all this kind of stuff, so a long, long process. And I think my producer, Ken, talked to about 70 people. And when he shared-- I remember talking to Grace for the first time over a Zoom call, and I was really just-- Grace is a person who's completely absorbed in influencing. Every moment is an opportunity for content, and she's always on. This is her job, so she's always working. We all have different jobs. Her job is to get content all the time. That's what she does.

But I was really impressed by her openness in those early Zoom calls. She was very, very open to talking about her experiences being an influencer, and she knew from the very beginning that she was not going to have control over her image, which is-- if you're an influencer, you need to have control over your brand and how people perceive you. And I told her very clearly, I said, look, you're not going to have control over your image here. But I made sure that she understood what the vision of the film was going to be and what we were going to explore, and it was going to be a film about overtourism and the challenges that come with that and the opportunities that come with that.

CHRIS REED:

So your movie is obviously, as you mentioned in part, about how social media affects how we view the world. Have you found that in making this film and in analyzing that within your movie, that that has made you think more about how you personally travel? It certainly made me think about it, being the umpteenth person to go to that famous view and hold your phone up for a selfie, which is what people are doing in Cinque Terre. And obviously what's more important is to just be present and to enjoy it, which is what your vintner, Bartolo, is all about. But has this sort of made you think more deeply about your own travel?

GAR O’ROURKE:

Yeah, a little bit. I'm kind of the same person I was a little bit before making the film, and it's probably why I made the film, because I was a bit frustrated at-- I'm not a perfect tourist. You know what I mean? I'm probably as annoying as every other person from a local's point of view. But most people like having tourists. Most local economies like seeing tourists come. I remember when I-- so I grew up in the west of Ireland in a very nice place called Clifton, which is in Connemara.

And we always had tourists there in the summertime, a lot of American tourists. We used to love seeing the tourists come because we'd meet someone from a different place, and we'd have a chat and everything. But at that time, it was all about the conversation. It was all about just having a chat with someone, connecting with someone, asking them, do you need directions, do you know where you are, can I tell you a little bit about the place?

And I think in our film, when you talk about the experience of a place being tainted through social media or just being online and connected on your phone the whole time, it isn't rocket science, I don't think, to know what a good version of travel looks like, which is to just be engaged and curious about the place that you're in. Be respectful towards people, and, I guess, look for the cultural experiences. It doesn't mean you have to go up in a vineyard and harvest wine.

I just think that's the main reason why I made the film. It's because I think phones have made the world so accessible, so known. You feel like everything about where you are already. You're on Google Maps. You don't need to ask for directions. You know where everything is. You're in your own little lane the whole time. If you want, you don't need to have any engagement with a local person.

And I hope in some small way this film just reminds you that travel should be about those little conversations that you have with people, putting the phone down just for a minute maybe, being in a place, being present. Don't get me wrong. When the sun sets there, I'm the first guy taking the photo and trying to make it look amazing, but at the same time just remembering to try and be a little present. And I'm not here to lecture people, by the way. I'm not a perfect tourist. But I just think that with social media people care a lot about the presentation of the holiday more sometimes than the experience of the holiday.

CHRIS REED:

They care about documenting the fact that they've been someplace-- and I've been guilty of this-- rather than actually being in that place. Well, your cinematographer is a man by the name of Lukas Gut, and I think his work is really amazing. What kind of instructions or guides did you give him for shooting this? And if I may ask, also, what did you shoot on? What was your camera of choice?

GAR O’ROURKE:

Well, so we shot on a Canon C400 was our main camera. And then we had a smaller B camera for days where we had to move around a lot, and that was the C70, also a Canon. We shot on some Cine Zooms and, yeah, mainly the Cinema Zooms-- I think they're called Laowa rangefinders-- and then a bunch of other smaller lenses and stuff. But Lukas is a great DP. It's a very physical place to work there, and there's a lot of climbing. And Lukas had actually made this customized backpack. He's Swiss as well, so climbing with heavy gear on your back--

CHRIS REED:

Nothing.

GAR O’ROURKE:

--comes second nature to this ox of a man. But it was a very demanding place to film. It looks so idyllic when you look at the film, but it's a very demanding place to film because the crew, the cars can't get anywhere near where you need to film. So you're always on foot. You're always carrying everything. You're going up these vineyards. You're going up hills and steps all day long, and it can get up to, like, 35, 36, 37 degrees there. There's a few days that were, like, 38. So it's pretty brutal. And then put a load of crowds in on top of that.

But when it comes to the cinematography, I was really clear from the beginning on the style and visual grammar of this film, and Lukas and I worked together a lot on that and creating a kind of a rule book, almost like, when we shoot things, this is how we shoot things, when the camera moves, this is how the camera moves, and defining the language, the cinematography before you film anything. And so yeah, it was a pleasure working with Lucas, and I love great visuals in a film and think visually all the time. So it was a very good collaboration to have Lucas there on the project.

CHRIS REED:

Have you screened this to everyone in some way who was in the film? And what are their reactions to it?

GAR O’ROURKE:

Yeah, we screened it to everyone, and the reaction has been really positive actually. It's been very nice. Maybe the most beautiful reaction was from Bartolo.

CHRIS REED:

I love that man.

[inaudible]

GAR O’ROURKE:

Yeah, he's a really great human being, and he had sent just a really beautiful email. I won't tell you everything he said in the email, but it was a very emotional and very touching email. And I think it meant a lot to him, so that was very, very nice to see that. And Grace and Izabel loved the film, and for them it's really nice. I think it's probably a bit worrying for them. Someone else has control over your message, your brand, and your image and stuff.

But I'm really glad that they enjoy the film. From the very beginning she's actually been posting it on her Instagram, promoting it. It's great to have an influencer promoting your film. And then, yes, the other locals have seen it, they really love it, so it's great.

I'm really looking forward now to the people who are from Cinque Terre being able to see it on a big screen because that's what it's all about. They'll probably be very nervous seeing it in front of an audience, as everybody is. I'm always so nervous when film plays. But yeah, it's been very positive.

CHRIS REED:

Well, I think you definitely showcase how beautiful the place is, so hopefully they'll like it. And you present a range of views about the tourism industry, so that's great. I want to thank you so much for talking to me and for joining me on the CineManiax podcast.

GAR O’ROURKE:

Thank you very much. It's great to be here.

CHRIS REED:

The Siege of Paradise is definitely a very special and beautiful documentary. You can read the full transcript of the interview at Hammer to Nail. If you're curious about any of the films discussed on today's show, be sure to look for them in theaters or via streamers. You can check out my film reviews at Film Festival Today or Hammer to Nail. For the CineManiax podcast, I'm your host, Chris Reed. Thanks for joining me, and I'll see you at the movies.

Outro

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Tribeca Festival 2026