Tribeca takeaways
Tribeca Takeaways 2026
This month I attended the Storytelling Summit at the 25th Tribeca Film Festival. I wanted to share my experience and some of my favorite takeaways from the industry panels.
The event was held at Spring Studios in Tribeca across several floors of meeting rooms, screening rooms, and a beautiful roof-top deck for industry networking. AT&T sponsored a suite which offered its own programming for its AT&T Untold Stories Program, a collaborative initiative between the Tribeca Film Festival and AT&T dedicated to connecting creators to greater opportunities like mentorship and a grand prize of $1.2 million in funding and a guaranteed premiere at the following year’s festival. The AT&T suite also offered a pitch studio and a portrait studio where attendees were able to sign up for professional photos and a professionally shot and coached project pitch. Unfortunately I didn’t make it on the list for either.
The storytelling summit spanned 12 days of programming beginning at about 10am each day with a slate of panels running until 6pm, the final hour from 6-7 was reserved for networking. Each panel featured a different area of the film industry covering a vast array of topics from fundraising through distribution as well as several career retrospectives entitled Luminaries. Some of my favorite panels included AI and the Future of Filmmaking, Adaptation Across Mediums, Rethinking Distribution, Taste Is The Strategy, and Pitching: Winning Over The Room.
There were insightful and important takeaways from each discussion but here are my top 3:
AI and the Future of Filmmaking:
“Build your dreams with new tools, the person (company) who makes the hammer doesn’t have to be the person who builds the house.”
-Luke Aragoni, Moderator and CEO of Loti AI
New York Loves Comedy
“Write what you think is funny, no what you think other people will thing is funny”
-Tina Fey, Legend
Made in NY, Filming in New York City
“The purpose of the producer is to provide an environment for everyone to succeed in bringing their vision to life.”
-Tony Yang, Producer