Lucia Puenzo’s XXY is part of the powerful wave of bold cinema coming out of Argentina. Films that deal with issues of gender and sexual identity are among the most popular at festivals — it’s the reason I missed this one at Toronto in 2007 — and was thrilled when I saw it on the 2008 Santa Barbara International Film Festival schedule. It has already scored numerous awards and nominations around the world, including the Critics Week Grand Prize and Grand Golden Rail at Cannes.

Alex (Inés Efron) was raised as a girl but possesses both male and female genitals. Her parents are pushing her to decide, now that she’s reached 15, whether or not to undergo surgery to become exclusively a man or woman. Alex is happy being both a boy and a girl, however, and wrestles with her parents’ wishes.

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Our lives are ruled by technology. Particularly for the generation of young people who came of age in a world of webcams, instant messaging, and multiplayer online gaming, the lines between virtuality and reality have become blurred. Where does the computer screen leave off and flesh and blood begin?

That’s the question posed by first-time writer/director Delphine Kreuter in 57,000 Kilometers Between Us, which had its North American Premiere here at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival. Themes of loneliness, alienation, and connecting with others are classic subjects for film, and they are elegantly updated here in the context of life in a cyberworld.

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One advantage (or disadvantage, as the case may be) of attending film festivals is that trends become readily apparent. Within one 24-hour period here at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival I saw three road films — all involving two guys and a girl. Within that same 24-hour period I also saw three films with suicide as a central plot point — two in a row, in fact.

One was The 27 Club, and it combines both — it’s a road movie, with two guys and a girl, with suicide at its core. And even that’s not totally original. In fact, one of my Top Picks of the past couple of years was Wristcutters: A Love Story, which was — you guessed it — a road movie with suicide as a central theme. Yet The 27 Club is a moving, poignant film which stands out among the rest.

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Let it be said right from the start. Yes, Tennessee is a road movie with two guys and a girl. It’s been done many times before. In fact, it was the third such film I saw in a 24-hour period here at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, where Tennessee had its World Premiere. And, yes, the girl is superstar diva Mariah Carey. But there’s a big difference between what the film appears to be and what it actually is, which is a surprisingly sweet film that was totally satisfying.

Aaron Woodley’s Tennessee, directing from a Russell Schaumberg script, is one of those films with a plot that’s difficult to even briefly summarize without revealing spoilers. Due to a tragic turn of events, brothers Carter (Adam Rothenberg) and Ellis Armstrong (Ethan Peck) embark on a journey from their trailer home outside Albuquerque, New Mexico to their hometown in Tennessee.

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In War Child we meet Emmanuel Jal, a successful hip-hop artist in his 20s whose music tells the story of a young life in exile from the ravages of civil war. First-time filmmaker C. Karim Chrobog’s documentary is both frightening and inspiring at the same time.

In Baghdad High, four high school students are handed digital cameras with which they will record their senior year of high school. This documentary sounds pretty familiar, on the face of it. It’s been done many times before. The twist here is that the high school is in Baghdad, one of the most violent and war-ravaged cities in the world, and the four (all boys) would appear to be enemies to the outside world — they and their classmates are Muslims, Christians, Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. What they have in common, though, is that they are all teenagers, and we know where this is going right from the start — the message here is that kids are the same all over the world.

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While I attend film festivals primarily for narrative features, works of fiction, I’m certainly not averse to seeking out quality documentaries. In fact, docs have often shown up on my lists of Top Picks from the various festivals I’ve attended. The U.S. vs. John Lennon, Billy the Kid, and Nanking all wowed me in the past couple of years and were among my 5 Top Picks from Toronto 2006, SXSW 2007, and Tribeca 2007, respectively. At this year’s SXSW Film Festival, Body of War, FrontRunners, andThe Wrecking Crew all impressed me so much that I had to split my Top Picks into three narratives and three docs.

Among the 50 films I saw at the just-completed Tribeca Film Festival were nine documentaries. There was also at least one “pseudo-doc,” that is, a film which would appear to be a doc but is actually a fictional, scripted narrative. Of course, being listed in the festival’s program guide under “narrative features” and not “documentaries” should be a tipoff to the viewer but folks are still fooled. For that reason, I won’t reveal them here.

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The official Closing Night Gala of the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival was the World Premiere of Speed Racer, brothers Larry and Andy Wachowski’s long-awaited big screen adaptation of the classic 60s cartoon. Directing from their own script, The Wachowski Brothers (as they are officially credited) have crafted a mind-numbing, stomach-turning experience which rivals those of the best theme parks in the world.

This blog generally focuses on indies and I rarely review a film out of Hollywood, let alone an about-to-be-released movie which is sure to be a blockbuster. I do make an occasional exception, though, for a film in which the star is someone who’s made a name for himself in the world of independent film. Such is the case here with Emile Hirsch (Alpha Dog, Into the Wild), who takes on the role of the iconic bad boy behind the wheel.

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