Robert De Niro is looking back on the origins of the Tribeca Festival, revealing that his commitment to launching it in the weeks following the September 11 attacks was immediate and unwavering. Speaking alongside longtime producing partner Jane Rosenthal and Tribeca 25 director Matt Tyrnauer, De Niro recalled how the two moved forward with an idea they'd only previously kicked around casually, transforming it into an urgent act of civic rebuilding once the towers fell.
"The festival was kind of an act of defiance," he said. "We had 120 days, 1,300 volunteers, no money, no blueprint, just an idea and a neighbourhood that needed people back in it. This wasn't just about movies; it was about whether downtown was coming back." De Niro and Rosenthal announced the festival in November 2001, just months after the attacks, with the inaugural event launching the following May and drawing more than 150,000 people back to downtown New York. Rosenthal described the emotional urgency behind the decision, recalling her own fear as a mother in the immediate aftermath. "As a mother of two little girls, I was scared: What's going to happen again?
I mean, it's all those feelings. But it's also like, okay, how can we help? If we can help, if we can do something, then something good will come of it." De Niro said he never wavered once the decision was made, "I wasn't thinking, I was just being, We're going to do it." Both described the atmosphere in lower Manhattan during that period as deeply unsettling. "Surreal," De Niro recalled.
"The whole thing was so strange. Every day and night, there were trucks going up from ground zero, bringing debris from it." Rosenthal added a haunting detail about the soundscape of those months, "For months after, you would hear the sound of the fire trucks. And if it made one loooong sound of the siren, it meant that they had found the remains of someone.
The other thing is that there were helicopters. You couldn't help but think of Apocalypse Now." The festival's founding mission also shaped some of its earliest high-profile moments, De Niro personally suggested inviting Nelson Mandela to the first event and called him directly to extend the invitation, according to Rosenthal. Mandela had previously spoken about the bond he formed with fellow prisoners at Robben Island through a shared love of film, and he ultimately appeared at the 2002 opening ceremony alongside Hugh Grant. Nearly 25 years later, the documentary Tribeca 25, which chronicles the festival's origins and evolution, premieres on Netflix Friday, September 11, a date carrying obvious symbolic weight for the story it tells. Since its founding, the festival has expanded well beyond film screenings to include concerts, filmmaker talks, industry panels, podcasts and immersive technology exhibitions across venues throughout New York City.