Now in its eighteenth year, New York City’s own Tribeca Film Festival kicks off every spring with a wide variety of programming, from an ever-expanding Vr installation to an enviable television lineup, but the bulk of the annual festival’s programming is movies. This year’s festival offers up plenty of familiar faces with new projects alongside newcomers. While Tribeca’s wide-ranging conversation programs and reunion events tend to dominate the schedule, the festival also offers a robust selection of documentary and narrative features worth the trip downtown.

This year, the program has reached a new milestone: gender parity across its three competition sections. Fifty-two narratives and 51 documentaries will debut throughout the 12-day festival. The competition section features 12 documentaries, 10 U.S. narratives, and 10 international narratives. The event will also host 15 spotlight narratives, 16 spotlight documentaries, as well as five Midnight features, and 17 Viewpoints selections.

This year’s Tribeca Film Festival...