Paraiso Travel is the story of a young Colombian couple who brave the dangers of crossing illegally into the United States to find a better life, only to discover the truth about where they're going -- and each other. Director Simon Brand, a native Colombian, discusses the realities of illegal immigration and the human condition with amctv.com.

Q: What inspired you to do this movie?

A: I read the book about six or seven years ago when it came out, and I thought it was a great book. I came to the US about 15 years ago, and I identified with the main character -- not because of the way he came in, I didn't go that route -- but the culture shock and the love story really attracted me. I stayed in the US because of a girl, so it was a great story to tell. At the same time, it dealt with a very hot topic, the whole immigration issue. Most of the movies I've seen, they're always very vague about what really goes on.

Q: Why do you think most films shy away from the horrors of illegal crossings?

A: I think it is ignorance in a way. People in the US talk about immigration all the time, and they talk about closing the borders and building a wall, but they really don't realize that most people are just trying to find a better life. I wasn't trying to make a political statement, I was just trying to see it from the human standpoint. Going from the south of Mexico to the border is actually extremely dangerous. People lose their limbs; they have to deal with gangs -- it's just one thing after another.

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Today is Sports Day at the Tribeca Film Festival. That means not only will the ESPN/Tribeca dream team be screening stories of competition and triumph, there will also be a variety of games and demonstrations for fans to check out.

Movie-wise, the day's top picks include Kicking It, an inspirational documentary narrated by Colin Farrell about the soccer matches of the 2006 Homeless World Cup, and Fighter, about a high school student who goes against the wishes of her family to study martial arts. The girl is Turkish, the setting is Copenhagen, but the film is universally appealing. Also on the schedule is Bigger, Stronger, Faster (pictured), a documentary about sports and steroid use.

If you're looking for a different arena of competition, try The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab, which follows the Olympics of haute cuisine, the Bocuse d'Or. Expect to be horrified and hungry at the same time.

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• Variety lists off the festival's big winners -- puppy love and blood lust, it seems, is a winning combination.

• Tennessee director Aaron Woodley tells Variety's Micheal Jones that the film's star, Mariah Carey, was his second choice after Janet Jackson.

• Variety's John Andersons says the documentary I Am Because We Are is little more than a public service announcement starring Madonna about the horrors of AIDS .

For more exclusive Tribeca news, check out Variety's Festival Central.

On Thursday, the Tribeca Film Festival handed out the awards for the in-competition films. Festival founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal, as well as jurors Mathew Modine, Whoopi Goldberg and Oliver Platt were among those handing out the prizes at the Target Tribeca Filmmaker Lounge located at Parsons School for Design.

The Swedish coming-of-age vampire film, Let the Right One In (pictured) picked up the prize for best narrative feature. Its director, Tomas Alfredson, won a $25,000 cash prize and an art awards crafted by Stephen Hannock. The documentary feature prize, also worth $25,000, went to Pray the Devil Back to Hell, by Gini Reticker.

Richard Ledes, who took home the Made in New York narrative award and $5000, admitted that he was nervous throughout the duration of the festival. "I am from New York City, so people came to my premiere not only from the festival but people who know me as the neighbor down the hall. It was nerve wracking."

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Want to go behind the scenes and on the red carpet of this year's Tribeca Film Festival? Check out AMC's exclusive photos from the Savage Grace and Yonkers Joe parties at The Supper Club, as well as the Guest of Cindy Sherman party at The Film Room.

•Variety's Winter Miller reports that Magnolia Pictures has acquired the rights to Finding Amanda, Peter Tolan's semi-autobiographical dark comedy starring Matthew Broderick.

•John Anderson reviews Milosevic on Trial for Variety, saying that while covering basic Balkan history, the documentary stirringly recaps one of the most repugnant title subjects in movie history.

•Tom McCarthy says Tribeca's closer, Speed Racer, is like cotton candy -- entirely non-nutritious, but too sweet to resist.

For more exclusive Tribeca news, check out Variety's Festival Central.

The Auteur director James Westby takes the camera for an inside look of his film's premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival.

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Click here for IFC's comparison of upcoming films featuring Mariah Carey and Dave Matthews.

Isabella Rossellini's directorial debut, Green Porno, makes science sexy -- but that wasn't her intention. "My goal is not to educate people," she said. "It's to make them laugh."

Last night as part of her Filmmaker Talk at the Tribeca Film Festival, Rossellini screened episodes of her short film series, in which she appears dressed as a giant insect in each one in order to illustrate how they mate.

 "I didn't even think -- Oh, I'm a female, I can only play a female spider. It was just so far out, I didn't think I had to respect gender," said Rossellini about casting herself against type. "I'm a ham... I'm going to play male when I can because it was just the extra little laugh."

Continue reading "The Tribeca Film Festival - Isabella Rossellini Makes Science Sexy in Green Porno" »

•Is it time for a fiesta? Variety's Dave McNary reports that Filmax has acquired international sales rights and theatrical rights for Spain to Simon Brand's immigrant drama Paraiso Travel, while John Hopewell delivers news that IFC has picked up North American rights to the Spanish-language film Fermat's Room.

•Melvin Van Peebles tells Variety that the plot of his film Confessionsofa Ex-Doofus-ItchyFooted Mutha is all in the title.

•Alissa Simon says the William H. Macy and Cheryl Hines vehicle Bart Got A Room is a refreshingly PG take on coming-of-age films like Superbad.

For more exclusive Tribeca news, check out Variety's Festival Central.

Actress Christine Lahti is used to spending months researching her parts before she steps in front of the camera, but Yonkers Joe was an exception to the rule.

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Click here for IFC's comparison of upcoming films featuring Mariah Carey and Dave Matthews.

Chazz Palminteri may think that Woody Allen is a great director, but it's not because of what he says to his actors on set.

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It was a poker party at producer Joe Roth's house that led to Marisa Tomei's involvement with War, Inc. "I actually met [the film's writers] John Cusack, Mark Leyner and Jeremy Pikser all in the same night at the party, so it pays to be a rogue," Tomei joked during the film's Tribeca Film Festival junket on Monday.

A political satire set in the fictional country of Turaqistan, War, Inc. also features Dan Akroryd as a CEO who hires a troubled hit man (Cusack) to kill the Middle Eastern oil minister, played by Omar Sharif. Hilary Duff, Ben Kingsley and Joan Cusack also star in the film, which arrives in theaters May 23.

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With her new film about the sex lives of insects, Isabella Rossellini realizes a lifelong goal to make a film about nature.

To read how Isabella Rossellini Makes Science Sexy in Green Porno, click here.

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"It felt to me like the artifact of a lost civilization," said author Ann Druyan after watching Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. "It was like a meditation by someone who had survived post-Copernican stress syndrome." The Contact writer was joined by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, MIT professor, Marvin Minsky, and actor Matthew Modine for a panel, 2001: A Space Odyssey - Ahead of Its Time, at the Tribeca Film Festival this weekend.

Of the group, astronaut Aldrin was the most critical of the film. "In my days of growing up, the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, the people who wrote those were trying to be as absolutely realistic as they possibly could and then I think we started getting esoteric," he explained. "I'm not sure exactly when in 1968 I saw this but I remind myself that I had done space walking in November of 1966. So I had a rather critical analysis." After watching it again he still prefers something like Apollo 13, a movie he says, "testifies to the fact that you can tell a fantastic story and stay right with the simple basic reality."

As to the future possibility of a moon base, said Aldrin, "Having been there, the moon is just a sorry place for habitation." Adding, "I'm just trying to get people to think differently about a second habitation for the earth, and it's not on a space station. It would be logically on Mars."

Continue reading "Tribeca Film Festival Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of 2001: A Space Odyssey" »

The Festival's two co-founders, Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, discuss how the festival's original goals have evolved from its post-9/11 days to the present.

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Adam Yauch (a.k.a. MCA of the Beastie Boys) tells how a day at the Mecca of street basketball inspired him to direct Gunnin' for That #1 Spot, a documentary about high school basketball players that's part of Tribeca's ESPN Sports Films series.

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Click here to vote for the greatest sports movie of the last 30 years.

Director Gini Reticker and Producer Abigail E. Disney share the real-life story of African women revolutionaries that inspired their documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell.

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Amy Poehler surprised everyone last night when she said there's a ghost in her movie Baby Mama. "Like, you know, Three Men and a Baby?" she explained. "There's a moment in the movie where there's a ghost behind the curtain. You can only see it if you go to see it in the theater." The comedian wasn't giving many straight answers last night, in part because her Tribeca Film Festival Q&A was moderated by a Saturday Night Live cohort, Fred Armisen. (He came prepared with note cards, but Poehler quickly noticed they were blank.)

For Poehler, recent stardom means more time talking to press. "You're just using the same joke over and over again and the first couple times, it works pretty well. Then by the 40th time, the person that's in the room with you is like, 'Really, again?'" She also noted, "It's fun to be interviewed by foreign reporters because they ask really insulting and personal questions." Switching to an accent, she imitated a reporter from Brazil, "I want to ask you something -- but don't be angry at me -- but do you think you are as funny because you are so short?"

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Savage Grace is based on the true story of the incestuous relationship between socialite Barbara Baekeland and her son, Tony, heirs to Bakelite plastics fortune. But the film's star, Julianne Moore, said that the controversial storyline did not intimidate her. "The script handles the incest question beautifully. Barbara was literally boundless, so it was compelling in a sense because I have never known anyone like her," said Moore. "She really interested me as an actress because she's very, very far from who I am."

The film has screened at over a dozen film festivals in the past year, including Cannes last May, but last night at the Tribeca Film Festival was the first time Moore stepped out with the film.

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