Earlier this month, I spent days bouncing between screening rooms at the 2026 Tribeca Festival, watching stories unfold across continents and around corners. Some films arrived with distributors already lined up. Others are still looking for a home. But a week or so later, after the closing-night party faded and the festival chatter quieted, these are the projects I’m still carrying with me.
That’s one of the real gifts of a film festival. Beyond premieres and awards, you discover works that deserve a much bigger conversation. Some land on streamers, like Jean-Michel, and some will show up in theaters, like Alicia Keys’ bio doc, playing at The Smith Center in Vegas on June 23. A few are still waiting for the right distribution partner. But all these films leave a lasting impression and are worth catching when they make their way to a larger, well-deserved audience.
One Woman One Bra
The Nigerian feature narrative One Woman One Bra follows a thirtysomething woman fighting for the right to remain in the home she has built despite lacking family ties within her village. What begins as a local dispute expands into a larger examination of inheritance and who gets to claim space within a community. The film’s power comes from its refusal to turn its protagonist into either a saint or a victim. Instead, it offers a nuanced portrait of resilience in the face of deeply entrenched social structures.
Jean-Michel
Though a handful of documentaries about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat already exist, none have directly involved his family in producing an intimate film that reflects his humanity as intimately as this one. Jointly directed by Quinn Whitney Wilson and Viridiana Lieberman, this look at the ’80s art-world superstar is officially approved by Basquiat’s estate and includes the voices of his sisters, Lisane and Jeanine Basquiat, as it explores his enduring influence and popularity. Winner of Tribeca’s Best Editing in a Documentary Feature award and quickly snapped up by Netflix for a premiere date later this year, the film is an exceptional look into the most important painter of color of the past century.
The Lorraine
With the keys inside the Lorraine Motel, veteran director Sam Pollard has unlocked the secrets to one of America’s most sacred and complicated sites in Memphis, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Pollard doesn’t simply revisit this tragic moment. Instead, he explores how the location evolved into a National Civil Rights Museum and what it means to preserve history, especially as it confronts ongoing struggles for justice. Written by Alvin Hall, Joe Wemple and Juleyka Lantigua, the film understands that opening the door to the past can be painful, but it paves the way for a nation to understand itself.
Trinity: The Story of The LOX
Though rap lore is full of mercurial rises and dramatic falls from the top, this Bill Horace-directed documentary delves into one of the most compelling of them all. Jadakiss, Styles P and Sheek Louch—childhood friends from Yonkers known collectively as The LOX—first earned their reputation at Sean Combs’s Bad Boy Entertainment on era-defining hits like “It’s All About the Benjamins.” After money-related disputes, they slid over to another hip-hop camp: the Ruff Ryders Entertainment label of the late DMX. This captivating doc draws most of its mileage from the trio discovering self-reliance as they battle for lucrative publishing rights to their catalog and the artistic independence that comes with it.
Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That’s the Weight of the World)
Questlove once envisioned a “Parliament-Funkadelic vs. Earth, Wind & Fire” documentary, spotlighting the histories of both powerhouse groups born in the 1970s. His decision to focus on EW&F founder Maurice White and on how his metaphysical beliefs charted the course of the band’s musical journey is a pivot that results in a compact film drenched in appreciation. Currently streaming on HBO Max, the doc makes full use of commentary from longtime band members Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson—in addition to Barack and Michelle Obama, Stevie Wonder, Anderson .Paak, H.E.R. and others—to explain the group’s ups, downs, and mainstream mega-success. The revelation about their 1975 hit ballad “Reasons” is worth tuning in all by itself.
Alicia Keys: Girl From Hell’s Kitchen
Director One9 (Nas: Time Is Illmatic) uses the Tony Award-winning Hell’s Kitchen and its journey to Broadway as a Trojan Horse to simultaneously tell the story of the play’s co-writer and producer, Alicia Keys. Born in 1981 as Alicia Cook, a biracial piano prodigy raised by a single white mom in the storied Manhattan Plaza building (the former home of Giancarlo Esposito, Terrence Howard and others), Keys brings an infectious passion to her life story on the Great White Way. Through cast interviews and fantastic archival footage of Keys’s child-actress appearances on The Cosby Show and sleazy 1980s Times Square, the film digs deep into the costs and payoffs of bold ambition.
Jail Time Records
The late Tupac Shakur may have scored a number-one album while incarcerated; Public Enemy may have once recorded a hard-hitting jailbreak fantasy. But music has never before heard anything like the subject of this documentary: an exploration of the Jail Time Records music studio operating at the center of New Bell Prison in Douala, Cameroon. Using a cinéma vérité approach tracking inmates-slash-rappers Emperor and Transporter through their daily lives at the overpopulated New Bell Prison, directors Dione Roach and Steve Happi reveal how hip-hop serves as their therapeutic release. The film, which won the Albert Maysles Award – Best New Documentary Director and Best Documentary Feature, is full of smartphone-recorded music videos, first-person testimonies, live performances and African francophone rap, offering a harrowing look at musical expression behind bars.