Following the September 11th attacks on NYC, Tribeca Film Institute (TFI) is founded as a means to revitalize the arts community in lower Manhattan.

The Tribeca Film Institute launches its first program: the Tribeca Film Festival. Since its inaugural year, the Tribeca Film Festival has spun off to be a separate entity from TFI.

TFI partners with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to launch the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund, our first funding and mentorship program for emerging filmmakers. This program supported the development, production, and mentorship of scripted features or series – created by storytellers from systematically excluded communities – that dramatized and humanized STEM stories. In its 17-year history, the TFI Sloan Filmmaker Fund granted more than $1.8 million to 119 storytellers. TFI later deepened its partnership with Sloan through two spinoff programs: Sloan Student Programs for student filmmakers and the Sloan Discretionary Fund to support alumni filmmakers.

The trajectory of TFI ultimately begins with the launch of Tribeca All Access®, TFI’s flagship film program for creators who experience inequality based on factors such as race, gender, class, sexuality, age, ethnicity, citizenship, and/or ability. The idea for this program came from the need to address prevalent issues within the industry at large: filmmakers from historically marginalized groups faced significant challenges competing for festival slots, and for the few filmmakers of color and women creators who made it into the festival circuit, there was no platform for them to connect with their peers or with industry gatekeepers in a meaningful way. Tribeca All Access was created in 2004 as a diverse and inclusive support system for artists during the Tribeca Film Festival. Out of this grew grants and more formal mechanisms to connect filmmakers to peers, mentors, and industry decision-makers.

Our City, My Story becomes a staple TFI program. The event showcased New York City’s best student-made films, highlighting and celebrating the tremendous work of our city’s young filmmakers. The competition was open to students 21 years of age or younger who resided within the five boroughs of NYC. Finalists in the categories of Documentary, Narrative, Experimental, and Animation premiered their work at the Tribeca Film Festival to an audience of film enthusiasts, friends, family, and community members in hopes of securing one of the four coveted awards. This was the first of our educational programs focused on New York-based student filmmakers, succeeded by Tribeca Teaches, the TFI Screening Series, and Tribeca Film Fellows.

The TFI Screening Series is launched as a media literacy program and year-long presentation of curated films that provided New York City youth, educators, and community partners with access to free, relevant programming. Taking place in classrooms and community spaces, each screening was followed by a facilitated discussion, workshop, and/or Q&A talkback with filmmakers to build engagement and critical thinking. The series provided an interactive experience where participants engaged in thematic discussions spurred by documentary and narrative films, connected with the film's creators, and interacted with each other through post-screening activities. The goal of the TFI Screening Series was to bring together communities, filmmakers, and young people through the power of film to promote media literacy and critical thinking and to engage audiences in socially relevant dialogue.

The Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund becomes TFI's first annual fund focused specifically on documentaries that tackle social issues around the world. In addition to funding, grantees received year-round support from TFI, including one-on-one guidance and consultation, helping each film to reach completion, enter the marketplace, and find the broadest possible audience. From its launch, it provided nearly $2 million in funding to over 80 filmmaking teams.

As Tribeca All Access evolves, so does its networking event during the Tribeca Film Festival. In 2010, that event is crowned the TFI Network and becomes a renowned filmmaker/industry market. TFI Network brought together 40 filmmaking teams from across the world to meet with 250 industry representatives from companies including CNN Films, Creative Capital, HBO, Hulu, National Geographic, Netflix, New York Times Op-Docs, and several others. Each year, more than 1,500 meetings took place over 2 days, offering filmmakers invaluable opportunities to generate funding, distribution, mentorship, and other resources for their projects. TFI Network served as an economic driver in our backyard by cultivating connections to boost not only the filmmakers’ careers but also the economic productivity of New York City industries.

Tribeca Film Fellows® launches as a year-round fellowship program for young filmmakers from historically underserved communities. The program offered guidance on a creative project, intensive workshops for personal, scholastic, and career development, participation in Tribeca Film Festival events, and direct contact with established filmmakers. In 2018, TFI revamped the program to implement a greater focus on mentorship and provide essential access in the developing stages of Fellows' careers by pairing young filmmakers ages 17-21 with prominent industry professionals in the same discipline (e.g. editors with editors, costume designers with costume designers, etc.). Mentors gave professional guidance, career advice, and hands-on experience, and the Fellows had the opportunity to work on a film or television production while shadowing their mentors. In this way, TFI equipped the next generation of storytellers with the skills and connections to thrive in their careers.

TFI expands its Screening Series to include a program at Otisville Correctional Facility, supporting adult men serving long-term sentences at a medium-security prison in Upstate New York. TFI first launched the Otisville film program in 2014 in partnership with John Jay College of Criminal Justice (Prison-to-College Pipeline) and New York State Department of Corrections. During the 5 years of the program, TFI screened more than 60 films and served more than 500 incarcerated men at Otisville. A number of the program participants were trained as peer facilitators, helping to guide pre- and post-screening discussions and activities.

As new ways of storytelling emerged through technologies like virtual reality, TFI creates its Interactive Department, which becomes a trailblazer in the new media space with labs, workshops, and funding opportunities for creators around the world.

Launched in 2015 as the TFI/ESPN Future Filmmaker Prize, TFI later revises this program as the TFI/ESPN Short Documentary Program to serve a larger pool of emerging filmmakers (including but not limited to graduate-level students) and/or storytellers whose perspectives and backgrounds have been historically underrepresented on both sides of the camera (including women, people of color, LGBTQIA-identifying artists, immigrants, etc.). Thanks to ESPN’s partnership, TFI distinguished itself as an incubator for thoughtful, innovative documentary films that focused on issues of social importance through the lens of sports, athletics, or competition.

In an effort to cultivate an intensive program for documentary filmmakers, TFI teams up with the Camden International Film Festival and CNN to host the The Camden/TFI Filmmaker Retreat. Each summer, five U.S.-based documentary filmmaking teams attended a five-day scenic retreat in Camden and Rockport, Maine for a series of mentoring sessions, workshops, and master classes led by a cross-section of industry experts and professionals. These filmmakers received professional guidance and mentorship to help them advance both their current projects and their filmmaking careers.

Our friends at the MacArthur Foundation commission TFI to develop an innovative new program centered on short documentary film. Out of this, IF/Then Shorts is born. Through regional pitch competitions at partnering film festivals, this program awards project funding and mentorship to eligible filmmakers – in this case, storytellers creating short documentary films that reflect one’s community and perspective. What makes IF/Then singularly groundbreaking is its strategic focus on global, multi-platform distribution – which goes beyond providing storytellers with production support. Following TFI's hiatus in September 2020, IF/Then found a new home at Field of Vision, and the program continues there.

TFI receives a BUILD grant from the Ford Foundation to develop a strategic plan, grow and cultivate staff, and strengthen its operations.

The COVID-19 pandemic rocks the independent filmmaking space, but TFI adjusts its programming to continue to provide opportunities for artists with a virtual TFI Network and virtual IF/Then Shorts pitches. Additionally, TFI launches an Emergency Artist Support fund to provide direct financial assistance to artists who lost work due to the pandemic.

As TFI's founders shift priorities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, TFI pauses its programming and is currently on hiatus.