by Megan Robinson, Staff Writer

At this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, the hustle and grind of daily life lies at the center. From documentaries about the struggles of everyday life as someone in the margins of society to features about the desperate need for cash, everyone is living on the outskirts of existence. There’s even multiple parodies of certain food delivery services that ought to remain nameless. Here are some of the features I’ve caught at Tribeca so far.

Boys Go to Jupiter
Directed by Julian Glander
Runtime 90 minutes

The first thing anyone will notice about Boys Go to Jupiter is its look. The animated film about teen Billy 5000’s (Jack Corbett) never-ending grind to start a life of his own after dropping out of school recalls the early days of computer-animation. Character models are round and smooth, the world is bright and inexplicably, whimsically odd. It’s as if the early 90s and the world of today merged together to create an engaging and wholly unique world. Even the camera retains a certain distance at most times, showing each environment in its entirety as if it’s a computer game. Boys Go to Jupiter can only be described as perfectly niche, ripe for the internet’s counter culture to grasp onto.

The film will connect to everyone’s perpetual exhaustion of living in this stage of capitalism. Billy 5000 works endlessly delivering “grub,” don’t call it food, alienating himself from his friends and loved ones at only 16-years-old. His crew of friends is constantly entertaining, and director Julian Glander demonstrates an expertise in writing child characters that are just as strange, annoying, and caring as real kids are. Every voice actor aces the absurdity of the material, from Elsie Fisher to Sarah Sherman, from Joe Pera to Julio Torres — the cast is an embarrassment of comedic riches. Just as well you’ll never guess where Boys Go to Jupiter will go next: what is that mysterious doughnut shaped creature? Is romance in Billy’s future? And is it really necessary for every animated film to have musical numbers? Overall, Boys Go to Jupiter has the potential to be a modern classic for everyone exhausted with and enthralled by the modern age.

DRIVER
Written by Nesa Azimi and Nicolas Borel
Directed by Nesa Azimi
Runtime 90 minutes

DRIVER doesn’t like to talk too much. Right away, you’re thrust into the average, isolated life of being a truck driver, with nothing but open roads and the endless sky as far as the eye can see. For Desiree Woods, though, this world is even more isolating, as the trucking industry is actively hostile to women that enter it. Woods founded “REAL Women In Trucking,” an organization that brings together women truckers and advocates for systemic changes in the industry, ranging from wage gaps to abuse from trainers. Despite how hard it can be on the road, it becomes clear that community is key — it’s easier to be on the road if you can stand by your fellow woman at the next rest stop.

Nesa Azimi’s camera captures the pure beauty across America, letting the sunsets and snow capped mountains linger. Each cut from one highway to the next makes time blend together; has it been ten minutes or one hundred? Ten miles or one hundred? It’s a taxing job with little pay, as multiple of the “REAL Women in Trucking” point out. Going a week without pay glues them to their trucks for the next few weeks, shady practices make it impossible to pay for the trucks, and rape culture runs rampant from trainers to strangers on the road. These are real women who have found safety with each other, even if the system remains on the side of those who harm them. DRIVER is a documentary that dares to show what life is like, in all its ups and downs, for a community that remains under discussed and under protected.

Rent Free
Written by Fernando Andrés and Tyler Rugh
Directed by Fernando Andrés
Runtime 93 minutes

It costs so much to exist these days. Rent Free has the fun stylistic choice to reveal to the audience how much each home or apartment costs, how many bedrooms and baths, and where they are. When the first New York City apartment is listed as $8,000 a month, I loudly gasped, unable to control my discomfort at even the thought of a rent so high. Our duo of Ben (Jacob Roberts) and Jordan (David Treviño) can’t afford any rent after Ben is kicked out of said $8,000 per month apartment by his friends and Jordan’s girlfriend breaks up with him. The plan? To couch surf across Austin. At best needing their friends’ help and at worst mooching off them until they can save up enough money to go back to New York. If it sounds like a flawed, selfish plan, it is; it’s also got its charm.

Each actor of the main duo gets their time to shine, with both Roberts and Treviño flexing their comedic and dramatic chops, but in two entirely different styles. Roberts has excellent comedic delivery, getting a laugh from lines that are equally aggressive and pathetic. He understands Ben intimately, getting at the childish nature of the grown man in every scene. Treviño meanwhile, plays things cool and often empathetic, reminiscent of the indie mumblecore style of the 2010s. They’re great foils, but their arguments and sometimes inability to communicate can border on grating. The film is sharp in writing people that are realistically messy, but much like those same messy people, there’s only so much one can take. Rent Free is definitely worth the watch for the often hilarious and cruel mayhem it creates, just don’t expect to like anyone too much.

S/He Is Still Her/e - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary
Written by Dillon Petrillo and David Charles Rodrigues
Directed by David Charles Rodrigues
Runtime 99 minutes

Genesis P-Orridge cannot be summarized easily. Her life was not linear, or concise, or transparent. What David Charles Rodrigues’ film S/He Is Still Her/e - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary attempts to do is capture a life so full, so textured, so challenged and challenging as Genesis P-Orridge’s. The editing, or “cutting up” as the film’s credits call it, is striking and abrasive, packing in as much archived footage, pictures, newspapers, interviews, and more into one ninety-nine minute documentary. Each of P-Orridge’s looks, career paths, and philosophies is distinct and easy to follow along with, even if her own path wasn’t so direct. Above all, the documentary was put together by those that loved her, but doesn’t shy away from the angry or even hostile feelings s/he could get wrapped up in — but s/he evolves, changes in ways no one could have expected.

There’s a particular instance in the film that’s stuck with me that captures so much more than one person’s extraordinary life. To make a long story short, P-Orridge won a lawsuit regarding her sustained injuries from evacuating a house fire, and with the over $1 million, they began to get a variety of surgeries to become one and the same with h/er wife Lady Jaye in what they called the “Pandrogeny Project.” P-Orridge even says all the work wouldn’t have been possible without the money to carry on with h/er consistent life philosophy that no one can own or legislate your body but you, and we must all do what we wish with it, exploring everything that can be done to or with it. Genesis P-Orridge represents transgressiveness in every sense of the word, and what is more transgressive than having the proper resources to be yourself, however you envision “you?” S/He Is Still Her/e - The Official Genesis P-Orridge Documentary is a beautiful exercise in honoring someone’s legacy by respecting and highlighting what makes them such a vital example of how life could be for all of us.