NellyTagar in Zero Motivation (All photos: Tribeca Film Festival)

Even though “international” doesn’t appear in the Tribeca Film Festival’s name, it has always included a wide variety of nationalities. Since its first year, the festival’s inclusive programming has showcased an array of genres from all over the world. Now in its 13th year, the broad-minded focus remains true, though there are not too many from off the beaten festival path, though Estonia, Bhutan, and Myanmar make appearances.

As in previous years, films first seen at other events—Berlin, Rome, and Toronto—raise Tribeca’s overall quality. Anyone who, back in 2001, thought there wasn’t room on the circuit for yet another large-scale festival has been proven wrong. Now there is such a glut of films that there’s very little overlap between festivals, no matter the time of year, and Tribeca has been very generous toward films from Scandinavia, discovering many from the Göteborg International Film Festival. This year, Tribeca has bragging rights for bringing Bad Hair, the top prize winner at San Sebastián, and Venus in Fur, Roman Polanski’s elegant and bawdy adaptation of David Ives’s Broadway play, with a star turn by Emmanuelle Seigner.

With more than 450,000 admissions last year, the festival’s audience growth has been independent of its track record of providing a boost through its awards. (Many festivals thrive without giving exceptional films so much as a pat on the back.) Many of its top winners have been widely praised, like the Oscar-nominated War Witch, but only one has become a medium-sized hit, the Swedish teen vampire Let the Right One In (and this was before “The Twilight Saga”).

However, Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, a best actress/best new narrative filmmaker winner in 2003, competed in Cannes last year (A Castle in Italy). She appears again here, acting in Paolo Virzi’s Human Capital. Additionally, Tribeca was an early fan of Asghar Farhadi for About Elly, bestowing the prize for best narrative feature in 2009, years before his widely acclaimed A Separation and The Past. Part of the problem previously was that the competition was so lopsided: a strong international presence, wan American entries. That’s not the case anymore, though of the competing films previewed, the foreign films still stood out in a class by themselves.

Two films in particular sneak up on you, turning into something quite different from what you might assume from their first few minutes, and win you over. Once again, TFF has highlighted another Israeli film (in the past, S#x Acts, Yossi), bestowing upon it a well-deserved win for best narrative feature. Zero Motivation’s three embedded and twisted story lines move in so many directions that they throw viewers off guard. The characters, and the film itself, are messy, in the best, freewheeling way. The film stands out for its recklessness and confident storytelling, though it’s already atypical, centering on female army conscripts.

The young women of Zero Motivation don’t play nice. This raucous, insouciant debut film by Talya Lavia has more in common with Stripes than Private Benjamin. Two best-friends-for-now (before the bond breaks spectacularly) are buying time serving behind desks, not that they care to advance. Both have to be reminded that their country is at war. A chronic complainer, Daffi (her behavior lives up to her name) longs to be transferred out of the dusty, remote base. Brooding Zohar (Dana Ivgy) fears Daffi (Nelly Tagar) abandoning her and makes it her goal to ensure that Daffi stays in the unit. Zohar has another objective, one that she can take by the hand: to lose her virginity.

The audience won’t know where the movie is going, and the tone shifts so fluidly that when a climactic catfight turns the office setting into a battlefield, the results are at once hilarious, satiric, and horrifying. (Though one question lingers: How does Zohar escape reprimand when she talks back to her commanding officer with impunity?)

Droll, deadpan, and, ultimately, disarming, The Kidnapping of Michel Houellebecq has a singular charm, even if you have never heard of the titular, real-life author. The first 20 minutes challenge the viewer to muster up some interest in Houellebecq (played by the writer himself, as a brainy and aloof Brahmin with zero charisma, a portrayal that’s intentional). Physically, he’s nondescript, and the intellectual stereotypically debates Mozart vs. Beethoven and dissects H. P. Lovecraft. He’s not exactly an audience-luring lead—that is, until he’s kidnapped for ransom (he’s a celebrity, after all, well, in France). The script derives inspiration from the author’s real-life and still-mysterious 2011 disappearance.

Treated with kid gloves by his winging-it captors, Houellebecq is taken to an industrial wasteland. Held against his will in a frilly bedroom, he remains unfazed and sleepily complies as long as he’s allowed to smoke. But scene by scene, his kidnappers slowly take over the story. The film is similar to American Hustle in that the crime(s) take a backseat to character. Like David O. Russell, director Guillaume Nicloux allows the footloose interactions to dominate, as a get-rich scheme turns into a party.

Even if you don’t warm up to Houellebecq, you’re bound to gravitate toward his non-threatening captors. Talk about free flowing—almost everything under the sun is touched here: Polish history, the Holocaust, to name two. And justice is served: up-and-comer Frederic Chopin receives screen credit for the score. (Chopin pops up in Zero Motivation, too.) Michel Houellebecq won two awards: the grand jury prize and best screenplay.

Valeria Bruni Tedeschi in Human Capital

One film that won’t disappoint and is the closest to a safe bet in the competition is Human Capital. Each character, main or supporting, gets his or her day in a chapter-by-chapter, time-shifting novelistic narrative, a form that was everywhere 10 years ago, until Crash tanked it. It’s also a rigid, though always compelling, microcosm  of contemporary Italy wrapped in a procedural: What driver swiped a bicyclist, throwing him off the road and into a coma? The bratty rich kid, son of a venture capitalist? His middle-class, open-minded girlfriend (gorgeous and terrific newcomer Matilde Gioli—add her to your Google search now)?

The secret is unwrapped in what is also an actors’ showcase. Wispy-voiced Valeria Bruni Tedeschi brings a lot of heart to what could have been a stereotypical trophy wife, a role that garnered her a second acting prize from Tribeca. The actress (sister to Carla Bruni) has made it her specialty to play a weepy wreck knocked off her pedestal. And for those who though that The Great Beauty was too all over the place, this all-star send-up of Italian mores is a well-balanced feat of straightaway storytelling that ends with enough ambiguity for some post-screening detective work.

The competition brings from the Berlin Film Festival the stark and beautifully made Brides from the Republic of Georgia, inspired by director Tinatin Kajrishvili’s personal experiences. It was filmed unobtrusively with a handheld, probing camera, and the lens fixates on the independent-minded Nutsa (Mari Kitia, who remarkably looks like Rosemarie DeWitt). She’s among a group of women, ranging in age, whose male partners are imprisoned and who marry their partners in an officious, by-the-book ceremony. (In order for an inmate to receive visits from his family, as well as other privileges, he has to be married.)

Nutsa makes the best of limited options. The willowy, porcelain-skinned 20-something obeys her in-laws, visits her older husband, and schleps the kids along for a visitation, though they have no idea dad is a con. But her husband still has six years to go until he’s released. Nutsa is broke, and so sells an heirloom (symbolically, a wedding present from her in-laws) to get by.  In the meantime, she meets a good-looking guy closer to her age, without telling him that she’s married.

The film makes a strong case for the power of understatement. Sequence by sequence, the viewer grasps a fuller portrait of Nutsa. The petulant but cool Nutsa has a minimum of dialogue, and the camera bathes in her reactions. The subtlety works, up to a point, but when the focus shifts to her prisoner husband, he comes off as underplayed. The impact of the ending stems from the events themselves rather than from an emotional resonance.

Lately, there has been a rash of extraordinary LGBT-related films from Europe, marked by spiky and well-drawn contradictory characters and a frankness that make their American counterparts seem camera shy, such as France’s Stranger by the Lake. From Sweden, Something Must Break is like a 90-minute private moment, centered, in practically every frame, on the love-him-or-leave-him Sebastian/Elle. Sebastian’s often perceived as a very beautiful woman, but he’s not trying to pass. (He’s neither transgender or in drag; pronouns here become void.) As he admits in his opening voice-over, he stands apart: “I’m not from here. I will soon disappear,” by taking on the persona of Elle. Gay-themed films have come a long way from being about acceptance.

The film challenges assumptions, though it features a familiar story: Sebastian falls in love with a handsome Prince Charming, Andreas (Iggy Malmborg), who saves him from a beating in a bathroom, but Andreas, who resembles an 1980s pop star, declares that he’s not gay (“Me neither,” replies Sebastian) and becomes embarrassed being seen with Sebastian or the feminine and floral Elle.

Sebastian’s only friend calls him a dreamer, but Sebastian also wants to control his fate, even when he’s often seen in slo-mo, fluid (pun intended), and rough sex scenes where he’s passive, frequently in a threesome. Saga Becker’s remarkable performance makes clear these are deliberate actions, some of which might make audiences cringe.

Though it can’t quite be declared a Tribeca discovery, the scattered Güeros has a breakneck, devil-may-care attitude, though it’s less confined into a story line like Zero Motivation. It won the best debut film award at Berlin in February and a Special Jury Mention for best new narrative filmmaker at this festival.

Director Alonso Ruizpalacios self-consciously and self-effacingly paints a polyglot portrayal of Mexico in glowing black and white. (The film additionally won a prize here for cinematography.) It’s about 20 to 30 minutes too long to sustain its adrenaline rush, but it’s alive with personality and humor to spare. It’s also one of the more successful homages to the French New Wave, in its own manner, without coming off as an intellectualized imitation. Characters address the camera about what type of movie they are stuck in, the tone shifts from scene to scene, and the focus jumps from one idea to the next. It’s playful in the spirit of Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player.

Like many American films that premiered here, Gabriel, filmed locally in New York, doesn’t quite gel. The camera lingers a little too long in its close ups, though there’s little tension onscreen. Still in his twenties, Gabriel (Rory Culkin) returns to live with his family after a stint at a mental health facility. A man/child who demands attention, he doesn’t fully understand that he can’t get away with threatening suicide, running away in the middle of the night, or breaking and entering into someone’s apartment. Whether he admits it or not, he manipulates everyone, though his mother has read every self-help book she can in order to calm her son. He goes by Gabe, so whatever you do, don’t call him Gabriel; only two people can do that: his father, who committed suicide, and a girl he knew from years past, whom he searches for to marry. In the process, the movie depicts a world where a young woman answers the door to a stranger wearing nothing but a towel and a key to a locked door is easily found underneath the doormat.

The most glaring contrast between the foreign-made films and most of the New York–based works in the competition is the overall strength of the cast, from the lead roles down to the one-scene cameo. Here, the Americans lack consistency. For his second film set in the streets of Brooklyn, director Keith Miller (Welcome to Pine Hill) fails to set his cast at ease in Five Star. Most of his actors are very self-conscious, and left to improvise, they repeat themselves. We’ve seen the story before, too: 17-year-old John, raised by his single mother, wants street cred and so becomes the protégé of a local small-time dealer, while searching for the truth about his father’s violent death. You can fill in the rest. The strained interactions aren’t helped by the sofa-bound direction: walk in, sit, and talk.

That said, one surprise of the festival has been the ensemble of X/Y, as 20- or 30-something New Yorkers looking for a connection lasting more than a tryst in a bar bathroom. The candid movie’s themes certainly don’t break new ground, but it’s the most convincing of the American films that are up for awards. The cast uniformly delivers strong performances, including America Ferrera (far away from Ugly Betty); Fruitvale Station’s Melonie Diaz; the film’s director, Ryan Piers Williams (and Ferrera’s real-life husband, playing her onscreen dumped partner); and Common. Williams is a rarity, a director who can not only act but does so with skill. He’s a credible leading everyman.