Tribeca Honors Iraq Docs

It was born out of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Now Robert De Niro's neighborhood film fest is tackling the war in Iraq.

After kicking off its fifth year with the controversial world premiere of Paul Greengrass' riveting 9-11-themed docudrama United 93, the Tribeca Film Festival wrapped things up this weekend by bestowing its Best Documentary Feature award on The War Tapes--a harrowing portrait of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq as seen through the eyes of a New Hampshire Guard unit.

A jury led by Ken Burns and Whoopi Goldberg selected the doc, directed by Deborah Scranton, which featured often gut-wrenching footage shot by soldiers who were given handheld digital cameras to record their first-person experiences in the ongoing conflict.

Another Iraq-themed doc, When I Came Home by Dan Lohaus, won the NY Loves Film Documentary award for films with a Big Apple focus. The work focuses on a U.S. veteran of Iraq who came back from his tour to nothing and wound up living out of his car. Through its subject, When I Came Home also examines how vets fight to obtain their benefits.

Voices of Bam won a special jury prize examining another Middle East tragedy, this one occurring not in Iraq, but in neighboring Iran. The documentary chronicles the survivors of a 2003 earthquake that devastated the Iranian inhabitants of the ancient city of Bam and killed over 43,000 people.

Three works scored trophies for Outstanding Achievement in Documentaries: Jesus Camp about an evangelical Christian camp; Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, a new look at the mass suicide led by Jim Jones in Guyana; and Maquilapolis: City of Factories, a poignant account of workers in massive sweatshops along the Mexican border.

Best New Documentary Filmmaker went to Pelin Esmer of Turkey for The Play about peasants in a Turkish mountain village who stage a play.

War stories also dominated the fictional slate. Argentine helmer Tristán Bauers' Iluminados por el Fuego, a blistering tale of an infantryman struggling with the memories of his service in the Falklands War, took home the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature.

Oren Rudavsky's The Treatment, about a fired schoolteacher who falls in love with a beautiful widow while battling his therapist, picked up Best Made in New York Narrative Feature category. The film stars Chris Eigeman, Ian Holm and Famke Janssen.

Neophyte Egyptian director Marwan Hamed was named Best New Narrative Filmmaker for his ambitious epic The Yacoubian Building, taking on formerly taboo subjects in that country such as government corruption, Islamic fundamentalism and homosexuality.

Germany's Jurgen Vogel garnered Best Actor props for his performance in The Free Will, while the Czech Republic's Eva Holubova earned Best Actress for Holiday Makers.

Nick Childs' The Shovel was honored as the Best Narrative Short.

This year's installment comprised over 274 features and shorts from 40 countries.

"Our competition jurors faced some tough choices this year, but what buoyed us above all was the sense we had from all participants that merely being selected to be shown in Tribeca this year left all filmmakers feeling like winners," said festival director Peter Scarlet.

That sentiment was echoed by Ryan Kampe, coproducer of The Big Bad Swim, one of the fest's buzz film, which stars Huff's Paget Brewster. The comedy proved to be so popular that organizers added an additional screening to the program.

"For us, a group of first-time feature filmmakers, the response has been tremendous," Kampe told E! Online. "And for the film to be garnering the industry attention that it has, we would have never expected to have this positive of an experience at Tribeca."

There were also a series of panels featuring a who's who of the film biz: director JJ Abrams, whose debut feature Mission: Impossible III was among a handful of Hollywood blockbusters to screen at the fest; Oscar winner Morgan Freeman, who talked about his craft; directors Harold Ramis, Todd Philips and Jeff Garlin, who riffed on American film comedies; and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, 2929 Entertainment's Todd Wagner and Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, who discussed the impact of downloading on the movie industry.

On the music side, the festival also sponsored the Tribeca/ASCAP Lounge, a series of events allowing filmmakers to mingle with such composers and songwriters as Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint, John Mayer and Patti Griffin.