Tribeca Festival Names 2026 Winners, With Cotton Fever, Labrador and Jail Time Records Taking Top Honors

The 25th annual Tribeca Festival has handed out its competition awards, and this year’s winners offered a reminder that the festival’s most enduring trick is still its best one: finding deeply specific stories that somehow make the world feel larger.

Cotton Fever, Daniel Blake Schwartz’s addiction drama, won the Founders Award for Best U.S. Narrative Feature, while Rodrigue Jean’s Labrador – Autopsy of Silence took Best International Narrative Feature. In the Documentary Competition, Jail Time Records, directed by Dione Roach and Steve Happi, won Best Documentary Feature for its portrait of a music recording studio operating inside an overcrowded prison in Cameroon.

Together, the top winners reflected the global reach of this year’s festival, whose honorees represented North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Middle East. The awards spanned narrative features, documentaries, shorts, games, podcasts, branded storytelling and the festival’s inaugural Best New York Short prize.

“This year’s award winners embody the spirit of Tribeca: fearless work that crosses borders, expands the form, and reveals the power of storytelling to uncover humanity in unexpected places,” Cara Cusumano, the festival director and senior vice president of programming, said in a statement.

Several films left with more than one prize. Labrador – Autopsy of Silence led the International Narrative Competition, winning Best International Narrative Feature, Best Performance for Christopher Angatookalook, and Best Cinematography for Mathieu Laverdière. The jury praised the film as haunting, spiritually mindful and deeply immersive, singling out Angatookalook’s “soulful portrayal of emotional solitude.”

In the U.S. Narrative Competition, Cotton Fever also won Best Cinematography for Tom Acton Fitzgerald, whose work was praised as naturalistic, gritty, and poetic. The Puerto Rican feature Summer of Three earned two major honors: Best Performance for Marcel Ruiz, Paolo Schoene, and Kiki Montilla, and Best Screenplay for Carlitos Ruiz-Ruiz, Marcel Ruiz, and Mariana S. Belaval. The jury called the film soulful and entertaining, while charmingly admitting that it wanted to “jump on the back of the motorcycle and careen across Puerto Rico” with its actors.

The documentary awards gave a strong boost to Jail Time Records, which also won the Albert Maysles Award for Best New Documentary Director. The film’s subject — incarcerated musicians finding creative expression inside a prison — clearly struck a chord with jurors, who described it as an unforgettable statement on the transformational power of music. Roach, Happi, and Urberto Rapisardi also won Best Cinematography in a Documentary Feature.

Other documentary honors went to Rebecca Adorno and Viridiana Lieberman, who won Best Editing for Jean-Michel, a portrait of a brilliant and haunted artist. Time Warp, Allison Berg’s film about a conservative town rallying around an LGBTQ theater performance, received a Special Jury Mention for Best Documentary Feature.

The Viewpoints Award went to Crocodile, directed by The Critics and Pietra Brettkelly, a Nigeria-New Zealand production celebrated for its joyful and inventive look at young artists pursuing their dreams. The Best New Narrative Director Award went to Miiku Sakanishi for Memorizu, from Japan, while Elisee Junior St. Preux received a Special Jury Mention for The Tropic Sun and His Eyes, a portrait of Haiti, friendship, and emotional drift.

The Nora Ephron Award went to Dina Duma for Skateboarding Is Not for Girls, a North Macedonia, Belgium, Slovenia and Croatia co-production that jurors described as lyrical, political, heartbreaking and heart-warming — which, as combinations go, feels very Ephron-adjacent indeed.

In the shorts categories, Mohamed Taher’s 32B won Best Narrative Short; Taliesin Black Brown’s Listen won Best Documentary Short; and Wesley Wang’s Violet and Marlowe Rob a Bank won Best Animated Short. The inaugural Best New York Short honor went to Insufficient Fare, from Michael Gugger and Varvara Kanellakopoulou, a tribute to the MetroCard that jurors called funny, nostalgic, and unmistakably New York.

Tribeca’s broader storytelling slate also had its winners. The Tribeca Games Award went to There Are No Ghosts at the Grand, from Anil Glendinning and Rachel Glendinning. Podcast honors included The Fastest Girl in Somalia, THE DOUBLE[S], The Most Wanted Olympian, and Reaching Out. In the AT&T Presents Untold Stories program, Sid Gopinath, Aditya Joshi, and Alifya Ali were recognized for Minnesota Goodbye.

The Tribeca X awards, which recognize brand-supported storytelling, honored projects from McDonald’s, Stio, Coca-Cola, Autodesk, Beats, Rubrik, Accenture and Yogi Tea, with A$AP Rocky named Director of the Year.

The Audience Award winners, determined by festivalgoers, will be announced later. The 2026 Tribeca Festival concludes on June 14 in New York City.