Interestingly, The Tribeca Film Festival will close with a new restoration of "The King of Comedy," the 1983 Martin Scorsese film that happens to star Tribeca co-founder Robert De Niro.

To say more, the disturbing black comedy, in which De Niro plays desirable stand-up comic Rupert Pupkin, who kidnaps talk-show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) and demands a spot on Langford's show, won largely wild reviews but has grown in stature since its initial release. 

Fact-fully, the film has been given a digital 4K restoration by Scorsese's Film Foundation, Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox.

According to Tribeca co-founder Jane Rosenthal, the idea of including restorations in the festival's lineup came from Scorsese himself. In fact, she said in the TFF press release announcing the booking that twelve years ago when they announced their first festival, it was Marty's idea for them to feature restored and rediscovered films and that The King of Comedy was so ahead of its time; it seems more relevant today than it was 30 years ago. While De Niro added that he was a big fan of the script and very excited to do it with Marty and happy that they finally made it. The fact that it's been restored (hard to believe that so many years have passed) is even all the better, and she can't wait to see it on their closing night.

The closing-night film will be screened on Saturday, April 27, though the festival itself will have an additional day of screenings on April 28. It is known to begin on April 17 and will take place at a variety of theaters and venues in downtown Manhattan. 

Furthermore,kindly view the full lineup of films is available at the Tribeca Film Festival website.

Keep on laughing!

(AW:Samrat Biswas)