“HUMAN THEORIES” // TRIBECA 2026
BY MATEO MORENO
Having lived in New York City for most of my life, I’ve come to realize that the majority of my interactions are with people I will never see again. Fleeting moments with strangers. A funny story shared on a subway train. A deep philosophical conversation on the rooftop of a house party. The shared annoyance of two locals trying to navigate Time Square together around hundreds of tourists. I’ve had so many of these moments and many of them have stuck with me as strongly as really great conversations with close friends of mine. It’s one of the many things that makes NYC so special, so unique. A fleeting moment with a stranger may stay with you for the rest of your life. And that’s why the new film HUMAN THEORIES feels so right; it’s an anthology film, set in NYC, that explores dozens of small, fleeting moments but never stays too long to really invest in a longer story. They’re meant to pass you right by, much like people do on the streets of Manhattan every day.
Comprised of 40 different short tales, the film flies by with an unabashed joy. By seeing so many different tales, you really are seeing a comment on the human condition. It opens with a jazz song underscoring the title sequence, feeling like the yesterday of a certain older NY filmmaker whose films made a big splash, but whose personal life seems destined to bury them in the past. A jazz score has always worked for me in a film about New York. Whether walking the streets of a rainy afternoon in Soho or an evening stroll in Tribeca, or as your recovering from a late night in Brooklyn, you can almost hear a jazz score underplaying you as you navigate the city. At least I can hear that. There are so many great sequences, from an awkward conversation between roommates as one of them is moving out to a subway sequence (of course) to a woman hooking up with a truly egotistical horrid of a man, the film easily allows us to laugh along with them, or something at them, while seeing ourselves in so many of them. Some are sweet and lovely; some are laugh out loud funny and some are pure cringe. Writer/director Jess Ziedman does a fantastic job covering the gambit of random, strange and wild NYC interactions. All of the actors are great here and the city itself, as it should be, is the starring role. A wonderful twist on the anthology film, Human Theories is well worth the trip to the Big Apple.
GRADE: B+
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY Jess Zeidman STARRING Elise Kibler, Joey Dardano, Joanna Arnow, Sophie Zucker, Josephine Chiang, Asha Ward. SELECTED AS PART OF THE 2026 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL. FOR MORE INFO:https://tribecafilm.com/films/human-theories-2026