15 Questions With Cara Cusumano, Tribeca Festival Director
Favorite theater: Cable Car Cinema (Providence).
Name: Cara Cusumano
Location: New York
Occupation: Tribeca Festival Director and SVP of Programming
Links: Tribeca Film Festival 2026 Lineup, Individual Tickets, Passes
Editor’s Note: I’m so excited to be partnering with Tribeca Festival this year to bring you moviegoing interviews—starting today with Festival Director Cara Cusumano, followed by select filmmakers throughout the festival! What a dream. The festival’s taking place June 3-14 this year. If you’re in New York, this is a lineup not to be missed. Check it out here and explore ticket & pass options here.
1. What’s your favorite day & time to go to the movies?
2pm on summer Fridays—no work, kids are in school, height of “popcorn movie” season. Feels almost like playing hooky.
2. What’s your favorite movie theater?
Growing up in Providence, there was a theater called the Cable Car that doesn’t exist anymore, but was a super funky space with all found furniture couches and mismatched chairs for seating, and they were doing indie films and off-the-beaten-path stuff when no one else really was (at least not in Rhode Island). I went on one of my first dates there to a screening of Mononoke Hime—didn’t see the boy again but became an anime fan for the rest of my life.
3. What’s your go-to movie theater snack & drink combo?
Milk duds and an absolutely enormous Diet Coke.
4. What’s your dream movie theater snack & drink combo (if noise and sound weren’t an issue)?
I like a little variety, just mix it up. When you go to see as many movies as I do, the menu gets predictable. I love the theaters that do fun special meals and cocktails tied to the films. I fully embrace a theme.
5. First movie you remember seeing in a theater?
The Little Mermaid in 1989 because I had been looking forward to it so much that we cut out a picture from the newspaper and had it on the refrigerator all summer counting down to opening weekend.
6. Last movie you saw in a theater?
Last night I went to the New York premiere of a movie my husband edited called Busboys with David Spade and Theo Von and ended up getting roped into moderating the Q&A.
7. Is there a movie you wish you could have seen in a theater?
The original Scream. I was a little too young when it came out, so I had to settle for sneaking a VHS out of Blockbuster. I watched it constantly and became obsessed with horror movies as a teen. Seeing that opening night with an audience in 1996 would’ve been incredible.
8. Have you ever seen a movie more than once in theaters?
Also from the mid-90s and my mid-teens, I admit to seeing Titanic five times in the theater. I was scheduled to see it a 6th and final time but I got very sick and my mom let me sleep through it and I still haven’t forgiven her.
9. Do you stay through the credits or leave once the film ends?
I see so many of my films at festivals, often back-to-back at different venues, so I am constantly choosing between staying for the Q&A or sprinting to be on time to the next thing.
10. What’s one thing you would change to make movie theaters better?
I actually hate the luxury seating trend. Every theater is now so small and you are so spread out, and suddenly there are only 10 people in the room. Bring back big, packed 200 person theaters with those velvet non-reclining seats.
11. Tell me about an especially memorable moviegoing experience that stands out in your mind.
Way before I self identified as a ‘movie person’, I was probably 12 or 13, my family was on vacation skiing in Park City. As luck would have it, it was the same time as Sundance was going on, and after watching it from afar for several days, I asked my dad if we could go to something. We just picked whatever movie was not sold out that night, and I remember it was an entirely age-inappropriate French film at the Egyptian, but some kind of switch flipped and I think a little part of me was like “yep, I’m doing this forever.”
Another was Opening Night at Tribeca in 2011. I had only worked there for a couple years and the festival opened with a documentary featuring Elton John, which we screened outdoors on the waterfront downtown. He performed afterwards, and dedicated “Your Song” to New York City and I was so genuinely moved and overcome with how beautiful it was and how lucky I was to be a part of that moment.
12. What’s a movie you’re looking forward to seeing?
I am heading to Cannes in a couple weeks so there is a lot I am looking forward to: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Her Private Hell, Full Phil. And of course all the ones I don’t even know to look forward to but will end up being incredible surprises.
Also my five year old son is obsessed with kaiju movies and I got us tickets to a screening of Terror of Mechagodzilla next weekend and he doesn’t know it yet.
13. What’s your dream combination of director and lead(s)?
It would be fun to pair people across eras -- Hitchcock and Scarlett Johansson, or Wes Anderson with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.
14. If you could live in a movie, which one would it be?
15. Why do you think people should continue seeing movies at the movie theater?
Shared experience, shared culture, discovery, conversation, change your point of view, be transported, have fun, support independent artists, eat candy. Why would you not see movies in theaters?
Absolutely enormous Diet Coke! I know that’s right!
This is a great collab, love to see it!