Tribeca 2026 Review: ACT ONE Turns Acting Class Into Unsettling Power Struggle

For obvious reasons, the topic of mentorship, a special kind of relationship that so often edges between nurturing and abuse, care and manipulation, has always been a goldmine for cinema to explore and possibly self-reflect on.

During this year’s Tribeca Festival, across different sections, you could find several works focusing on that theme in one way or another. Michael J. Gallagher’s The Leader regards this topic through the lens of religious following and cults. Jamie Adams’ Only What We Carry pits a dancer against her former choreographer as they vehemently disagree over the effectiveness of grinding in creative practice.

Act One, directed by Sophia Takal (Black Christmas), also examines the topic in the context of creating art, but with a focus that hits closer to home: perfecting the acting craft. At the center of it is a high schooler, Hannah (Ella Beatty), who dreams of becoming an actor, as much for the love of the craft as for having a chance to mentally and possibly literally escape her unhappy home life, with her forever-fighting parents, who don’t get or support her aspirations.

After not being cast in a school play as she expected, Hannah pins all her hopes on the Act One Studio, led by Melanie (Ari Graynor, who previously played an actor in another memorable film about the misfortunes of making art, The Disaster Artist), a charismatic teacher who immediately sees not only Hannah’s potential but also all the ways to manipulate her into fully realizing it.

Takal’s latest feature is by no means a subtle work -- the red-colored cutaways used as a sort of a curtain aren’t really all that necessary -- and one of its pitfalls is that you can clearly see where this is going from the very beginning. Still, that doesn’t mean the journey isn’t good, which in this case, means it's sufficiently disturbing and rather smart in its musings. While many films that tackle the topic tend to portray the relationship at the center as a complicated collaboration, the very nature of the acting profession allows Takal to show the clear power imbalance and dominance at its center.

In Act One, Melanie becomes a sort of demiurge before she even starts writing a piece specifically for the group of her best students. She is a creator of talents, an arbiter of artistic fates, who looks at Hannah as if she were prey – a potential instrument she could operate with. Talent versus the right kind of direction is an old dilemma in the performative arts, as is the question of whether one might be more crucial than the other.

In this sense, another interesting character emerges within the story: Henry (Nate Mann), a long-time student of Melanie’s, who becomes Hannah’s scene partner and potential love interest. Throughout the film, Henry proves to be a certain kind of actor who is absolutely willing to be the clay in the hands of someone he considers a true artist. He is the one willing to go the distance, while the matter of whether he is actually sufficiently talented remains cleverly unresolved. 

Questions regarding relinquishing of one’s agency, as well as the classic dispute between acting something out and actually living through it, grooming and grinding – all of this is at the center of Act One, making it an already curious, at times genuinely uncomfortable, and dramatic watch. But there is another layer to this dissection of creative collaborations, which comes down to the question: Do we make art for the love of it, or does art offer us opportunities to fulfill altogether different kinds of needs? 

The film enjoyed its world premiere at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. Visit its page at the official festival site for more information.