Star-crossed chums in Somers Town.

There are only a handful of U.K.-made (or partially-U.K.-made) movies at Tribeca this year: Boy A, The Cottage, Mister Lonely, Somers Town, I Am Because We Are, Man on Wire, Baghdad High, and War, Love, God and Madness. Of these, the last four are documentaries. Britain’s always been rather better at documentaries (thank you, John Grierson) than other film genres. When we venture elsewhere, we’re good at social realism; Ken Loach and Mike Leigh do fine work with their kitchen-sink dramas which, like the Brits in general, find humor in misery. While Americans spit, “You lookin’ at me?,” when they’re in turmoil, we—whether facing the threat of unemployment or a horde of zombies in the back garden—respond by putting the kettle on for a nice cup of tea. As it is in life, so it is in the movies.

We generally avoid happy endings, and we can’t compete with Hollywood glitz, unless Keira Knightley happens to be loitering. (We used to have Helena Bonham-Carter in all her Merchant Ivory splendor; but then she met that strange American guy.) Of course, Tribeca isn’t supposed to be about Hollywood. While critics may grumble that the festival often showcases West Coast fluff, De Niro founded the festival with downtown Manhattan in mind.

Two of the British films are documentaries about Iraq: Ivan O’Mahoney’s Baghdad High and Mohamed Al-Daradji’s War, Love, God and Madness. Then there’s Mister Lonely (a collaboration from the U.K., France and the U.S.), about celebrity impersonators who live on a Scottish commune (with a secondary plot involving daredevil nuns who jump out of planes). A large dose of what Tribeca calls “horror-comedy” arrives in Paul Andrew Williams’s (London to Brighton) Cottage. It sounds like Haneke’s Funny Games, but played for laughs, and minus the gratuitous sadism.

One of the British films avoids the U.K. altogether. Man on Wire, British-born James Marsh’s documentary, follows Frenchman Philippe Petit as he struts and dances along a high wire between the two World Trade Center towers in 1974. According to the Tribeca blurb, “For the few moments that Petit did not film himself, Marsh adds beautifully shot black-and-white dramatic reenactments…” which leaves me wondering how exactly they reenacted those particular scenes and, more importantly, where. In any case, Man on Wire received two accolades at Sundance this year: World Cinema Jury and Audience awards.

Boy A, Irishman John Crowley’s latest, follows a 24-year-old man who’s just been released from prison after spending the last 14 years of his life behind bars. Boy A will surely remind British cinemagoers of the huge media flurry that erupted when two 11-year-old boys were sentenced to prison for the murder of toddler James Bulger in 1993. When released in 2001, they were provided with new identities for their protection.

Continuing the theme of British gloom is Somers Town, Shane Meadow’s (This Is England) exploration of the friendship between two boys, one a Londoner, and the other a newly arrived Polish immigrant. As Lou Dobbs blames illegal immigrants for all of America’s ills, the Polish are being blamed by many British right-wingers and moral-panic enthusiasts for crime and employment problems in the U.K. Poland joined the European Union in 2004, and immigration to the U.K., large in scale though it may be, is almost always legal. Somers Town is sure to touch on this.

Finally, we come to I am Because We Are, a documentary directed by Nathan Rissman and written and produced by Madonna. Rissman is listed on IMDb as a “former gardener for Madonna.” As you may have guessed, the film focuses on the plight of Malawian children with AIDS; Bill Clinton and Desmond Tutu make guest turns. None of this sounds terribly British—unless you count Madonna, who’s made her home in London. She thinks she’s British, and speaks in tones that occasionally sound like someone who is trying—and failing—to imitate a bad British accent.

• Baghdad High screens at Tribeca starting Apr 29.
• Boy A screens at Tribeca starting Apr 25.
• The Cottage screens at Tribeca starting Apr 24.
• I Am Because We Are screens at Tribeca starting Apr 24.
• Man On Wire screens at Tribeca starting Apr 26.
• Mister Lonely screens at Tribeca starting Apr 29.
• Somers Town screens at Tribeca starting Apr 24.
• War, Love, God & Madness screens at Tribeca starting Apr 25.