Tribeca Studios will release a film today tracing the founding of the Tribeca Film Festival, and it is so many things rolled into one for those of us who live here: a harrowing look back on September 11th; a time capsule of Tribeca from 25 years ago; a profile of its founders, Robert De Niro, producer Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff, who put down roots here in the ’90s; a homage to films shot in New York City; and an account of the evolution of both the festival and the neighborhood it was named for. The film is available on Netflix as of today.

Directed by Matt Tyrnauer, the movie opens with scenes of the neighborhood 25 years ago, and while some are a bit anachronistic — there’s a shot with subway tokens, which, by 2001 were nearly obsolete — it’s still a remarkable assemblage of archive footage, especially if you live here and can recognize each corner. Tyrnauer called it, in the talkback hosted by People magazine (and moderated by Tribecan and People Inc. president Leah Wyar), “archival verite” — “if you get enough you can actually building a scene from it,” he said.

The film has new interviews with De Niro and Rosenthal, along with Martin Scorsese, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Whoopi Goldberg, Nas, Jon M. Chu, Nia DaCosta, Denis Leary, Graydon Carter, Julian Schnabel, Sheila Nevins, and more.

“We felt we needed to do something and we weren’t firefighters or steelworkers,” Rosenthal said in the talkback about what inspired the festival. (People hosted a screening at their new space at 225 Liberty, right across from the memorial.) In the film she says: “It was a rupture in the geography of the city…We’re still here. Screw you.”

De Niro discovered Tribeca while looking for a place to train for “Raging Bull,” the 1980 Scorsese film where he plays a former middleweight boxing champion. (He grew up in the Village.) “I fell in love with the neighborhood, the light, the water,” he said at the talkback. He convinced Rosenthal to take an office here, and when Tristar Pictures insisted they move uptown, he suggested they buy a building in Tribeca instead. They did: 375 Greenwich, originally a coffee and tea warehouse.

More than a decade later, De Niro was at his office desk with a clear view of the Twin Towers on 9/11. He said he watched as they came down, and then watched again from a big TV he had on in the office, just to make sure he was actually seeing what he was seeing.

Production still courtesy Tribeca 25

In the months following, he and Rosenthal first started events called Dinner Downtown, where they got movie celebrities to come to dinners that were more of a neighborhood crawl — appetizers one spot, main at the next, dessert down the street. From that effort, came the film festival — designed to bring people downtown. It came together in a few months, and it worked. The goal was 50,000 people over four days; 150,000 showed up, starting with the opener of Hugh Grant’s “About A Boy” on May 8, 2002.

“They had just opened up West Street when Bob suggested we invite Nelson Mandela,” Rosenthal said. They did, and he came, speaking at City Hall for the opening day.

Everyone rallied. Graydon Carter hosted a Vanity Fair party — at 60 Centre, the New York State Supreme Courthouse.

“The festival was an act of defiance,” De Niro said in the film. “It wasn’t just about movies. It was about downtown coming back. You looked out the window and it was still smoking. That gave some perspective.”

Rosenthal said that whenever someone complained or got weary during those first months, they would say, “Look left.”

The festival is still doing what they want it to do, and more. It’s launched hundreds of film careers — Ryan Coogler, Jon M. Chu, Nia DaCosta — and forged alliances with artists across all the mediums. Springsteen, Bono, Julian Schnabel, Questlove are all huge supporters. And it is still keeping Tribeca on the map. Of course we know De Niro would go on to develop some of the neighborhood’s most iconic restaurants and hotels.

Now, at 25 years, Rosenthal said they bring their staff down to the memorial every year — most have no memory of the event, and some weren’t even born in 2001.

“We’re going from this place of having lived it to having to teach it,” she said. “But that’s ok. We didn’t just start a film festival for our love of movies. We did it for this place.”