A Tribeca Institute initiative, "The Power of Words" invited world-renowned filmmakers and young storytellers to interpret the words of a visionary leader. In its inaugural year, the 2014 program honors Nelson Mandela.

5 of today’s foremost filmmakers were paired up with 5 Tribeca Film Fellows (emerging student storytellers) from New York City, and each filmmaking team was tasked with producing a short film based on a quote by Nelson Mandela, creating five distinct interpretations that, through an accompanying education arm of the program, aims to connect younger viewers to Mandela, if only for the first time.

The film series and accompanying transmedia project premiered in Cape Town, South Africa on November 13, 2014, before an international gathering of Mandela family members, public dignitaries, filmmakers, and the nation’s emerging youth leaders.

The teams were as follows, accompanied by the Mandela quotes their films were inspired by:

– MIRA NAIR/JASMINE VELEZ:"Difficulties break some men but make others."
– NABIL ELDERKIN, TYLER STRACHAN: "I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps on trying."
– RAMIN BAHRANI/FRISLY SOBERANIS: "The habit of attending to small things and of appreciating small courtesies is one of the important marks of a good person."
– EVA WEBER/JAMES MARSH/NIA ASHLEY: "Where poverty exists, there is not true freedom."
– HANK WILLIS THOMAS/TATIYANA JENKINS/JASMINE VELEZ: "The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed."

The initiative, supported by Montblanc, is developed from a partnership between the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Tribeca Film Institute.

All the films are now available to watch online, and are embedded below: