As partnerships go, Robert De Niro has been pretty lucky.

For starters, there’s his legendary 50-year run with Martin Scorsese, a collaboration that began in the ‘70s with classics like Mean Streets and Taxi Driver and has continued on all the way to 2023’s Killers of the Flower Moon. Then there are co-stars like Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel—both Scorsese company men who’ve shared the screen with him several times—and of course, Al Pacino, arguably De Niro’s only true peer, who burned through the screen with De Niro in Michael Mann’s Heat and Scorsese’s The Irishman.

But sometimes lost in all that testosterone is one of De Niro’s longest-running collaborations—his 37-year partnership with the powerhouse producer Jane Rosenthal, who he founded Tribeca Productions with in 1989. With Rosenthal, De Niro entered a fruitful, often financially lucrative next chapter in his career in the ‘90s, starring in films like Wag the Dog, Analyze This, and the Meet the Parents movies. (Focker-in-Law, the hotly-anticipated fourth installment of the Meet the Parents franchise, co-starring Ben Stiller and Ariana Grande, opens nationwide on Thanksgiving; De Niro has already called Grande his “single most talented” scene partner.)

But even with all that success, De Niro and Rosenthal’s most lasting legacy will likely be the Tribeca Festival, which the pair launched in 2002, as an eleventh-hour effort to help revitalize downtown New York City in the months following 9/11. It has since become one of the world’s most famous film festivals.

Through the years, Tribeca has featured noteworthy debuts of young, inventive filmmakers who went on to release some of the era’s most memorable films and win Oscars in the process—Ryan Coogler (Sinners), Damien Chazelle (La La Land), and The Daniels (Everything Everywhere All At Once). Recently, they’ve also expanded their focus, highlighting podcast events and live performances in their programming.

This year, the festival is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a robust and notably music-heavy slate, opening with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s documentary on Earth, Wind & Fire and closing with Alicia Keys’ Girl From Hell’s Kitchen documentary. In between, Tribeca audiences will see new films top-billed by stars like of Oscar Isaac, Susan Sarandon, and Alicia Vikander, the eagerly-anticipated world premiere of Madonna’s Confessions II music film—not to mention a 50th-anniversary celebration of Taxi Driver, which will reunite De Niro, Scorsese, and Jodie Foster in a pre-screening conversation.

Last month, De Niro and Rosenthal sat down with GQ to talk about 25 years of the TriBeCa Festival, wrangling a cut of Gangs of New York from Harvey Weinstein, and how Martin Scorsese brought them together.

GQ: To start, I wanted to ask you both: What were your first film festival experiences?

Robert De Niro: I went to the Belgrade Film Festival almost 50 years ago. Once or twice, I think I went. And oh God, Cannes Festival, the thing called the [Directors’] Fortnight, for Mean Streets, I think. And maybe the New York Film Festival when I was younger. I was the president of the jury in Moscow maybe again about 35 years ago, maybe give or take a few years. First American president of the Soviet Festival.

How about you, Ms. Rosenthal?

Jane Rosenthal: I had never attended a film festival until I first went with Bob to go to Deauville [Film Festival]. [Turns to De Niro] I think you were being honored at Deauville. Ted Demme was there, Abel Ferrara was there, Kevin Spacey. I just remember staying up extremely late and then not going to sleep because I had to get on the plane.