The Tribeca Film Festival, which was conceived as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has always been committed to spotlighting stories made in and about New York City. To that end, this year’s edition has arrived with a particularly strong lineup of local yarns, all vividly constructed and engaged in discussions about how the New York of the 20th century became the gentrified metropolis of today.

In “Theater of War” (Wed., Fri., Sat.), director John Walter goes behind the curtain of the 2006 Public Theater production of “Mother Courage and Her Children” to capture a story of modern interpretation. In “The Zen of Bobby V” (Thurs., Sun.), three NYU students live alongside former Mets manager Bobby Valentine for seven months to uncover how the former New York icon has made himself into something of a national hero in Japan. And in “Guest of Cindy Sherman” (tonight, Thurs., Fri., Sat.), directors Tom Donahue and Paul H-O peel away the façade of the Chelsea art scene of the late 1990s.

But among all the New York-centric films populating this year’s festival, there is one iconic image that towers above all others: the closing shot of Douglas Keeve’s “Hotel Gramercy Park” (Thurs., Fri.). Mr. Keeve saw in the sale, renovation, and reopening of the Gramercy Park Hotel a microcosm of the changes in Manhattan life, and he juggles three stories that collide in a final, dizzying juxtaposition.

Talking to members of the Weissberg family, the former owners of the hotel who lured an array of celebrities — and celebrity hopefuls — with their “anything goes” mentality, Mr. Keeve plunges into the history of this unlikely, imperfect institution. All the while, he chronicles the ambitious renovations being orchestrated by the famed hotelier Ian Schrager, who plans to shake up the status quo and give New York a dazzling new treasure of refined luxury.

But in a final scene, we see the New York of the past and the New York of the present come face to face. As the brand new, sparkling hotel opens for business — complete with an art-filled lobby meticulously arranged by Julian Schnabel — one of the building’s elderly, longtime residents comes down to grab some fresh air. He had refused to leave as the construction and renovation took their course, and as he strolls from the hotel door into a barrage of flashbulbs and celebrities, the contrast dividing old New York from new (or young) New York is thrown into stark relief.

Here, in Gramercy Park, in both the dismayed expression of a veteran city dweller and in the carefully constructed faces of tourists and celebrities alike, we can see the turning of the tide. What once was a home is now a foreign land.

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While “Hotel Gramercy Park” is a chronicle of the rebirth of a New York institution as the city’s history fades around it, the breathtaking documentary “Man on Wire” (today, Sun.) goes a long way toward properly exhuming a bygone landmark — the one whose demise inspired the creation of the Tribeca Film Festival.

“Man on Wire” fits an intimate profile of the famed French tightrope walker Philippe Petit, who followed a walk atop Notre Dame Cathedral with a 45-minute stroll between America’s two tallest structures, into a heart-pounding thriller about a small group of French nationals, led by Mr. Petit, who broke into the newly constructed World Trade Center towers in 1974.

“It was such an amazing accomplishment that I think it’s easy for people to forget that this was also a pretty daring crime,” the film’s director and a Brooklyn resident, James Marsh, said. “But it was an inversion of the classical criminal conspiracy — less a crime that took something from New York than one that gave a gift back to the people of New York. Ironically, there was a lot of ambivalence among people in the city about these imposing new structures, and I think that in conquering the towers, Philippe sort of humanized them.”

Indeed, viewing Mr. Petit’s incredible accomplishment on the latter side of the September 11 attacks (with the aid of an array of photography and helicopter footage) lends a renewed sense of emotional discovery to the towers, which were a fixture of the New York skyline for just three short decades. In sharing Mr. Petit’s sense of awe and astonishment, Mr. Marsh all but brings the buildings back to life.

“I wanted to show them going up, never coming down,” Mr. Marsh said. “So you see them being built, and then you see them from Philippe’s perspective, as these soaring buildings that stood atop the world.”

It is impossible not to become caught up in the sheer audacity of Mr. Petit’s plan, and in the bold nature of the buildings themselves. As “Man on Wire” ticks down to the moment of truth, one suddenly considers how those two hunks of steel and glass in many ways defined the city and inspired a man to risk his life and his freedom to dance with them.

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In the end, however, Judd Ehrlich’s “Run for Your Life” (Thurs., Fri., Sat.) might be this year’s most popular New York crowd-pleaser. An intimate profile of the eccentric, endlessly optimistic, and defiantly unstoppable Fred Lebow, who founded the New York City Marathon, “Run for Your Life” evokes the day-to-day sense of community that unites New Yorkers. When Mr. Ehrlich founded the marathon in 1970, 27 runners paid the $1 entry fee to participate in a race that made several loops around Central Park. Thirty-six years later, 93,000 people applied to run in the race that now takes in all five boroughs.

Mr. Ehrlich has rescued archival footage depicting some of the earliest runners as they cut across the vast Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and trek into Queens, where organizers originally feared no crowds would turn out. This is the city at its very best: Strangers run next to strangers, winding through neighborhoods they wouldn’t otherwise see, cheered on by people they would never otherwise meet.

ssnyder@nysun.com

For more information, visit www.tribecafilmfestival.org.