The Tribeca Film Festival, which will kick off its sixth year on April 25, has become to the world of film — or at least to the New York movie scene — what the Olympics are to the world of sports: a spectacle that has transcended the movie theater and taken on a life of its own.

This year, as Tribeca plans to present its most diverse and eclectic program yet, the festival no longer seems focused on curating, programming, and screening films, nor about building bridges between aspiring filmmakers and audiences comprised of both curious cineastes and interested investors (which is the primary purpose of most of the world’s film festivals). Tribeca, which was launched in 2002 by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff as a response to the attacks on the World Trade Center to “foster the economic and cultural revitalization of Lower Manhattan,” has evolved into an ever-expanding crossroads of art, commerce, community, and celebrity — a three-ring all-media circus which this year looks to add ring number four.

One needs to look no further than the event’s Web site to see its bigger, bolder agenda: “Don’t let the name fool you — the Tribeca Film Festival is about much more than just movies.”

But organizers say these additions should come as little surprise to those who have been following the festival’s growth through the years. “We’ve never approached this as traditional festival organizers,” Ms. Rosenthal said. “We always try to do something different and to incorporate every community we can — and that means everything from [programming] films to encouraging tourism and working hard to reach every demographic in the city.”

Still, by any measure, this year’s festival has reached something of a critical mass, targeting everyone from Nascar fans to the MoMA crowd, those downtown Mercury Lounge-goers, and, with the festival’s opening night devoted to seven SOS short films (part of the campaign behind the Live Earth global concert series), even environmentalists. Outside the standard slate of movies and panels — about 240 features and shorts will be screened through May 6 at 16 Manhattan venues, while more than a dozen “Tribeca Talks” panels will be hosted amid the screenings — the last month has seen an unending wave of announcements regarding an exhausting diversity of programming never before seen at the fest.

The most prominent of these additions is the ESPN Sports Film Festival, which will screen 14 premieres of sports-related films, including triumphant tales of break dancing, horse racing, and championship poker. It will also offer “Sports Saturday,” a free, outdoor day of interactive sports demonstrations.

“We’ve always had numerous sports films at the festival,” Ms. Rosenthal said. “But we think this is way for a younger, mostly male audience to come and experience the festival, and a way to celebrate more sports films than we have in years past.”

As sports buffs navigate the ESPN series, digital art connoisseurs will be heading uptown to the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine or downtown to Trinity Church and the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden, in search of either DJ Spooky’s “Rebirth of a Nation” (a digital remixing and reinterpretation of the controversial 1915 D.W. Griffith silent film with a modern score) or the North American premiere of Paolo Cherchi Usai’s “Passio,” which will fuse Arvo Pärt’s classic score with a wide-ranging montage from a century of moving images.

Seemingly every day, the list of TriBeCa’s special events grows longer. Two weeks ago, there was the news of a simultaneous, five-borough New York premiere of “Spider-Man 3,” which is scheduled to play out across the city on April 30. Then there was word that this year’s festival would feature two films — “Planet B-Boy” and “Lillie & Leander: A Legacy of Violence” — that are both products of the “Tribeca All Access” program, a series that connects hopeful writers and filmmakers from underrepresented communities with investors and producers who are able to make their projects a reality.

Monday, there was even word that the festival would be hosting the “ASCAP Music Lounge” at the Canal Room, which will feature performances during the festival from such musicians as Martha Wainwright and Donovan.

None of this even touches on the year-round events now being organized by Tribeca Enterprises, the parent company of the festival. But Ms. Rosenthal said this unlikely evolution — from a multiday film festival into a yearlong media empire — makes sense, given Tribeca’s unlikely and unprecedented mission.

“When you have a festival that started because of an act of war, everything we do is about a celebration of our community as a whole, of New York City,” she said. “We don’t have the traditional expectations of your standard film festival; it’s first and foremost about our city and creating new memories, and creating something to really look forward to. The first year was about how we could create a new sense of normal downtown, but in the years since it has morphed into something else.”

Not that there aren’t moments that still evoke, for Ms. Rosenthal and scores of other New Yorkers, the sentiments with which the festival became a reality. Asked what events are among her favorites in the festival, she pointed to the Tribeca Drive-In, which screens films outdoors at the World Financial Center on the banks of the Hudson, just across the street from the World Trade Center site.

“It’s always a poignant moment,” she said, “to stand there and say, ‘Yes, we’re still here and stronger than ever, and no one can take away our spirit.’ And what’s wonderful about the Drive-In is that no matter what weather we’re facing, New Yorkers come out, and they always have a good time.”

Today, it’s obvious that Tribeca is not just the dominant New York film festival — surpassing the longestablished New York Film Festival — but also one of the leading film spectacles in the world, aided by such sponsors as American Express and such events as the Academy Awards in marketing itself as a preeminent international event, eliciting about 4,500 submissions from filmmakers around the globe and attracting volunteers willing to fly yearly across the ocean to make the festival a reality.

Ms. Rosenthal conceded that some have criticized the event’s growth into arenas other than movies and into neighborhoods other than TriBeCa. (In keeping with the corporate theme, tickets went on sale last Saturday to American Express cardholders only. They will be made available to downtown residents today, and to the general public tomorrrow.) But she countered that the growth is a fitting tribute to a city still subtly on the mend six years after 9/11.

“It’s all about entertainment,” she said, reflecting on the size and scope of Tribeca 2007. “Whether it is looking at a beautiful piece of art — such as the awards we give out, all made by local artists — or hearing music at the ASCAP Lounge, or watching somebody do a remix mash-up of ‘Birth of a Nation’ at St. John the Divine, or listening to the music of Arvo Pärt, or going to the ‘Drive-In’ with the B-Boys dancing, or watching an anniversary print of ‘Dirty Dancing,’ or watching a doc about a taxi driver that was captured in Bahrain … the festival’s about all of these things that interest in us in our world, and our culture, and trying to bring them together and pass on the excitement.”