A scene from Somers Town Courtesy of Tribeca/Shane Meadows

Film festivals of this size are rarely about the movies themselves, and as Tribeca is one of the most corporate sponsored fests in the world (can I get an "amen," Stella Artois? Or how about you, ESPN?), it's frequently amusing to see how and where sponsorship dollars are spent. For instance, the Target/Tribeca Filmmaker Lounge — home to meet-and-greets with the talent, free bags of organic potato chips and booze, and three volunteers to each attendee — looks exactly like a Target print ad, fire-engine red and mod, every square inch (including the fake fireplace loops on TVs throughout) emblazoned with those trademark bullseyes. It must seem an incongruous tableau when viewed from afar, a community of artists mingling in a mock storefront. In honor of the ongoing and ever-peculiar symbiosis between art and commerce, today's Tribeca round-up looks at unexpected kindred spirits; as the festival is still young, so are the protagonists herein.

Originally conceived as a short film but hardly bloated at 75 minutes, Brit director Shane Meadows takes his first onscreen trip to London in his endearingly funny, deceptively minimal working-class dramedy Somers Town. Having introduced audiences to the easy, rabble-rousing naturalism of little Thomas Turgoose in last year's This is England, Meadows again casts the now teenaged towhead — strangely comfortable in these awkward adolescent years — to shoulder the story's weight. (Considering their first outing ends in a freeze frame reminiscent of The 400 Blows, this brash youngster is quickly becoming the Jean-Pierre Léaud to Meadows' Truffaut, loftiness deserved.) In the titular neighborhood, fiery Nottingham runaway Tomo (Turgoose) meets pensive Polish immigrant Marek (Piotr Jagiello), and a hesitant friendship begins after the former steals the latter's photos of a gorgeous Parisian woman. Maria (Elisa Lasowski) is real all right, and the boys are competitively smitten, rolling her the long way home from work in a found wheelchair. At night, Marek hides an imposing Tomo from his father under his bed, and by day they scheme: stealing clothes to later sell, and making a few pounds on a neighbor's odd jobs. Written by Meadows' frequent collaborator Paul Fraser (Dead Man's Shoes, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands) and shot almost entirely in black-and-white DV so crisp that its wistfulness feels more modern than nostalgic, Somers Town is, in its meager ambitions, warm and spacious and just about perfect. I had a perma-grin from beginning to end.

Kolia Litscher as Nicholas in Charly Courtesy of Tribeca/Jowan Le Besco

There's a far more unusual, psychologically puzzling dynamic going on between the two teen leads in Charly, the enigmatic, homegrown and actually minimal second feature directed by French actress Isild Le Besco (seen recently in Backstage and À tout de suite). As in her debut effort, Half-Price, parents are little-seen in this unpretentious, organically lit universe; we aren't even sure if lackadaisical 14-year-old loner Nicolas (Kolia Litscher) is related to the elderly couple he lives with — that is, before he runs away. Armed with a wad of stolen cash, a teacher-annotated copy of Wedekind's scandalous youth-sexuality play Spring Awakening, and a romantic postcard depicting the idyllic Breton island of Belle-Île, Nicolas hitchhikes as far as the road takes him. Eventually, he's collected like a stray pup by the eponymous redhead (Julie-Marie Parmentier, remarkable as the film's single thrust of vivacity), a hardheaded teen prostitute who moves him into her trailer, but why? Forcing the easy-to-mold Nicolas to perform basic chores with an obsessive-compulsive exactitude, Charly acts as his disciplinarian mother, or maybe a roommate-mentor, or is this playing house with a skewed sense of marital duty? Each day follows a similar repetition, including Charly's honk to attention from outside, her regular john (who we only see from afar) waiting impatiently on his motorcycle. It's only after the tease and taste of sex does the vulnerability shared between the two frame Nicolas's insular experience as a pseudo-houseboy; whether any of this has happened or it's all a Wedekind-inspired, sea creature-laden daydream in his mop-topped head, the boy's greatest triumph over passivity is simply going home. My only advice here is to keep your opinions to yourself until you've sat with this humble treat a couple days; it's a grower.

Tribeca keeps on kicking through next weekend, so stay tuned for one last round-up, along with Premiere's top ten picks from this year's festival.