“The price of a ticket at the emerging Tribeca Film Festival is increasing by 50% this year,” reports Indiewire’s Eugene Hernandez. “While most tickets for last year’s festival were sold for $12, this year tickets for the majority of screenings are priced at $18” — a higher per-ducat price than at any other major American film festival .” The TFF launched on the spirit of downtown recovery from 9.11.01, but now it has a new rep — the nation’s most avaricious and money-grubbing film festival.

“The price of seeing a movie at the Tribeca Film Festival is increasing dramatically in an area of New York City where the cost of daily life seems to be on a continual incline,” Fernandez writes. “The cost is higher than all other festivals in major American urban cities but perhaps not totally surprising to those who face some costly cultural event prices in New York City where a ticket to MoMA infamously hit $20 and the price of a ticket to a Broadway show often exceeds $100.”

It’s not the surprise — it’s the arrogance. Not the $18 tickets in and of themselves (although $18 per ticket definitely sucks) as much as the 50% bump over last year’s prices and the accompanying greed-head vibe overtaking the festival’s founding spirit