Bethany Hamilton accepts the award for favorite comeback athlete at...

Bethany Hamilton accepts the award for favorite comeback athlete at the Kids' Choice Sports Awards at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion on July 17, 2014, in Los Angeles. Credit: AP / John Shearer

ESPN is in its 12th year as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, but this spring’s slate is relatively lower in visibility than most, with nothing to compare to last year when its “Mike and the Mad Dog” documentary premiered as part of the festival.

Still, there is an eclectic list of options in the ESPN portion of the festival, which opened April 18 and runs through Sunday in locations throughout Manhattan.

The headliner is “Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable,” about the surfing star who continued on after a life-altering shark attack at age 13 and who now is a mother.

Speaking of surfing, “Momentum Generation,” which is not part of the ESPN slate, concerns a community of surfers in Hawaii in the 1990s that included what became many of the biggest stars of the era such as Kelly Slater.

“Kaiser: The Greatest Football Never to Play Football” is a seriocomic look at a tale that would be impossible in 2018 but still is difficult to believe from the 1980s: A Brazilian who “played” for professional soccer clubs around the world – including some of Brazil’s most storied teams – for more than 20 years, even though he could not actually play competently at that level.

It is funny, until it isn’t.

“Home + Away” is the story of Mexican-American students at El Paso’s Bowie High School whose lives straddle the border and who find success through sports, including soccer, baseball and wrestling.

“Crossroads” focuses on underprivileged teenagers in Charlotte who take up lacrosse thanks to a grant, and find that they are good at it.

“Roll Red Roll” tries to unravel the culture of complicity that enveloped an infamous sexual assault at a football party in Steubenville, Ohio, in 2012.

Most ESPN/Tribeca films historically have been documentaries, but “When She Runs” is a low-key, scripted drama that follows a young mother in a small town in the midst of a longshot bid to train for the Olympic trials.

Director Robert Machoian said after a recent screening the movie was about dreamers, and pointed to the unlikely second-place finisher in the Boston Marathon, Sarah Sellers, as a recent real-life example.

ESPN also has a compilation of four shorts running as part of the festival.

Finally, a film that is not under the ESPN banner but has generated buzz is “Unbanned: The Legend of AJ1,” in which the likes of Michael Jordan, Spike Lee, Chuck D, DJ Khaled and Russell Westbrook are interviewed for the story of Air Jordan sneakers and the impact they had on the wider culture.

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