Why has it taken so long for someone to make a movie about the musician John Forté? His life story certainly has the requisite sweep: Forté grew up fatherless and poor in Brownsville, Brooklyn, only to get a scholarship to one of the best prep schools in the country, Phillips Exeter. He received a Grammy nomination for his work with the Fugees, then embarked on a critically acclaimed solo career, before getting arrested at Newark Airport for carrying $1.4 million in liquid cocaine. He was sentenced to a mandatory 14 years in prison, served seven, and then had his sentence commuted in 2008 by George W. Bush at the urging of a pair of unlikely allies: the singer Carly Simon and the Republican Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.

“The Russian Winter,” which has its debut tonight at the Tribeca Film Festival, is a documentary about Forté, but it has very little to do with the Fugees, jail, Carly Simon or growing up poor in Brooklyn. Instead, this strangely moving film, which Forté co-produced, centers around a nine-week music-making journey that he took across Russia in 2011 — a trip for which he had to obtain special permission from his parole officer….