Robin Williams Photo: CFP

A random drive down an unfamiliar road and a chance encounter with a stranger force a soft-spoken bank employee to reassess his life and acknowledge his true self in the new indie drama Boulevard, starring Oscar winner Robin Williams.

Williams, 62, most familiar to audiences as a sharp-witted, fast-talking comedian, shows his darker, more intense side in Boulevard, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival that runs through Sunday.

The four-time Academy Award nominee, who took home the best supporting actor prize in 1998 for Good Will Hunting, plays a 60-year-old, meek loan officer comfortably attuned to his life and marriage until he meets a young man who reawakens his inner conflict.

Williams' character, Nolan Mack, must choose between hiding the secret he has suppressed for decades and continuing his life with a woman he loves and respects, or dealing with it and upending his entire life.

Although the film focuses on a gay man, director Dito Montiel, who picked up awards at the Sundance and Venice Film Festival in 2006 for A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, said it is a story about a life and a relationship.

"For me it was about letting go and holding on, the weird push and pulls of life, when it comes to anything from a job to a relationship - the thin line," the New York director explained. "It didn't matter all that much that he was gay.

"Everyone can relate in some way, whether it is a job that you wished you got out of, or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a wife or a husband or a parent that you can't let go of," he added.