This year’s festival will feature 20 films
Covid complications made it impossible to host a live online festival for two years. The Park City indie film lover’s gathering is back on the ground with the first in-person festival since 2020. This Thursday’s opening night, we will be present on the ground with reviews and news. Here are 20 of our most interesting projects, starting with a viral. New Yorker Story, to tales about gay luchadores and pubescent supermodels and (we hope), a major discovery.
<i>Magazine Dreams</i>
Before he swings in, Creed III this March — and slips into the Marvel multiverse as Kang — Lovecraft Country’s Jonathan Majors A bodybuilder amateur who is struggling to connect takes on another form of physicality, according to a 2020 Black List script by Elijah Bynum.Hot Summer Nights); Zola‘s Taylour Paige costars. — Leah Greenblatt
Premieres Friday, Jan. 20
<i> Cat Person </i>
Published for the first time in New Yorker, Kristen RoupenianThis 2017 short story from ‘It’s a Short Story was Powerful and Delicate. It was specific to aggressive millennial dating but also suggested enough to be a #MeToo remark. Emilia Jones (CODA) and Nicholas Braun (Succession() Stars in the movie version, directed and produced by one of the cowriters BooksmartIt’s been whispered and shaped into a more thrilling thriller. — Joshua Rothkopf
Premieres Saturday, Jan. 21
<i>Infinity Pool</i>
Cronenbergs should be working more often. Even though the King of Body-Horror has returned to his former form, last year’s incarnation was still a delight. Crimes of the Future, son Brandon (PossessorHe continues to be a promising voice, and is equally attracted to extremes. He’s got it this time. Pearl‘s Mia Goth It is a great thing to have in the mix. — JR
Premieres Saturday, Jan. 21
<i>Little Richard: I Am Everything</i>
There is nothing small about the life of one of popular music’s most enduring — and least understood — iconoclasts. Producer Lisa Cortés (All In: Fighting for Democracy) goes deep on both the man and the myth in her directing debut, already set for release on CNN and HBO Max. — LG
Premieres Thursday, Jan. 19
<i>Landscape With Invisible Hand</i>
The secret subject of writer and director Corey Finley has already been explored twice with great results. Thoroughbreds And Bad EducationClass is the best. One can hope that Finley’s latest — a sci-fi pivot concerning the haves and have-nots after a (mostly) benevolent alien invasion — will serve up more of what he does exquisitely well. — JR
Premieres Monday, Jan. 23
<i>Bad Behaviour</i>
Jennifer Connelly An ex-child star who is now seeking enlightenment. Ben Whishaw Alice Englert (Australian actress) is the spiritual guide she follows.You won’t be alone) plays her onscreen daughter and — twist! — also directs. — LG
Premieres Saturday, Jan. 21
<i> Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie</i>
Fox’s relentless fight against Parkinson’s disease is more important than his short stint behind the wheel of DeLorean time machines. Davis Guggenheim is a documentary director.An Inconvenient Truth, It could get loud) shapes the actor’s life story into the rousing profile it deserves. — JR
Premieres Friday, Jan. 20
<i>Passages</i>
Sundance legend Ira Sachs (Frankie, Love is StrangeThe intimate micro-budgets he has built a reputation for are what make him famous. Here he takes on a larger role (and gets wildly horny), in starring in a romantic drama. Ben Whishaw Longtime lovers of Franz Rogowski, the great German actor. Blue is the warmest colours Adèle Exarchopoulos as the woman who comes between them. — LG
Premieres Monday, Jan. 23
<i>You Hurt My Feelings</i>
Ah, Sundance! Movies about neurotic novelists and side-eyed marital tensions. Hurt feelings. This one has all the above plus Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The CrownTobias Menzies is a small-scale urbane psychodrama queen, directed by Nicole Holofcener. — JR
Premieres Sunday, Jan. 22
<i>My Animal</i>
You might be interested in one queer werewolf romance you spot this year. Animal, starring Bobbi Salvör Menuez and Bodies Bodies Bodies’ Amandla Stenberg A hyper-contemporary thriller where you may or not howl at your moon. — LG
Premieres Monday, Jan. 23
<i>Judy Blume Forever</i>
Forever is not such a long period of time when you consider the brilliant Blume. Superfudge Author who pioneered honest young-adult fiction long before the term was ever coined. Although she is a simple subject, her letter-writing fans make this profile powerfully emotional. — JR
Premieres Saturday, Jan. 21
<i>Cassandro</i>
Oscar-winning documentarian Roger Ross Williams (Music by Prudence) makes his narrative debut with Gael García Bernal in the title role of Saúl Armendáriz, the real-life amateur wrestler from El Paso whose sexuality made him an unlikely pioneer in a sport already not exactly lacking for flamboyant color. — LG
Premieres Friday, Jan. 20
<i>A Thousand and One</i>
Sundance’s most successful entries are built upon the bonds between mother and child. Rockwell appears to be following suit. It’s about a single parent with a difficult past (Coming 2 AmericaTeyana Taylor, a six-year-old girl from foster care who takes her child to make a new life for herself. — JR
Premieres Sunday, Jan. 22
<i>Eileen</i>
Last Night in SohoThomasin McKenzie, a shy loner from Boston in the 1960s who falls for a seductive friend at work played by Anne Hathaway In an adaptation of the pitch black novel by My Year of Relaxation and Rest author Ottessa Moshfegh. (Moshfegh also co-produced last year’s quietly affecting Jennifer Lawrence drama Causeway, However, don’t be surprised if the tone doesn’t repeat itself. — LG
Premieres Saturday, Jan. 21
<i>All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt</i>
Produced with no less bold-type names than Moonlight‘s Barry Jenkins This Mississippi-set drama about a coming-of age feels like it is the arrival of a new voice. She’s attuned for rural tensions and weather like a young David Gordon Green. Raven Jackson is Raven Jackson’s writer-director. — JR
Premieres Sunday, Jan. 22
<i>Sometimes I Think About Dying</i>
Daisy Ridley is a depressive cubicle drone in rural Oregon drawn to a new coworker (Dave Merheje) who makes her feel alive — or at least less like dying — in a feature-length expansion of the 2016 short by Rachel Lambert (Radiant City). — LG
Premieres Thursday, Jan. 19
<i>birth/rebirth</i>
Is it too obvious? This entry is located in the Midnight section, which was famously launched. Blair Witch Project, The Babadook, It followsAnd Hereditary). It also draws its inspiration from Mary Shelley’s. Frankenstein. Don’t go reanimatin’ the dead — unless, of course, you’re making a future horror favorite. — JR
Premieres Thursday, Jan. 19
<i>The Pod Generation</i>
RachelGame of Thrones‘ Emilia ClarkeAlvy (Chiwetel EjioforA couple is struggling to conceive in a future world. Are artificial wombs the solution? Sophie Barthes’ creeping social humor is the only thing that can be certain. — LG
Premieres Thursday, Jan. 19
<i>Rotting in the Sun</i>
Writer-director Sebastián Silva (The Maid, TyrelSilva has a perverse sense humor that makes his films seem risky. In Silva’s latest, he plays a snide, drug-addled version of himself: a depressed artist forced to take a vacation on which he comes into contact with a likes-thirsty influencer.— JR
Premieres Sunday, Jan. 22
<i>Brooke Shields: Pretty Baby</i>
Documentary filmmaker Lana Wilson — who brought the Taylor Swift story Miss Americana to Sundance three years ago — turns her lens on ShieldsAnother icon of young womanhood, with her own cautionary tales and pop-culture maelstroms. — LG
Premieres Friday, Jan. 20
Related content: