If 2025 already feels prefer it’s been loads, think about attempting to placed on an occasion meant to convey collectively hundreds of individuals to focus their consideration on impartial cinema for 11 days. Such is the problem going through this yr’s Sundance Movie Competition, which begins on Thursday and runs via Feb 2.
With the presidential inauguration and political vibe shift of the brand new administration earlier this week and wildfires nonetheless a menace in Los Angeles, Sundance is right here with its forty second version, asking filmmakers, the media, Hollywood trade gamers and audiences to decamp for Park Metropolis, Utah, to observe from a program of 88 function movies — a tall order. But it could be simply the factor to convey troubled minds some sense of construction, solace and even aid.
“This year the festival lands on the calendar at a moment when I think we need it most,” says Eugene Hernandez, director of the competition. “I’ve been chatting a lot in recent days with filmmakers, industry, audiences and staff who were displaced or much worse in the past week. Folks who’ve lost so much. Everyone continues to tell me that they need this festival right now, to come together as a community and look ahead.”
In the meantime, later this spring, the competition will announce its determination of a brand new host metropolis — that’s, whether or not it would stay in Utah with a mixed Salt Lake Metropolis/Park Metropolis footprint or transfer fully to both Boulder, Co., or Cincinnati for the 2027 version.
All through all of it, Sundance plans to stay very a lot a spot for discovery, the place new expertise and contemporary creative voices can emerge.
This week, writer-director Mary Bronstein brings a movie to the competition for the primary time with “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a vivid, anxiety-inducing portrait of a girl making an attempt to juggle the calls for of a profession and residential life that features caring for an in poor health baby. The film will possible garner comparisons to different latest works that reexamine motherhood reminiscent of Marielle Heller’s movie “Nightbitch” and Miranda July’s newest novel “All Fours.” The movie stars Rose Byrne, ASAP Rocky and Conan O’Brien (in his first full-fledged film function) and will likely be launched by A24 later this yr.
Bronstein, whose solely earlier function, the self-financed “Yeast,” premiered on the 2008 South by Southwest Movie Competition, is happy to have her new work premiering at Sundance.
“It’s sort of the original place where films that are not studio films, films that exist outside the system, art films, were given a home,” stated Bronstein. “And those places are shrinking and I feel Sundance still very much lives up to that. My movie and the movies I want to make in the future need that home.”
“If I Had Legs” took seven years to make, from its writing to the premiere. Adhering strictly to the perspective of Byrne’s beleaguered Linda, who could also be getting into some kind of psychosis as she is pushed to her limits by the calls for of caring for her daughter, the movie’s aggressive, at-times abrasive model is certain to create robust reactions from audiences.
“I am just so excited to stand in front of a theater full of people after they have watched the film and soak in the energy that they’ve taken from it and hear questions and thoughts,” says Bronstein.
“After the premiere it’s not mine anymore. I’ll be probably very nervous, but it’ll be a very happy nervous feeling. I’m excited about just feeling that energy.”
Amongst filmmakers returning to the competition this yr are Invoice Condon with “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Ira Sachs with “Peter Hujar’s Day,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson with “Sly Lives! (a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius),” Cherien Dabis with “All That’s Left of You,” Justin Lin with “Last Days,” Amalia Ulman with “Magic Farm,” Matt Wolf’s “Pee-wee Herman as Himself” and Andrew Ahn with “The Wedding Banquet.”
Kelly Marie Tran, left, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-Chan and Bowen Yang within the film “The Wedding Banquet,” directed by Andrew Ahn.
(Luka Cyprian / Bleeker Road)
Ahn’s movie is a remake (it’s additionally being known as a “reimagining”) of the 1993 romantic comedy directed by Ang Lee. The screenplay is co-written by Ahn and James Schamus, who was additionally a co-writer on the unique. Bleecker Road will launch the movie within the spring.
Ahn was first at Sundance along with his debut function “Spa Night” in 2016 and is grateful for the chance to once more convey a function to the competition.
“I would not have my career if it weren’t for Sundance,” says Ahn. “It’s where I got my agents and it really helped me make a career of this. I’m kind of amazed that I’ve been able to build a career making films about Asian American people. I couldn’t be happier with where I am at this stage of my life. It’s a festival that means a lot to me.”
Increasing from the unique, the replace facilities on two homosexual {couples}, Angela and Lee (Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone) and Chris and Min (Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan), who hatch a scheme to hopefully remedy a number of issues: Angela will marry Min in a standard Korean ceremony so she will get cash for fertility remedies and he can get a inexperienced card and ease the pressures of his conventional dad and mom. Joan Chen and Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn additionally seem within the forged.
Ahn admits that, so far as he is aware of, Lee has not seen the brand new movie but, including, “He is the audience that I am most scared of.”
Dylan O’Brien, left, and James Sweeney within the film “Twinless.”
(Greg Cotten / Sundance Institute)
James Sweeney’s “Twinless” is one among quite a few tasks, additionally together with Katarina Zhu’s “Bunnylovr,” Grace Glowicki’s “Dead Lover,” Eva Victor’s “Sorry, Baby” and Cooper Raiff’s “Hal & Harper,” that function writer-director-stars, a triple menace that’s been a Sundance staple going to again to Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s 1990 “Chameleon Street” and Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” from 1994.
Co-starring Dylan O’Brien, “Twinless” is about two lonely males who strike up a friendship in a grief assist group for former twins. It’s Sweeney’s second function movie however first to play at Sundance (although he was in Park Metropolis just a few years in the past on a ski journey and stopped in to see among the native venues, questioning if sooner or later a movie of his would play there).
“I try not to expect too much of anything because I feel like timing hasn’t been too kind to me historically,” Sweeney says, noting that his first movie “Straight Up” went into theaters in February 2020, simply earlier than the pandemic hit, and manufacturing on “Twinless” was delayed because of the 2023 strikes in Hollywood.
“But I’m very excited and I’m really looking forward to watching the film with an audience and seeing how they react,” he provides. “It’s a comedy and I hope it gets a very visceral reaction.”
The 2017 competition noticed a girls’s rally unfold in protest of Donald Trump’s first inauguration as president and final yr noticed a pro-Palestinian protest on Park Metropolis’s Primary Road. One other protest for Palestine has already been introduced; whether or not moreactions happen this yr stays to be seen. For competition organizers, such occasions merely turn into a part of the general material of the bigger competition expertise with out pulling focus from the core of the occasion.
“Watching movies at the Sundance Film Festival — any film festival for that matter — is the heart of the experience,” says Hernandez. “But it’s everything else happening during that week that makes it a festival: the panels, the parties, the conversations at dinner, even pop-up events that are reactive to what’s happening in the world or coming from our program.
“Sundance is situated at the start of each new year, after the holidays as folks get back to business, so it’s always felt right that we’re able to bring people together in person,” Hernandez continues. “Those who watch some of the films or talks online from home get a taste of that, but the true magic of the festival is being in person together, even just for a few days.”
Movies reminiscent of “A Different Man,” “A Real Pain,” “Dìdi,” “Union” “Sugarcane” and others that premiered on the competition in 2024 have remained within the awards dialog a full yr later. For administrators, the straightforward recognition of getting the competition showcase their work might be reward sufficient.
“Having Sundance invite me, it’s really solidified in my mind that there is a place for me, there is a place for my voice, and there’s a place for my work,” stated Bronstein. “And I’m just going to keep chugging forward.”
“I’ve been watching Sundance films and tracking careers of Sundance filmmakers since I was in film school,” Sweeney says. “And there’s going to be another filmmaker who will watch my film that is going to get into Sundance one day. I just feel like now I’m part of a lineage and it’s very validating. I think mostly what I’m excited about is to meet other filmmakers.”
With the upcoming announcement of a brand new host metropolis, the clock is ticking on an expertise individuals have lengthy recognized — even when what makes the competition really distinctive goes effectively past the snowy confines of Park Metropolis.
“It does feel very special to go back to Sundance before it moves wherever it goes,” stated Ahn. “At the same time, as I think we witnessed during the early phases of the pandemic, the spirit of Sundance doesn’t necessarily exist in a physical location, but is made up of the community. And so I really believe that wherever it goes, we’ll find that same feeling of magic and excitement and creative expression. It really doesn’t matter to me where it goes, as long as it’s a place where we can celebrate independent film.”
