The 2023 edition of the Sundance Film Festival kick off in Park City on Thursday January 19th, but you don’t have to hop a plane to Utah and stand in line in the snow to get in on the action. This year, the film festival is offering almost 75% of its film selections for online viewing in addition to its in-person screenings. During the second half of the festival (starting January 24), at-home viewers will be able to access all the Competition titles in the festival (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT), in addition to other non-Competition selections.
This year’s lineup is a particularly diverse one. “The program for this year’s Festival reiterates the relevancy of trailblazing work serving as an irreplaceable source for original stories that resonate and fuel creativity and dialogue,” says Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “In so many ways this year’s slate reflects the voices of communities around the world who are speaking out with urgency and finally being heard. Across our program, impactful storytelling by fearless artists continues to provide space for the community to come together to be entertained, challenged, and inspired.”
To get you started on your own personalized Sundance viewing plan, here are five films we’re especially excited about.
Credit: Jaclyn Martinez
Credit: Jaclyn Martinez
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
The section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
The director: Raven Jackson
The official Synopsis: Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.
Raven Jackson’s striking debut is an assured vision, unafraid to immerse us in moments of grief and longing, or within the thickness of things left unsaid. Her camera is patient and loving, capturing the beauty of Black bodies and life. Rural quietness is filled with the transportive sounds of crickets, frogs, and water in its many forms. Jackson’s nontraditional narrative borrows from the language of memory. Shifts in time are prompted by movement and emotion — the feeling of mud between fingers or the release felt from being outside during a storm. Dialogue is restrained, and performances are subtle and powerful. Jackson employs the power of touch to communicate what evades spoken language. It’s an embodied experience that honors the sumptuousness of life and leaves you feeling the rain on your skin.
Why we’re excited:
This one is already one of the most buzzy films of the festival, and it hasn’t even premiered yet. With echoes of Terence Malick, Toni Morrison, and Sundance legend Beasts of the Southern Wild it sounds like it has the potential to be the kind of transcendent experience that this festival, at its best, opens to the world, the kind of film it feels like a privilege to encounter. It will be fascinating to see if it can live up to the hype; our money says it will.
Credit: Sundance Institute
Credit: Sundance Institute
Cat Person
The section: Premieres
The director: Susanna Fogel
The official synopsis:
Margot, a college student working concessions at an art house theater, meets frequent filmgoer — and rather older local — Robert, on the job. Flirtation across the counter evolves into continuous texting. As the two inch toward romance, shifts between them, awkward moments, red flags, and discomforts pile up. Margot feels both attached and reticent, as her gnawing hesitations blossom into vivid daydreams where Robert realizes his most threatening potential. As her distrust and uncertainty mount, an evening, their relationship, and possibly their lives unravel.
Exploring power dynamics, the terrifying nature of some gray areas, and the way young women must balance their relationships to themselves alongside their lovers, Cat Person is a provocative portrait of modern dating. Director Susanna Fogel (co-writer of Booksmart) brings these questions to the screen with a vibrant tension that packs a serious punch, aided by great performances from Emilia Jones (CODA) and Nicholas Braun (Succession). Inspired by the most-read piece of fiction ever published in The New Yorker, Kristen Roupenian’s short story “Cat Person”, the film continues a conversation whose urgency is clear, present, and dangerous.
Why we’re excited:
The easy sell is the clause “Inspired by the most-read piece of fiction ever published in The New Yorker.” If that doesn’t make you want to see a film, what will? And it doesn’t hurt that Fogel is one of the brilliant minds behind Booksmart. But for those who saw CODA (and if you didn’t, go do that now), the starring presence of Emilia Jones is the real draw here.
Credit: Ante Cheng
Credit: Ante Cheng
Jamojaya
The section: Premieres
The director: Justin Chon
The official synopsis:
James (Brian Imanuel), an aspiring Indonesian rapper, is at a resort in Hawai’i to cut his debut album for a major U.S. record label. Accompanying him is his father and former manager (Yayu A.W. Unru), who is still mourning the death of James’ brother and unwilling to surrender control of his career. While James sinks deeper in debt to the label, his father insists on acting as a de facto personal assistant. Caught between the music industry’s commercial demands and a power struggle with his suffocating stage dad, James is forced to find his voice.
Writer-director Justin Chon (Gook, 2017 NEXT Audience Award winner and Ms. Purple, 2019) returns to Sundance with this introspective family drama set against the infernal neon backdrop of the showbiz machine. Jamojaya juxtaposes anxious handheld shots that follow James through cramped corridors and busy backstage areas with quiet, lyrical passages depicting the growing gulf between father and son. In his feature film debut, acclaimed rapper Imanuel brings sensitivity to the would-be star, while Unru delivers a heart-wrenching performance as his doting but demanding father.
Why we’re excited:
We’ll go see anything by the filmmaker behind Sundance winner Gook. And there’s an impressive supporting cast here – Kate Lyn Shiel is consistently one of the most interesting actors around, Henry Ian Cusick is spot-on in everything he does, and it will be interesting to see what Chon does with Anthony Kiedis. But also? Come on, you had us at “aspiring Indonesian rapper.” When have you ever seen that onscreen?
Credit: Sundance Institute
Credit: Sundance Institute
Little Richard: I Am Everything
The section: U.S. Documentary Competition
The director: Lisa Cortés
The official synopsis:
Like a quasar burning past the gaslight, director Lisa Cortés’ eye-opening documentary explodes the whitewashed canon of American pop music. Little Richard: I Am Everything shines a clarifying light on the Black, queer origins of rock ‘n’ roll, and establishes the genre’s big bang: Richard Wayne Penniman.
Testimonials from legendary musicians and cultural figures, Black and queer scholars, Penniman’s family and friends, and interviews with the artist himself all exuberantly reclaim a history that was willfully appropriated by white artists and institutions. Cortés updates the canon with a treasure trove of rarely seen archival footage of Penniman. Among the gems are scenes with his Black and queer predecessors and contemporaries, like Sister Rosetta Tharpe: the mother of rock ‘n’ roll who gave 14-year-old Penniman his first break.
Cortés depicts Penniman’s complex journey as a conflicted revolutionary who careened between religion, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll, navigating the extreme tensions of race and sexuality of his time. She reminds us that outsiders and outcasts can possess superpowers that, given the chance, can create new worlds for us all to dance in.
Why we’re excited:
Georgian and rock and roll icon Little Richard would be worth the price of admission just on the basis of his prodigious musical talent, even if he looked, dressed, and acted like everyone else. But as we all know, he was so much more than just a musician. He was a seminal figure in how we saw queer people, religious people, black people, and just people, full stop. It certainly sounds like Cortés is intent on tackling him from all those fascinating angles, and we can’t wait. Perhaps our most anticipated Sundance film of the year.
Credit: Sundance Institute
Credit: Sundance Institute
Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls
The section: Midnight
The director: Andrew Bowser
The official synopsis: Amateur occultist Marcus J. Trillbury, aka Onyx the Fortuitous, is struggling. He’s misunderstood at home and work, but his dreams for a new life seem to be answered when he lands a coveted invitation to the mansion of his idol Bartok the Great for a ritual to raise the spirit of an ancient demon. He excitedly joins Bartok and his fellow eclectic group of devotees as they prepare for the ceremony, but pretty quickly it becomes apparent everything is not as it seems. As Onyx and his new friends fight to keep their souls, he must decide what he’s willing to truly sacrifice in order to meet his destiny.
Based on his viral internet character of the same name, writer, director, and star Andrew Bowser takes us on a wild ride of magic and fun with just the right mix of Satanic worship and friendship. Featuring terrifying monsters and dark and silly laughs, Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls is a creative and joyful celebration of weirdos of all kinds.
Why we’re excited:
At a major festival like Sundance, you’re going to see a lot of heavy, heavy films. That’s a good thing, but it can also be exhausting. Every now and then you need a little fun to hit the rest button. Onyx looks like just the prescription. Bowser’s character is already hilarious and well developed, and the prospect of getting to spend an hour and a half inside his bizarre mind on a more extended adventure is tantalizing to say the least. The fact that the wonderful Olivia Taylor Dudley (The Magicians) is involved not only as a cast member but also as a producer gives us all the more faith that we’re in great hands for some late night scary fun.
To purchase tickets for online viewing, just head on over to https://festival.sundance.org/tickets/
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
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