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Sundance remains one of the toughest festivals to truly predict – a smattering of unknown first-timers unfurling distributor-less films that are often shrouded in mystery – and so trying to guess what to see and what to miss of the 90-odd premieres can be something of a fool’s errand.
But a year on from a festival that gave us I Saw the TV Glow, Dìdi, My Old Ass, The Outrun and A Real Pain, there are enough reasons to suggest that this edition will be just as impressive. Here are the 10 I have my eye on right now:
Jimpa
Back in 2019, premiering criminally far under any Sundance radar, the smart and messy coming-of-a-certain-age comedy Animals was the most surprising and satisfying film I happened to see that year. Its director, Sophie Hyde, who had already impressed with her sensitively told trans teen drama 52 Tuesdays, then returned with another winner – Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a frank and funny comedy drama about sex that should have nabbed its star Emma Thompson an Oscar nod. It would therefore be rather foolish to underestimate her latest, an intergenerational family drama starring Olivia Colman as a woman taking her non-binary child to see their gay grandfather, played by John Lithgow.
The Thing With Feathers
Benedict Cumberbatch’s last visit to Park City, leading the old-fashioned spy drama The Courier, might not have led to all that much (the film was quietly released to miniscule box office a year later) but this January, with a prime Saturday night premiere and a spikier, more Sundance-appropriate premise, his latest should find a far larger audience. Based on Max Porter’s prize-winning novella, which was later turned into a stage play with Cillian Murphy, The Thing With Feathers stars Cumberbatch as a father dealing with the death of his wife while caring for their two sons. Things get strange when a seemingly malevolent creature enters the frame. If the writer-director Dylan Southern can find a way to balance the sad and the scary, this could be a big thing.
Opus
Sundance typically has at least one horror breakout with past years premiering films like Get Out, The Babadook, Talk to Me and Saw and an easy bet for this year would be Opus, a buzzy pop culture thriller that boasts the A24 seal of approval, an of-the-moment lead in The Bear’s awards magnet Ayo Edebiri and a crafty premise. Edebiri plays a journalist headed to the remote compound of John Malkovich’s reclusive pop star who starts to worry that the sycophantic fanboys and girls that surround her might be falling for something far more dangerous than the cult of celebrity. A freshly released trailer suggests the tone will be somewhere between horror and comedy, a scary skewering of superstar pomposity.
Rebuilding
Given the frequency of wildfires in the US (last year there were an estimated 38,415 of them), it’s not as if a film like Rebuilding, about a cowboy grappling with the loss of his ranch, wouldn’t already feel timely. But with the devastation recently felt in California, the writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s reportedly emotive drama should feel like one of the most important premieres of the festival. It stars Josh O’Connor, coming off a breakout role in Challengers, and The White Lotus MVP Meghann Fahy as his ex-wife, the pair reuniting at a Fema camp. Walker-Silverman’s last film, the gentle romance A Love Song, was one of the best-reviewed of Sundance 2022.
Sorry, Baby
While the Moonlight Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins might seem to have spent more time and energy on more mainstream fare of late, having just directed the Lion King prequel Mufasa, he has remained quietly committed to independent cinema. Together with his producing partner Adele Romanski, they helped usher the Cannes hit Aftersun and the Sundance success All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt to release and so now their latest, the darkly comic Sorry, Baby arrives with more buzz than most. It’s the big-screen debut of writer, director and star Eva Victor, who has gained viral fame as a comedian, including for her Straight Pride video back in 2019. She plays a college professor struggling with the fallout from a sexual assault told over a four-year period.
The Alabama Solution
While his brother Eugene might have chosen not to show his new film at this year’s Sundance (a Julian Assange doc was pulled after “unexpected developments”), Andrew Jarecki’s latest is all set for a splashy premiere, announced as a late addition. Little is known about The Alabama Solution, which follows incarcerated men exposing a cover-up at one of America’s deadliest prisons, but early buzz suggests it will become a talking point. His previous documentaries, from Capturing the Friedmans to The Jinx, have certainly shown his knack for both starting and then keeping within the conversation so expect big things when this one premieres on Monday.
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Jennifer Lopez might not be a name one has come to associate with the Sundance film festival, even post-critical hit Hustlers; her films have mostly remained both broadly pitched and for streaming audiences only. So it was a surprise when her latest, a supporting role in an adaptation of the Broadway musical Kiss of the Spider Woman was added to the lineup. Directed by Bill Condon, whose work runs the gamut from the multiplex (Beauty and the Beast, Twilight sequels) to the arthouse (Gods and Monsters, The Fifth Estate), it’s the second filmed take on Manuel Puig’s novel (the last premiering at Cannes and winning William Hurt an Oscar), telling the story of two politically different men sharing a prison cell and retreating into the world of fantasy. The stage musical swept the Tonys back in the 1990s, including for the groundbreaking legend Chita Rivera, whose intimidating shoes Lopez must now attempt to fill.
2000 Meters to Andriivka
Back at 2023’s Sundance, Mstyslav Chernov’s immersive documentary 20 Days in Mariupol provided a vital, if hard-to-watch, look at life on the ground in war-torn Ukraine. It went on to win an Oscar and was deemed so essential that it was even screened at the UN’s general assembly. His follow-up, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, promises to be another hellish reminder of the unending horrors being faced by so many, following a Ukrainian platoon as they attempt to liberate the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. Kicking off this year’s world documentary competition, expect it to be one of the festival’s most talked-about films.
If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You
It’s become a safe bet to assume that whatever boutiquey distributor A24 brings to the festival will most likely be worth checking out (previous years have seen them bring such standouts as I Saw the TV Glow, Past Lives, Eighth Grade and Hereditary), turning one of many italicised question marks to bold. Even without their stamp, it’d be hard to ignore the curiosity factor of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a film that boasts the unusual cast of Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky. It comes from the writer-director Mary Bronstein and the producer Josh Safdie and focuses on a woman on the edge, dealing with an absent husband, a mysteriously sick child and a hostile therapist. It’s an exciting prospect for Byrne, an often untapped actor who has long-deserved more challenging roles.
The Librarians
Given the bleak state of politics in the US, many eyes will be on the documentary strand which has come to be an important form of resistance at the festival. Sundance also tends to dictate the non-fiction conversation for the year with this morning’s Oscars announcement revealing that four of the five best documentary nominees were premieres at last year’s edition. There will be few as timely as Kim A Snyder’s The Librarians, which focuses on the difficult work of those trying to combat book bans in America, forcing those working in the system to become “first responders in the fight for democracy and free access to information”. The film also boasts Sarah Jessica Parker as an executive producer.
