The Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val announces its most diverse line-up yet

The Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val main­tains a tra­di­tion of lay­ing deep foun­da­tions for the moviego­ing year to come. It’s the first major state­ment of cin­e­mat­ic intent, and the work show­cased over in the snowy moun­tains of Park City, Utah, will like­ly wend its way to a cin­e­ma (or stream­ing plat­form, or VR head­set) near you in the not-too-dis­tant future.

Fes­tiv­i­ties kick off on 24 Jan­u­ary, and for those who aren’t on the ground, bask­ing in the win­ter glow of a whirring movie pro­jec­tor, it’s like­ly that Sun­dance will be the flash­point for cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion for much of ear­ly 2019. The line-up has already been announced, and the diver­si­ty of both sub­ject mat­ter and mak­ers is enough to sug­gest that we may have a vin­tage crop on our hands.

Those in search of glitz and glam­our will find their fill in the Pre­mieres strand – home to big tick­et titles from across the globe. There’s a good show­ing from the UK this year, with Sophie Hyde’s Ani­mals (a co-pro­duc­tion with Ire­land and Aus­tralia) look­ing a young woman at a personal/​professional cross­roads in her life. Chi­we­tel Ejio­for makes his direc­to­r­i­al debut with the Malawi-set The Boy Who Har­nessed the Wind, while Blind­ed by the Light sees Gurinder Chad­ha tell the sto­ry of jour­nal­ist Sar­fraz Manzoor’s deep con­nec­tion to the music of Bruce Springsteen.

Else­where, we have Zac Efron play­ing Ted Bundy in Joe Berlinger’s Extreme­ly Wicked, Shock­ing­ly Evil and Vile, and Dan Gilroy re-teams with his Night­crawler gang (Jake Gyl­len­haal and Renee Rus­so) for art world satire, Vel­vet Buz­z­saw.

Six­teen films jos­tle for suprema­cy in the US Dra­mat­ic Com­pe­ti­tion strand, which is the festival’s main launch­pad for new voic­es. We’d be lying if we said we weren’t excit­ed for Hon­ey Boy, Alma Har’el’s trip into the mind of writer and star Shia LaBeouf. Rashid Johnson’s Native Son looks inter­est­ing, too – a mod­ern restag­ing of Richard Wright’s sem­i­nal nov­el of the same name.

Paul Downs Colaizzo’s Brit­tany Runs a Marathon sees Jil­lian Bell accept­ing the life-alter­ing balm of run­ning, while Justin Chon’s Ms Pur­ple fol­lows a har­ried karaōke host­ess through LA’s Kore­atown. Con­sid­er­ing Olivia Colman’s cur­rent award sea­son form as star of Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos’ The Favourite, all eyes will be on her new film, Them That Fol­low, by Britt Poul­ton and Dan Madi­son Savage.

Branch­ing out from the US to the World Cin­e­ma Dra­mat­ic Com­pe­ti­tion, there looks to be pearls a‑plenty in a line-up which takes us to points north, south, east and west. There’s anoth­er good show­ing for the UK as the great Joan­na Hogg reveals Sou­venir, which stars two gen­er­a­tions of the Swin­ton clan (Til­da, and daugh­ter Hon­or), while The Last Tree is Shola Amoo’s fol­low-up to his impres­sive lo-fi debut, A Mov­ing Image.

Mia Wasikows­ka brings star wattage to Aus­tralian fea­ture Judy & Punch, about a dis­grun­tled, ambi­tious mar­i­onette who is dri­ven to vio­lent revenge. And for sheer out­ré mad­ness, you can’t real­ly beat the barmy-sound­ing WE ARE LIT­TLE ZOM­BIES by Mako­to Nagahisa. Its pithy log­line: ​“Their par­ents are dead. They should be sad, but they can’t cry. So they form a kick-ass band.”

That is just the very tip of the ice­berg of this year’s dra­mat­ic fea­ture offer­ings, but this being Sun­dance, the focus is very much equal­ly shared with the entire spec­trum of visu­al sto­ry­telling forms. In the doc­u­men­tary strand, dry eyes and unmelt­ed hearts are unlike­ly for Gar­ret Price’s Love, Antosha, a por­trait of the late Anton Yelchin, while oth­er artists in the spot­light include Leonard Cohen (care of Nick Broomfield’s Mar­i­anne & Leonard: Words of Love), Miles Davis (in Stan­ley Nelson’s Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool) and the author Toni Mor­ri­son (in Tim­o­thy Green­field-Sanders’ Toni Mor­ri­son: The Pieces I Am). And it will be stand­ing room only for the screen­ing of Untouch­able, Ursu­la Macfarlane’s por­trait of the fall­en super pro­duc­er and erst­while Sun­dance roy­al­ty, Har­vey Weinstein.

Along­side the dra­mat­ic com­pe­ti­tion, there’s a doc­u­men­tary com­pe­ti­tion that cov­ers both US and World titles. Cur­rent Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty shin­ing star Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez is front and cen­tre of Rachel Lears’ Knock Down the House, which looks at the rise of grass­roots / sin­gle-issue polit­i­cal can­di­dates in the US. On the oth­er side of the cam­era is Mike Wal­lace, long-time TV inter­locu­tor on 60 min­utes and the sub­ject of Avi Belkin’s Mike Wal­lace is Here.

The always inter­est­ing Pen­ny Lane returns to the fray with Hail Satan?, a no-doubt inno­v­a­tive and pre­scient look into the rise of The Satan­ic Tem­ple, while APOL­LO 11 by Todd Dou­glas Miller blasts us into the stratos­phere once more with some rarely-seen 70mm footage of the Moon land­ings. Fur­ther afield, Petra Costa’s The Edge of Democ­ra­cy exam­ines the polit­i­cal tumult in Brazil, while the great British doc­u­men­tar­i­an Kim Longinot­to is back with Shoot­ing the Mafia, about Letizia Battaglia’s efforts to chron­i­cle the bru­tal crimes of Sicily’s Cosa Nostra.

If it’s new dis­cov­er­ies you’re after, look no fur­ther than the New Fron­tier strand, which is famous for unearthing the more left­field tal­ents of tomor­row. There’s a cin­e­mat­ic jour­ney through the trans­for­ma­tive beau­ty and raw pow­er of water (Vic­tor Kossakovsky’s Aquarela), and a road movie cen­tred on an Aus­tri­an fir tree (Daniel Zimmermann’s Walden).

There are live VR per­for­mances too – we’re most excit­ed for Mechan­i­cal Souls from Gaëlle Mourre and LP Lee, in which a woman hires androids to assist in the lav­ish wed­ding of her daugh­ter. Trav­el­ing While Black feels like one of the more polit­i­cal­ly vital offer­ings, a vir­tu­al real­i­ty doc­u­men­tary which immers­es the view­er in the long his­to­ry of restric­tion of move­ment for black Americans.

And last but by no means least, there’s the shorts strand, which is always one of the most impor­tant and vibrant aspects of the entire Sun­dance line-up. Episod­ic offer­ings include the the sto­ry of a teen tech start-up with Danielle Uhlarik’s Boot­strapped, and also the the tale of queer daugh­ter return­ing home to Las Vegas for a ​“girls week­end” with her estranged homo­pho­bic sis­ter and peo­ple-pleas­ing moth­er in vet­er­an actress Kyra Sedgwick’s Girls Week­end. Nick Horn­by writes and Stephen Frears directs State of the Union, about a cou­ple who meet in a pub each week and plan how to fool their therapist.

The shorts pro­gramme, per usu­al, offers up a ver­i­ta­ble cor­nu­copia of styles and sub­jects. If we had to pick one from the US, it would be Brad­ford Young, Ter­ence Nance and Jenn Nkiru’s As Told To G/D Thy­self, which is billed as the cos­mic jour­ney of sacred youth, dur­ing which pain, plea­sure and sub­li­ma­tion are non-nego­tiable. From from the world shorts strand, our mon­ey is down on Swedish direc­tor Anette Sidor’s teen peg­ging odyssey, which comes with the sim­ple but high­ly effec­tive title: Fuck You.

The 2019 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val runs from 24 Jan­u­ary to 3 Feb­ru­ary. Browse the full pro­gramme now at sun​dance​.org