Sun­dance Lon­don will go vir­tu­al to con­tin­ue in 2020

While the peo­ple of Earth await a vac­cine or oth­er last­ing solu­tion to the ongo­ing coro­n­avirus cri­sis, we’ve been left with no choice but to con­trive nov­el meth­ods by which we might con­tin­ue onward with the things that made life worth liv­ing back in the before-times. Sun­dance Lon­don, the off­shoot bring­ing the choice cuts from the sprawl­ing Amer­i­can film fes­ti­val across the Atlantic, was sched­uled to take place in its usu­al spring­time slot, but inclement cir­cum­stances forced an indef­i­nite postponement.

The post­pone­ment may now be upgrad­ed to ​“def­i­nite,” as Sun­dance Lon­don has issued a press release announc­ing a vir­tu­al edi­tion of the 2020 fes­tiv­i­ties, with a few films set for their UK pre­mière. For a trun­cat­ed three-day run, the pro­gramme will stream online to a wider audi­ence than ever, bring­ing the screen­ings and spe­cial events that would have oth­er­wise tran­spired in person.

Three fea­tures will be made avail­able to those with a £20 fes­ti­val pass: the first will be Uncle Frank, Alan Ball’s road pic­ture about a gay man (Paul Bet­tany) in the ​’70s com­ing to terms with his own past, the sec­ond will be Lux­or, an Egypt-set romance from Zeina Dur­ra, and the final film will be Boys State, a doc­u­men­tary chron­i­cling one thou­sand teens’ effort to build a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment from the ground up.

The fes­ti­val will also cor­ral five direc­tors for a group dis­cus­sion about their work that swept the orig­i­nal Sun­dance back in Jan­u­ary, though the movies in ques­tion will not be on dis­play for patrons. The chat will include Jan­icza Bra­vo (direc­tor of Zola), Emer­ald Fen­nel (direc­tor of Promis­ing Young Woman), Romo­la Garai (direc­tor of Amulet), Justin Simien (direc­tor of Bad Hair), and Julie Tay­mor (direc­tor of The Glo­rias). In the free-to-stream pan­el, they’ll get into the vicis­si­tudes of the inde­pen­dent sec­tor, and where this cat­a­clysmic event will leave them and their to-be-released films.

Pass hold­ers will also have access to a pan­el dis­cus­sion on inside-base­ball indus­try mat­ters with exec­u­tive from Film4 and NEON, as well as a pro­gramme of eight short films. (The offer­ings include an ani­mat­ed fan­ta­sy about a beau­ti­ful large slug, and a dark vision of vio­lent upris­ing by a school’s a cap­pel­la club against their bul­lies.) In terms of sheer size, Sun­dance Lon­don 2020 may be scal­ing back, but what they’ve got still has the same inter­na­tion­al heft as their pro­gram­ming from years past.

Sun­dance Lon­don take place 7 – 9 August, 2020. For more info vis­it pic​ture​hous​es​.com/​s​u​n​dance