Sundance Film Festival 2024

10 Lives

Christopher Jenkins

<p>A pampered cat takes for granted the lucky hand he has been dealt after he is rescued and loved by Rose, a kind-hearted and passionate student. When he loses his ninth life, fate steps in to set him on a transformative journey.</p> <p>Writer-director Christopher Jenkins takes us on a fun and emotional adventure through the heterochromous eyes and many lives of the exuberant cat Beckett. Beautiful animation introduces us to a fantastic world where the powers of love and family are magical and persistent; where life itself is a challenge to care and be cared for by the ones we love.</p> <p>An all-star voice cast features Simone Ashley, Zayn Malik, Mo Gilligan, and Dylan Llewellyn &mdash; characters that are funny and full of heart, guiding us through a narrative that lovingly and with levity centers the transcendent bonds we have with our pets. At times silly and electric, and just as often a tearjerker, <em>10 Lives</em> is perfect for audiences of all ages.&mdash;CA</p>

A Different Man

Aaron Schimberg

<p>Aspiring actor Edward undergoes a radical medical procedure to drastically transform his appearance. But his new dream face quickly turns into a nightmare, as he loses out on the role he was born to play and becomes obsessed with reclaiming what was lost.</p> <p>Writer-director Aaron Schimberg&rsquo;s latest film is a surreal, singular tale of one man&rsquo;s desire to self-actualize. Sebastian Stan is Edward, a man overcome by the reality of his appearance, intent on curing his alienation and transcending his self- and socially-enforced artistic potential. Adam Pearson and Renate Reinsve carefully embody foils to Edward&rsquo;s ambition; an artistic and philosophical juxtaposition of his, and our, conceits.</p> <p>Through a haunting score, Lynchian approach to story, and folkloric magical realism, a unique psychological thriller emerges. A stylish vision of the theatrical currents of New York stages a universe where reality and fiction blend in beautiful ways; where lies, expectations, and internal turmoil weave a man&rsquo;s consequentially incipient senses of truth and becoming. <em>A Different Man </em>is a reflexive allegory for the modern tortured artist; a subversive, gothic fairytale that deftly begets obsession.&mdash;CA</p>

A New Kind of Wilderness

Silje Evensmo Jacobsen

<p>In a forest in Norway, a family lives an isolated lifestyle in an attempt to be wild and free, but a tragic event changes everything, and they are forced to adjust to modern society.</p> <p>Silje Evensmo Jacobsen&rsquo;s portrait of the Payne family is an intimate encounter with a family coming to terms with a new reality. For years, the family of five enjoyed a slower-paced, independent life in harmony with nature on a picturesque farm. Now they are at a turning point, and Jacobsen captures their journey with a caring eye. The vulnerability and compassion they extend to each other, the land, and their animals are tenderly and beautifully observed by a camera that feels part of the family, while home videos woven throughout provide meaningful insights into years past. Joyous moments spring through the heartache, and the Paynes&rsquo; strong bond and love for each other guide them through each challenge they face. Jacobsen crafts a sensitive, affectionate, and completely heartfelt experience that is as much about navigating grief as it is about graciously accepting change.&mdash;SO</p>

A Real Pain

Jesse Eisenberg

<p>Mismatched cousins David and Benji reunite for a tour through Poland to honor their beloved grandmother. The adventure takes a turn when the pair&#39;s old tensions resurface against the backdrop of their family history.</p> <p>Writer-director Jesse Eisenberg (<em>When You Finish Saving the World</em>, 2022 Sundance Film Festival) returns to the Festival with a poignant, funny</p> <p>exploration of the unexpected permutations of intergenerational trauma. Eisenberg&rsquo;s intimate, resonant script complements the tension and humor of the two very different cousins&rsquo; tumultuous road trip with a sensitively drawn reckoning of the legacy of World War II among the survivors of survivors.</p> <p>While Benji&rsquo;s irreverent charm only partially masks his deep melancholy, David&rsquo;s frustration with and genuine love for his cousin become achingly clear. Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin give devastating, funny performances as characters grappling with their grandmother&rsquo;s history and the ways their own lives have diverged. Michał Dymek&rsquo;s eloquent cinematography and a Chopin-driven score bind the tour group&rsquo;s complicated, emotional reaction to the Polish setting into the texture of the film.&mdash;HZ</p>

Agent of Happiness

Arun Bhattarai Dorottya Zurbó

<p>Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people&rsquo;s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way?</p> <p><em>Agent of Happiness,</em> directed by Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurb&oacute;, offers a unique take on the notoriously exoticized Bhutan and its unusual happiness policy. We follow Amber as he investigates various expressions of contentment across different households and lifestyles while navigating his own struggle as a Nepali minority. The holistic philosophy at the heart of the survey he conducts challenges the conventional metrics of fulfillment and success, often provoking some deeper soul-searching. The filmmakers elegantly capture many tender moments between Amber and his interlocutors, as well as some very revealing conversations filled with unflinching honesty and quiet wisdom.</p> <p>Through its carefully crafted narrative, the film resonates as a heartfelt exploration of happiness in the face of adversity. As Amber grapples with societal disparities and personal roadblocks while searching for love, this story becomes a beautifully realized reminder to count our blessings.&mdash;AT</p>

And So It Begins

Ramona S Diaz

<p>Amidst the traditional pomp and circumstance of Filipino elections, a quirky people&rsquo;s movement rises to defend the nation against deepening threats to truth and democracy. In a collective act of joy as a form of resistance, hope flickers against the backdrop of increasing autocracy.</p> <p>With the end of Rodrigo Duterte&rsquo;s presidency and his attacks on democratic institutions like a free independent press, some Filipinos hoped for a new beginning. In contrast, others yearned for even more autocracy and a return to an era before the People Power Revolution and the restoration of democracy just a generation before. In this companion piece to A Thousand Cuts, which helped introduce the world to online news site Rappler and Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, director Ramona Diaz returns to Sundance with a film that takes you inside the fight for democracy in the modern media age. As elections threaten to be simulacrums of democratic processes, And So It Begins chronicles what the defenders of democracy in the Philippines have experienced and is a haunting depiction of what is at stake in elections around the world.&mdash;SS</p>

As We Speak

J.M. Harper

<p>Bronx rap artist Kemba explores the growing weaponization of rap lyrics in the United States criminal justice system and abroad &mdash; revealing how law enforcement has quietly used artistic creation as evidence in criminal cases for decades.</p> <p>J.M. Harper&#39;s self-assured directorial debut unfolds like an original odyssey, shedding light on the intersection between the weaponization of rap lyrics and threats to freedom of speech. Traveling with Kemba grounds the international exploration in the perspective of an artist. He guides us through the origins of gangster rap to drill, studies on racial bias in music, discussions with legal experts, and candid conversations with influential artists like Killer Mike to reveal a profound history of targeting Black music and artists. Harper&rsquo;s seamless transitioning between restructured interviews, animated sequences, and imaginative reenactments reveals an audacious vision that also reflects the depth and interconnectedness of the issues at hand. Harper&rsquo;s sophisticated and immersive journey merges style and substance, boldly weaving through a web of issues, and ultimately shining a light on the First Amendment, provoking crucial questions about whom it protects.&mdash;SO</p>

Being (the Digital Griot)

Rashaad Newsome

<p>In this innovative participatory experience, Being, an artificial intelligence digital griot, asks the audience to engage in unifying and challenging discussions. It features a soundscape and movement informed by a dataset from Black communities, theorists, poets, and activists, including bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Dazi&eacute; Grego-Sykes, and Cornel West.</p> <p><em>Being</em> <em>(the Digital Griot)</em> is a machine learning model run by a counterhegemonic algorithm that multidisciplinary artist, Rashaad Newsome, has been developing since 2019. Being (the Digital Griot) takes the humanoid form of a 30-foot tall, femme vogue Afro-futurist cyborg, who writes and reads poetry, and leads critical pedagogy workshops that teach people to decolonize their minds.</p> <p>Colonial values of extraction and exploitation live ubiquitously inside the hearts and minds of colonial subjects, and are the root of our unconscious compulsion to dehumanize and extract value from each other, and from our planet. <em>Being</em> offers generous ways of forging relationships - with others and with ourselves. Newsome reminds us that AI is powered by the richness of our collective human archive, and is a reflection of the values of the designer.&mdash;SF</p>

Better Angels: The Gospel According To Tammy Faye

Dana Adam Shapiro

<p>As told by her family, friends, and enemies, the meteoric rise, scandalous fall, and unlikely resurrection of Tammy Faye, the &ldquo;First Lady of the Electric Church,&rdquo; poses an increasingly relevant question: How did we get the story so wrong?</p> <p>Having premiered an Academy Award&ndash;nominated documentary feature (<em>Murderball</em>) and an animated short (<em>My Biodegradable Heart) </em>at the Festival<em>, </em>director Dana Adam Shapiro returns with <em>Better Angels: The Gospel According To Tammy Faye</em>, a lively, ruminative documentary series that provides fresh insights into the life of American icon Tammy Faye Messner. A larger-than-life personality whose singular visage became a cultural touchstone, Messner and her personal breakthroughs &mdash; both high and low &mdash; were reflected in the political, religious, and societal news of the day. Shapiro adroitly excavates private and historical artifacts to craft a profile that distinctively centers Messner as the leading woman of her own story.&mdash;DC</p>

Between the Temples

Nathan Silver

<p>A cantor in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher reenters his life as his new adult bat mitzvah student.</p> <p><em>Between the Temples</em> is a rare, offbeat comedy buoyed by its casts&rsquo; lively yet heartfelt performances. Indie stalwart Nathan Silver reteams with co-writer C. Mason Wells for a script that delivers both jokes and emotional depths with a confident hand. Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane are a natural fit as our loving leads, while the rest of the film is peppered with a way-too-funny cast including <em>Triangle of Sadness&rsquo;</em> standout Dolly De Leon and comedy writing legend Robert Smigel. They create a film that delights in frenzied misadventure while being carefully driven by a warm heart and loving embrace of human connection.&mdash;CS</p>

Black Box Diaries

Shiori Ito

<p>Journalist Shiori Ito embarks on a courageous investigation of her own sexual assault in an improbable attempt to prosecute her high-profile offender. Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country&rsquo;s outdated judicial and societal systems.</p> <p><em>Black Box Diaries </em>was born out of Ito&rsquo;s need to document her investigation &mdash; a response to the authorities&rsquo; refusal to pursue her case in a meaningful manner. More importantly, it was a way to journal her fears and thoughts as she anticipated the backlash that followed.</p> <p>As the film&rsquo;s director, Ito accomplishes something remarkable. On one hand, <em>Black Box Diaries</em> has a raw and honest quality to it &mdash; it&rsquo;s a personal journey from the perspective of a victim piecing together the crime she experienced, while pushing herself to the extreme. At the same time, it is an impressively crafted, concise piece of filmmaking &mdash; guided by a strong sense of purpose and broken up by occasional moments of joy. Shiori Ito came forward to challenge her high-profile abuser despite knowing the risks. Her bravery meant hope for others and the prospect of real change to a broken system.&mdash;AT</p>

Jia Ting Jian Shi (Brief History of a Family)

Jianjie Lin

<p>A middle-class family&rsquo;s fate becomes intertwined with their only son&rsquo;s enigmatic new friend in post one-child policy China, putting unspoken secrets, unmet expectations, and untended emotions under the microscope.</p> <p>After an incident at their private school, Wei, an only son from a middle-class family, and Shou, a quiet, highly perceptive boy, find themselves connected through some mysterious energy that draws them intimately into each other&rsquo;s lives. In his feature debut, writer and director Jianjie Lin elegantly unfurls a story where, just under the surface of family dinners, polite manners, and daily school and extracurricular activities, lie dark truths and hidden yearnings threatening to explode into sight. With an arresting, sharp style and a unique sensitivity to the socioeconomic status of its characters, <em>Brief History of a Family</em> is an exciting new expression of Chinese film on the world stage.&mdash;SS</p>

Conbody VS Everybody

Debra Granik

<p>Taking place over eight years, Coss Marte builds ConBody, a gym inspired by workouts he developed while in prison. Committed to employing trainers who were formerly incarcerated, Coss creates a community fighting to break the cycle of recidivism while navigating society&rsquo;s many obstacles to reentry.</p> <p>Having premiered multiple feature-length films at the Festival, including <em>Down to the Bone</em>, <em>Leave No Trace</em>, and the Academy Award&ndash;nominated <em>Winter&rsquo;s Bone</em>, director Debra Granik returns with <em>Conbody VS Everybody</em>, a documentary series that shines a light on the uphill battle of reestablishing one&rsquo;s self in an often unforgiving society, where barriers endure for those who have been incarcerated. Devoted to the craft of storytelling, Granik spent more than eight years documenting the journey of Marte, his family, and the other former inmates that he employs. The result is a fascinating story of uncompromising perseverance, sure to inspire all of us to overcome life&rsquo;s many obstacles.&mdash;AM</p>

Daughters

Angela Patton Natalie Rae

<p>Four young girls prepare for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a unique fatherhood program in a Washington, D.C., jail.</p> <p>A moving lesson in empathy and forgiveness, <em>Daughters</em> is a result of an eight-year documentary journey that filmmaker Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, an activist advocating for &ldquo;at-promise&rdquo; girls, embarked upon. As Aubrey, Santana, Raziah, and Ja&rsquo;Ana get ready for the special event, they speak candidly about their hopes, dreams, and disappointments. There is an innate wisdom and honesty to what they share about their dads&rsquo; inconsistent presence; an awareness far beyond their years. <em>Daughters </em>meaningfully challenges many stereotypes around incarceration and serves as a poignant reminder that maintaining family bonds can be both healing and empowering. We get to witness a lot of joy, but in keeping with the film&rsquo;s v&eacute;rit&eacute; style, Rae and Patton don&rsquo;t shy away from more challenging moments, including heartbreak, skepticism, reluctance to engage, and anger. But then comes a classic dad joke, and the mood shifts again.&mdash;AT</p>

Desire Lines (2024)

Jules Rosskam

<p>Past and present collide when an Iranian American trans man time-travels through an LGBTQ+ archive on a dizzying and erotic quest to unravel his own sexual desires.</p> <p>Leading trans academic and scholar Jules Rosskam makes his Sundance debut with this daring, sexy exploration of the interdependence of gender expression and sexuality. Deploying a hybrid approach, Rosskam blends a deeply intellectual interrogation of the archive, a sharp erotic imagination, and a series of breathtakingly intimate interviews to create this layered document of transmasculine sexuality and its profoundly social roots and ripples.</p> <p>Executive producer (and frequent advisor to the Sundance Institute&rsquo;s Native Labs) Jennifer Reeder returns to Sundance after her 2015 short <em>A Million Miles Away</em>. Lead performers Theo Germaine (of 2019 Sundance Film Festival Indie Episodic breakout <em>Work in Progress</em>) and Aden Hakimi share a cerebral and physical chemistry that enlivens and enriches this examination. <em>Desire Lines</em> is an urgently needed contribution to a sociopolitical landscape in desperate need of empathy, understanding, levity, and freedom.&mdash;AH</p>

Devo

Chris Smith

<p>Born in response to the Kent State massacre, new wave band Devo took their concept of &ldquo;de-evolution&rdquo; from cult following to near&ndash;rock star status with groundbreaking 1980 hit &ldquo;Whip It&rdquo; while preaching an urgent social commentary.</p> <p>Leave it to acclaimed filmmaker Chris Smith (<em>American Movie</em>) to perfectly capture the gloriously radical spirit that is Devo. This high-energy documentary embraces the spectacle of the band reveling in lofi archival footage, swift montage, and a charging rhythm that leaves you mesmerized by their wild rise. Band members are open with both their memories and archives &mdash; finally sharing their full story. They are a rare band founded by a philosophy; a Dada experiment of high art meets low, hellbent on infiltrating American popular culture, and <em>Devo </em>relishes every freakish moment of their story. Not to mention all the incredible performances.&mdash;CS</p>

弟弟 (Dìdi)

Sean Wang

<p>In 2008, during the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can&rsquo;t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt, and how to love your mom.</p> <p>In his striking directorial debut, Sean Wang takes us on a kinetic ride through the ups and downs of adolescence, mining personal experience to share a joyful, funny, and deeply affecting ode to first-generation teenagers navigating the beauty and pain of cultural heritage in a sea of conformity. Wang confidently steers us through the freewheeling early days of social media, where AIM emoticons and MySpace rankings carry the weight of heartbreak and friendships forged and broken. Both a moving love letter to immigrant parents and a playful examination of our uncertain paths to adulthood, <em>D&igrave;di (弟弟) </em>reminds us that growing up and growing into better versions of ourselves are often one and the same.&mdash;AS</p>

Eno

Gary Hustwit

<p>Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno &mdash; known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums &mdash; reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that&rsquo;s different every time it&rsquo;s shown.</p> <p>Filmmaker Gary Hustwit brings to the Sundance Film Festival the first career-spanning documentary about visionary musician and artist Brian Eno. This innovative bio-doc also elevates the documentary form to become an evergreen, algorithmic performance.</p> <p>Hustwit and creative technologist Brendan Dawes have developed a bespoke generative software designed to sequence scenes and create transitions out of Hustwit&rsquo;s original interviews with Eno, and Eno&rsquo;s rich archive of hundreds of hours of never-before-seen footage, and unreleased music. Each screening of <em>Eno</em> is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live.</p> <p>The generative and infinitely iterative quality of <em>Eno</em> poetically resonates with the artist&#39;s own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.&mdash;SF</p>

Eternal You

Hans Block Moritz Riesewieck

<p>Startups are using AI to create avatars that allow relatives to talk with their loved ones after they have died. An exploration of a profound human desire and the consequences of turning the dream of immortality into a product.</p> <p>&ldquo;I wanted to see if he was okay,&rdquo; explains Christi, one of the users of Project December. With this innovative software, users can communicate with a virtual version of the deceased through a chatbot that simulates the dead person&rsquo;s conversation patterns. Hers was an attempt to check on her first love. Others may simply miss someone, seek permission to move on, or want to rid themselves of guilt.</p> <p>Little is known about the effects that this kind of generative AI might have on our brains, hearts, and wallets. The filmmakers, Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck (<em>The Cleaners</em>, 2018 Sundance Film Festival), do not claim to have the answers, but instead bring up various emotional and moral complexities we should be aware of. <em>Eternal You</em> poses important questions about algorithmic immortality, and the need to take a closer look at our future &ldquo;digital remains.&rdquo;&mdash;AT</p>

Every Little Thing

Sally Aitken

<p>Amid the glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles, a woman finds herself on a transformative journey as she nurtures wounded hummingbirds, unraveling a visually captivating and magical tale of love, fragility, healing, and the delicate beauty in tiny acts of greatness.</p> <p>A film of joy and wonder, <em>EVERY LITTLE THING </em>offers profound truths in a deceptively simple story. What does it mean to care for another, and what impact does this act have on us? In tending to these fragile yet resilient hummingbirds, Terry Masear finds a sense of healing from her own past. Her diminutive patients &mdash; brought into sharp focus through breathtaking, beautifully detailed photography &mdash; become memorable protagonists in their own right. The viewer becomes emotionally invested in Cactus, Jimmy, Wasabi, Alexa, and Mikhail, celebrating their small victories and lamenting their tiny tragedies. The compassion and empathy that Masear shows her Lilliputian charges serves as a lesson to us all &mdash; a reminder that in the smallest of acts, and in the tiniest of creatures, we might find grace.&mdash;BT</p>

Exhibiting Forgiveness

Titus Kaphar

<p>Utilizing his paintings to find freedom from his past, a Black artist on the path to success is derailed by an unexpected visit from his estranged father, a recovering addict desperate to reconcile. Together, they learn that forgetting might be a greater challenge than forgiving.</p> <p>This soulful, sophisticated, and beautifully crafted debut feature blossoms a hard to tell story about destructive parenting, the seasons of angst weathered by an abused child becoming a successful human being, and the deep meaning and salve of creative practice.</p> <p>Oscar-nominated filmmaker and celebrated painter, Titus Kaphar, turns his attention again to cinema to innovate a fresh cinematic language that incorporates the language of paint and canvas to tells the story of Tarrell (Andr&eacute; Holland), an art star reckoning with his own traumatic childhood by creating powerful and transcendent paintings.</p> <p>At the radiant heart of <em>Exhibiting Forgiveness</em> is Tarell&rsquo;s artistic process which illuminates how a creative practice can redeem illnesses of the soul, forge pathways toward regaining power over one&#39;s own destiny, and forgive and transform despite the spiritual damage. &mdash;SF</p>

Freaky Tales

Ryan Fleck Anna Boden

<p>In 1987 Oakland, a mysterious force guides The Town&rsquo;s underdogs in four interconnected tales: Teen punks defend their turf against Nazi skinheads, a rap duo battles for hip-hop immortality, a weary henchman gets a shot at redemption, and an NBA All-Star settles the score. Basically another day in the Bay.</p> <p>Since premiering their short <em>Gowanus, Brooklyn</em> at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden have forged careers marked by fresh story sensibilities, rigorous character complexities, and outstanding performances. A mind-blowing mixtape and joyful ode to the &rsquo;80s, <em>Freaky Tales </em>imaginatively fuses styles and cinematic influences with giddy abandon, yielding a pastiche of pulp, pop, comic books, anthology horror, Old Testament wrath, and kung fu by way of a bloody crescendo that leaves no appendage unsevered. The supernatural storm brewing above Oakland empowers its ensemble of underdog warriors with a spirit of righteous retribution as they take on bullies, corruption, racism, misogyny, the Man, and the Lakers. A stirring anthem to solidarity and Oakland&rsquo;s egalitarian, countercultural, and multicultural spirit, <em>Freaky Tales</em> reminds a world of wrongdoing that this is what you get when you mess with the underdogs &mdash; after all, there are more of us.&mdash;JN</p>

Frida

Carla Gutiérrez

<p>An intimately raw and magical journey through the life, mind, and heart of iconic artist Frida Kahlo. Told through her own words for the very first time &mdash; drawn from her diary, revealing letters, essays, and print interviews &mdash; and brought vividly to life by lyrical animation inspired by her unforgettable artwork.</p> <p>Carla Gutierrez, renowned for her masterful editing of films including Sundance Film Festival projects <em>RBG</em> (2018), <em>When Two Worlds Collide</em> (2016), and <em>Cesar&rsquo;s Last Fast</em> (2014), brings artistry and a deep understanding of her subject to an astonishing directorial debut. Through a cacophony of rich archival sights, music, and journal entries joyfully brought to life, we become immersed in Frida&rsquo;s interior world, fears, arduous relationships, and events that drove her indelible artistic creations. Gutierrez vibrantly guides us through Frida&rsquo;s complex relationship to her own work, navigating the tension between art as commerce and painting for pleasure and self-knowledge. With reverence, thoughtfulness, and the color of pure emotion, <em>Frida</em> invites us to get to know one of the greatest artists of the 20th century in a completely new way.&mdash;AS</p>

Gaucho Gaucho

Michael Dweck Gregory Kershaw

<p>A celebration of a community of Argentine cowboys and cowgirls, known as Gauchos, living beyond the boundaries of the modern world.</p> <p><em>Gaucho Gaucho</em> paints an Argentinian Western with image and sound that reach an operatic beauty. Acclaimed photographers and now three-time Sundance-feted filmmakers Gregory Kershaw and Michael Dweck return with another striking nonfiction work after first taking audiences to the final stock car racetrack of New York with <em>The Last Race</em> and the secret corners of the Italian countryside in search of white truffles with <em>The Truffle Hunters</em>. Their focus is now on the vast plains of Argentina, expressed in stunning black-and-white photography, and a small community of gauchos who hold profound connections to the surrounding nature and their own traditions. As older generations dispense their wisdom, the film keeps its eye toward a new generation who continue to fight for their families&rsquo; legacy in a modern world.&mdash;CS</p>

I Saw the TV Glow

Jane Schoenbrun

<p>Teenager Owen is just trying to make it through life in the suburbs when his classmate introduces him to a mysterious late-night TV show &mdash; a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen&rsquo;s view of reality begins to crack.</p> <p>Writer-director Jane Schoenbrun&rsquo;s <em>We&rsquo;re All Going to the World&rsquo;s Fair </em>(2021 Sundance Film Festival) introduced us to a new genre of their own design: emo horror. Their follow-up feature builds upon that vibe, worming its way into the subconscious with an equally potent autopsy of reality versus fiction. As Owen, Justice Smith exudes a quiet vulnerability, while co-lead Brigette Lundy-Paine displays a confident yet awkward conviction. Schoenbrun has a knack for portraying the trappings of adolescent family life with nuance and a welcome ambiguity, freeing audience members to relate in a way that is best suited to their own experiences. <em>I Saw the TV Glow</em> forces us to consider whether the memories of our youth betrayed us, or if something more sinister is at play.&mdash;AM</p>

Kneecap

Rich Peppiatt

<p>There are 80,000 native Irish speakers in Ireland. 6,000 live in the North of Ireland. Three of them became a rap group called Kneecap. This anarchic Belfast trio becomes the unlikely figurehead of a civil rights movement to save the mother tongue.</p> <p>Bursting forth from an often unpredictable and raucous post-Troubles Belfast, Liam &Oacute;g &Oacute; hAnnaidh, Naoise &Oacute; Caireall&aacute;in, and JJ &Oacute; Dochartaigh leap onto the screen to play themselves in this heightened and wildly entertaining tale of Kneecap&rsquo;s origins, with Michael Fassbender in tow as the charismatic father-figure turned political martyr. Armed with a blend of English and native Irish verses and blazing, politically-charged rhymes, Kneecap&rsquo;s music takes us on a ketamine-fueled, rollicking trip to encounter the meaning of pure defiance. Filmmaker Rich Peppiatt captures the untameable essence of this singular trio with unapologetic humor and energy, revealing a generation born out of chaos and ready to reclaim their cultural heritage. Fervent and unforgettable, <em>Kneecap</em> is the rallying cry of a music group poised to take the world by storm.&mdash;AS</p>

In A Violent Nature

Chris Nash

<p>The enigmatic resurrection, rampage, and retribution of an undead monster in a remote wilderness.</p> <p>In his directorial feature debut, Chris Nash skillfully flips the slasher genre on its head by shifting the perspective from the victims to the killer with haunting effect. <em>In A Violent Nature</em> upends a formulaic mainstay featured within horror films for decades, minimizing familiar tropes to inject new life into the genre. Instead of dwelling alongside promiscuous young people in a remote forest cabin before they get what&rsquo;s coming to them, the film keeps their unsuspecting voices in the distance as we follow a maniacal murderer trudging through the woods to stalk his prey. Infusing inventive kills with generous amounts of gore, Nash is methodical in his approach, setting an ominous and ambient tone that will linger within your psyche for a long time to come.&mdash;AM&nbsp;</p>

Nocturnes

Anirban Dutta Anupama Srinivasan

<p>In the dense forests of the Eastern Himalayas, moths are whispering something to us. In the dark of night, two curious observers shine a light on this secret universe.</p> <p>Deep in the pitch-black forest, a few hundred moths are drawn by a single source of illumination to a piece of hung canvas. Only through this intimate examination can their existence, and the happenings of their world, be made visible. Though moth life spans are measured in hours and represent only a small amount of the immense biodiversity of their species, in these small beings lies a history of our planet. With a transportive and experiential visual style and immersive sound that brings you to a place few people can travel, co-directors Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan&rsquo;s <em>Nocturnes </em>gives us a multi-millennia vision of time nearly beyond our human-scale perception.&mdash;SS</p>

Love Machina

Peter Sillen

<p>Futurists Martine and Bina Rothblatt commission an advanced humanoid AI named Bina48 to transfer Bina&rsquo;s consciousness from a human to a robot in an attempt to continue their once-in-a-galaxy love affair for the rest of time.</p> <p><em>Love Machina</em> is where futurism meets love, where love meets humanity, where humanity meets AI. Director Peter Sillen (<em>Benjamin Smoke, 62,000:1 Three Teams One City One Year</em>) delivers a film transcending time and space. Sillen&rsquo;s approach feels as imaginative and dreamlike as our protagonists. <em>Love Machina</em> is entrancing to watch &mdash; packed with discovery, curiosity, and heart. Sillen shares a love story between Martine and Bina Rothblatt, entangling us in their world of passion and extravagant determination. At the forefront of many social movements, Martine and Bina set out to do what previously seemed impossible, taking their love story past &ldquo;till death do us part&rdquo; to &ldquo;as long as we both shall live.&rdquo; Thoughtful and inquisitive, Sillen dares to transport us to infinity and beyond.&mdash;BB</p>

Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story

Ian Bonhôte Peter Ettedgui

<p>Never-before-seen home movies and extraordinary personal archives reveal how Christopher Reeve went from unknown actor to iconic movie star as the ultimate screen superhero. He learned the true meaning of heroism as an activist after suffering a tragic accident that left him quadriplegic and dependent on a ventilator to breathe.</p> <p>Moving backward and forward in time, filmmakers Ian Bonh&ocirc;te and Peter Ettedgui expertly weave together a dual narrative exploring the life-changing impact of two pivotal moments in Christopher Reeve&#39;s career: being cast in 1978&#39;s <em>Superman</em> and becoming paralyzed in 1995. Decades before superheroes took over the cinemas, Reeve made the world believe a man could fly; his accident brought worldwide awareness of disability. In <em>Super/Man</em>, Reeve&#39;s family and close confidantes demonstrate remarkable candor in their reflections on life before and after the accident. The result is a deeply moving film foregrounding the man behind Superman &mdash; not a hagiography, but a full-fledged portrait that encompasses both the soaring heights and the dark depths of Reeve&#39;s journey.&mdash;BT</p>

The Remarkable Life of Ibelin

Benjamin Ree

<p>Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer, died of a degenerative muscular disease at the age of 25. His parents mourned what they thought had been a lonely and isolated life, when they started receiving messages from online friends around the world.</p> <p>Benjamin Ree (<em>The Painter and the Thief,</em> 2020) returns to the Festival with a heartwarming and adventurous journey through the breadth of Mats Steen&rsquo;s digital life and his profound impact on a community. Thoughtfully beginning with an overview of Mats&rsquo; life from the Steens&rsquo; perspective, Ree then uncovers and revives Mats&rsquo; vibrant cyberself. Narrated entries from Mats&rsquo; published blog introduce us to Ibelin, his charismatic World of Warcraft persona. Mats&rsquo; personality is revealed in a fuller dimension through reconstructed animated moments from his gameplay and interviews with people who knew him as Ibelin. Mats&rsquo; parents&rsquo; deepest remorse was the thought of their son never experiencing love and friendships, but Ree offers an endearing and innovative portrait of Mats&rsquo; abundant life through World of Warcraft, underscoring how community and soulful relationships can transcend the boundaries of the physical world.&mdash;SO</p>

Handling the Undead

Thea Hvistendahl

<p>On a hot summer day in Oslo, the newly dead awaken. Three families faced with loss try to figure out what this resurrection means and if their loved ones really are back. Based on the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist.</p> <p>Reuniting Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie (<em>The Worst Person in the World</em>, 2022 Sundance Film Festival), <em>Handling the Undead</em> is a visually expansive experience, full of arresting images and subtle performances that collapse the space between the living and the dead. Director Thea Hvistendahl&rsquo;s steady directorial hand leaves her characters room to breathe, to mediate the moral gray area, letting the minutiae of grief lead them as they feel their way through an extraordinary circumstance. Hvistendahl&rsquo;s interpretation of Lindqvist&rsquo;s novel addresses daunting questions about the body, the soul, loss, and moving on, pushing viewers to get to the root of reanimation: What would you do, and how would you feel, if someone you loved returned?&mdash;AE</p>

Little Death

Jack Begert

<p>A middle-aged filmmaker on the verge of a breakthrough. Two kids in search of a lost backpack. A small dog a long way from home.</p> <p>Acclaimed music video director Jack Begert&rsquo;s idiosyncratic debut feature, co-written with Dani Goffstein, takes a cockeyed but sensitive look at Hollywood dreams and disappointments. <em>Little Death</em> is a dark comedy about a screenwriter&rsquo;s (David Schwimmer) midlife identity crisis and a crime drama about a pair of taco truck entrepreneurs (Talia Ryder and Dominic Fike) in search of their next opioid fix. In true Los Angeles fashion, these characters collide at a tragicomic intersection, and the film shifts gears from barbed showbiz satire to an introspective hangout vibe. Throughout, <em>Little Death</em> stays deeply attuned to the inner lives of its restless dreamers, examining their efforts to find meaning and connection while struggling against the fickleness of fate and the illusion of free will. Begert deploys disorienting bursts of surreal montage and oddball AI animation to convey Schwimmer&rsquo;s fractured psyche and draws on a terrific ensemble including Jena Malone, Gaby Hoffman, and Karl Glusman.&mdash;MC</p>

In the Land of Brothers

Raha Amirfazli Alireza Ghasemi

<p>Three members of an extended Afghan family start their lives over in Iran as refugees, unaware they face a decades-long struggle ahead to be &ldquo;at home.&rdquo;</p> <p>Nearly 5 million Afghan refugees live in Iran, often with such tenuous legal status that any unexpected event could lead to forced deportation, family separation, or worse. Starting in 2001, these three stories elegantly and movingly capture the plight of people living their lives with hope and joy, but trapped under a state that constantly threatens police brutality, administrative violence, and armed conflict. In their feature debut, co-writers and directors Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi dazzle as a new voice in Iranian cinema. But the lasting power of<em> In the Land of Brothers</em> lies in the indelible performances of its actors, whose humanity lends a specific perspective on the struggle of living as a refugee in Iran &mdash; but that will be recognizable around the world.&mdash;SS</p>

Never Look Away

Lucy Lawless

<p>New Zealand&ndash;born groundbreaking CNN camerawoman Margaret Moth risks it all to show the reality of war from inside the conflict, staring down danger and confronting those who perpetuate it.</p> <p>Moth&rsquo;s intrepid energy and kinetic lust are rendered beautifully in this documentary that deftly captures both her powerful personality and the nascent development of the 24-hour news cycle. <em>Never Look Away</em> asks hard-hitting questions about where our desire for conflict coverage comes from, whether it can ever be satiated, and what we are running from when we are absorbed by work and by relentless global news. Margaret&rsquo;s indelible commitment to her work, her striking aesthetic, her deeply mysterious nature, and her gargantuan contributions to the field of journalism all come to the fore in this potent biopic.</p> <p>Renowned actress Lucy Lawless (<em>Xena: Warrior Princess</em>, <em>Battlestar Galactica</em>, <em>Parks and Recreation</em>) steps behind the camera in this impressive directorial debut. Lawless creates a distinctively female, Kiwi lens to cover this titanic career that shows both the horrors and life-affirming dimensions of war from a woman&rsquo;s point of view.&mdash;AH</p>

LOLLA: THE STORY OF LOLLAPALOOZA

Michael John Warren

<p>In the summer of &rsquo;91, the Lollapalooza music festival was born. What started as a farewell tour for the band Jane&rsquo;s Addiction rose from the underground to launch a cultural movement and change music forever.</p> <p>Michael John Warren, veteran filmmaker behind acclaimed story-driven documentaries and innovative concert films, brings a deft understanding of music and culture to his Sundance Film Festival debut, <em>Lolla: The Story of Lollapalooza. </em>The untethered energy of 1990s American youth counterculture finds focus in roiling mosh pits, raging to artists like Jane&rsquo;s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, and Sonic Youth, and gaining exposure to social activism, political art, and alternative circuses. A wealth of archival footage from audience and band perspectives leads to an immersive experience akin to the festival itself, touching on behind-the-scenes machinations as much as the impact of music previously out of reach to its listeners.&mdash;DC</p>

Look Into My Eyes

Lana Wilson

<p>A group of New York City psychics conduct deeply intimate readings for their clients, revealing a kaleidoscope of loneliness, connection, and healing.</p> <p><em>Look Into My Eyes </em>by Lana Wilson (<em>Miss Americana</em>,<em> Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields</em>,<em> The Departure</em>) gives us an intimate view of psychics in New York City. Over a series of interviews and with a camera that is not afraid to get up close and personal, Wilson highlights the ins and outs of being a psychic and what that entails, while constructing a tender portrayal of the clients. A thoughtfully paced and oftentimes deeply personal piece, it unfolds the grief, turmoil, and loneliness that come along with being a human. On the flip side, the joys of gaining clarity, achieving closure, and even having a pet are experienced. Wilson&rsquo;s truly masterful work with <em>Look Into My Eyes </em>cements her as a powerhouse documentary filmmaker.&mdash;BB</p>

My Old Ass

Megan Park

<p>The summer before college, bright-yet-irreverent Elliott comes face-to-face with her older self during a mushroom trip. The encounter spurs a funny and heartfelt journey of self-discovery and first love as Elliott prepares to leave her childhood home.</p> <p>Writer-director Megan Park&rsquo;s tender, surprising sophomore feature cleverly uses its high-concept premise of a visit from one&rsquo;s future self to launch a refreshing, nuanced exploration of the uncertainties of young romance and coming of age. <em>My Old Ass</em> is a sweet teenage love story, a lively contemporary comedy, and a quirky riff on time-travel films all in one.</p> <p>Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza have a terrific unlikely chemistry, as the sass and self-assuredness of the young Elliott, as played by Stella, blends and overlaps with Plaza&rsquo;s sardonic humor as a more mature Elliott. The care and affection shown in the film&rsquo;s depiction of Elliott&rsquo;s rural hometown in her last days before taking off for adulthood visually highlights her emotional journey, evoking a nostalgia for days that haven&rsquo;t even ended yet.&mdash;HZ</p>

Out of My Mind

Amber Sealey

<p>Melody Brooks is navigating sixth grade as a nonverbal wheelchair user who has cerebral palsy. With the help of some assistive technology and her devoted, exuberant allies, Melody shows that what she has to say is more important than how she says it.</p> <p><em>Out of My Mind </em>presents a sincere experience of teenage girlhood through the lenses of disability and belonging. Director Amber Sealey crafts a world around Melody that is all too familiar; at once full of love, fun, and opportunity, yet systemically unfair to those who are different. Actress Phoebe-Rae Taylor, who similarly lives with cerebral palsy, embodies Melody from a place of authenticity and heart.</p> <p>Melody&rsquo;s wants courageously steer this narrative &mdash; her desires to prove her intelligence, befriend girls her age, and, ultimately, break free from the limiting preconceptions of others, are both unique and deeply universal. This is a powerful story about finding one&rsquo;s voice, bolstered by the collective passion and advocacy of those who are willing to really listen.&mdash;CA</p>

Penelope

Mel Eslyn

<p>Feeling out of place in modern society, a 16-year-old is drawn into the unknown wilderness, where she begins forming a new life for herself.</p>

Rob Peace

Chiwetel Ejiofor

<p>Robert Peace grew up in an impoverished section of Newark and later graduated from Yale with degrees in molecular biophysics and biochemistry while on scholarship. Peace led a dual life in academia and research while also earning six figures selling marijuana. Based on Jeff Hobbs&rsquo; bestselling biography.</p> <p>Chiwetel Ejiofor&rsquo;s thoughtful adaptation of Hobbs&rsquo; biography examines Peace&rsquo;s struggle to reconcile his academic ambitions with mounting economic and family pressures. Although Peace&rsquo;s (Jay Will) talents are nurtured from childhood by his devoted mother (Mary J. Blige), he lives in the shadow of his father (Ejiofor) who is imprisoned for a murky double murder. Intellectually curious and restlessly entrepreneurial, Peace lives a divided life, tenaciously working in a university research lab while secretly raising cash for his dad&rsquo;s defense. Detailing Peace&rsquo;s dual rise within the ranks of Yale and the Newark drug trade, <em>Rob Peace</em> explores the double bind between being true to one&rsquo;s dreams and faithful to one&rsquo;s roots, exposing the contradictions in the American dream for young Black men. Will vividly conveys Peace&rsquo;s inner turmoil while Ejiofor gives an anguished performance as his mercurial father.&mdash;MC</p>

Ponyboi

Esteban Arango

<p>Unfolding over the course of Valentine&rsquo;s Day in New Jersey, a young intersex sex worker must run from the mob after a drug deal goes sideways, forcing him to confront his past.</p> <p><em>Ponyboi </em>bursts off the screen in this bombastic, edgy, and campy roller-coaster ride of a film. Flipping the script on the LGBTQIA+ return home tale and the classic Jersey mobster saga, this neon-soaked story is not only full of action but also pure moments of tenderness. Complicated and hilarious, Ponyboi&rsquo;s journey exposes a kaleidoscope of ways humanity is sugary sweet under hard surfaces. Backdrops of laundromats, diners, and the Jersey Shore create a heightened sense of place and time that is at once precisely transportative and fantastically imaginary.</p> <p>Director Esteban Arango returns to the Sundance Film Festival after his feature film debut in 2020 with <em>Blast Beat.</em> His signature liveliness, energy, and Latinx lens are present and blossoming in this sophomore effort. Writer, producer, and star River Gallo delivers a thrilling performance and a ripe emotional foundation that absolutely sings. Arango and Gallo&rsquo;s creative collaboration is as entertaining as it is emotionally graceful.&mdash;AH</p>

Porcelain War

Brendan Bellomo Slava Leontyev

<p>Under roaring fighter jets and missile strikes, Ukrainian artists Slava, Anya, and Andrey choose to stay behind and fight, contending with the soldiers they have become. Defiantly finding beauty amid destruction, they show that although it&rsquo;s easy to make people afraid, it&rsquo;s hard to destroy their passion for living.</p> <p>And how does one continue to live when everything you love is under a vicious attack? <em>Porcelain War </em>argues that you can learn to fight back using all the tools you have, including your art, in order to avoid erasure. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re ordinary people in an extraordinary situation&rdquo; is how co-director Slava Leontyev describes their current life. Meanwhile, there is absolutely nothing ordinary about them &mdash; these artists, farmers, IT specialists &mdash; coming together to fight their oppressor. <em>Porcelain War </em>is a true cinematic gem. Leontyev and co-director Brendan Bellomo manage to gracefully capture the dissonance between the horrors of war and the fragile beauty of nature and artistic practice. Anya&rsquo;s and Slava&rsquo;s porcelain pieces come to life in delicately crafted animations that offer context to their makers&rsquo; story and a stunning outlet for processing grief.&mdash;AT</p>

Ghostlight

Kelly O’Sullivan Alex Thompson

<p>When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater&#39;s production of Romeo and Juliet, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.</p>

Girls Will Be Girls

Shuchi Talati

<p>In a strict boarding school nestled in the Himalayas, 16-year-old Mira discovers desire and romance. But her sexual, rebellious awakening is disrupted by her mother who never got to come of age herself.</p> <p>With precision and sensitivity, first-time feature director Shuchi Talati invites us into the lives of characters she intimately understands and deciphers, allowing us to experience adolescent sexual discovery with all its conflicting emotions. Preeti Panigrahi embodies Mira with nuanced sincerity, her hesitation transforming into confidence when she&rsquo;s swept up by Kesav Binoy Kiron&rsquo;s charismatic, wry Sri. Kani Kusruti, meanwhile, gives a brilliant performance as Mira&rsquo;s cunning mother, Anila, setting up the perfect game of mother-daughter chess as these women descend into a struggle that threatens their affection for each other. Beautifully exploring the origins of empowerment and the limits of trust, <em>Girls Will Be Girls</em> celebrates the freedom of self-acceptance and the solace of female agency, sensuality, and physicality.&mdash;AS</p>

Girls State

Amanda McBaine Jesse Moss

<p>Teenage girls from wildly different backgrounds across Missouri navigate a week-long immersive experiment in American democracy, build a government from the ground up, and reimagine what it means to govern.</p> <p>Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss&rsquo; anticipated return to the captivating world of teenage-led politics follows ambitions unfolding as hundreds of teenage girls gather to build a representative government in Missouri during a session of Girls State co-hosted alongside Boys State. As the girls run for office, including governor and supreme court seats, they also methodically preside over a reproductive rights case while the real-life overturning of Roe v. Wade hangs in the balance. McBaine and Moss stay embedded in Girls State, following several charismatic candidates, but these aspiring change-makers keenly take note of the Boys State program, and the differences between the programs, sparking outcry and awakening.<br /> <br /> Girls State deftly reflects urgent issues around gender equality and our political landscape through the energetic and tenacious lens of youth. The candidates&rsquo; resilience and adaptability shine through, revealing that no closed doors are stopping these girls.&mdash;SO</p>

Reinas

Klaudia Reynicke

<p>Surrounded by social and political chaos in Lima during the summer of 1992, Lucia, Aurora, and their mother, Elena, plan to leave and seek opportunities in the United States. Their farewell involves reconnecting with their estranged father, Carlos, adding turbulence to the regrets, hopes, and fears of their emotional departure.</p> <p>Director Klaudia Reynicke subtly weaves a tale of shifts and sacrifices that shows, whatever the familial configuration, strength and loss are necessary parts of growth. Grounded by a strong performance from Jimena Lindo as Elena and a wonderfully inquisitive Abril Gjurinovic, a family is brought to life. Reynicke&rsquo;s effective direction honors each community the camera focuses on, and her Lima, the city where Reynicke grew up, feels personal, like a memory or a version of a city that no longer exists but emerges vibrant and alive in the film. <em>Reinas</em> is truly an emotional trip, transporting the viewer to Lima in the &rsquo;90s, right into the heart of a family faced with a universal challenge: the search for a safer place.&mdash;AE</p>

Presence

Steven Soderbergh

<p>A family moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they&rsquo;re not alone.</p> <p>In every project of his legendary career as a director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, and editor, Steven Soderbergh has brought a vital energy, curiosity, and unique vision to storytelling that has few parallels in filmmaking history. Following groundbreaking work like <em>sex, lies, and videotape </em>(1989 Sundance Film Festival, Audience Award: Dramatic) and <em>The Girlfriend Experience</em> (2009 Sundance Film Festival), he returns to Park City with a film shot entirely in one location that will haunt audiences with its otherworldly story and constantly awe-inspiring visuals. Working from a taut, mysterious script by David Koepp and featuring an exciting cast of known actors and newcomers, <em>Presence</em> is a thrilling cinematic ride that reifies Soderbergh&rsquo;s status as an icon of American independent film.&mdash;SS</p>

REALM OF SATAN

Scott Cummings

<p>An experiential portrait depicting Satanists in both the everyday and in the extraordinary as they fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy.</p> <p>Filmmaker Scott Cummings is no stranger to Sundance, having edited many highly acclaimed festival premieres over the past decade, including <em>Never Rarely Sometimes Always</em>, <em>Monsters and Men</em>, and <em>Wendy</em>.</p> <p><em>REALM OF SATAN</em> marks his feature-length directorial debut after first staking his claim in the peripheries of nonfiction-adjacent storytelling with his acclaimed short film <em>Buffalo Juggalos</em>.<br /> His unique approach is to work in collaboration with sinister subcultures to conjure up video portraits that express a vision of their personal existence. Working in lockstep with cinematographer Gerald Kerkletz, each shot is its own small treasure to explore, whether fantastical, explicit, mundane, or all of the above. <em>REALM OF SATAN</em>&rsquo;s acceptance in an unreality sets itself on an anarchistic path through expressions of identity and image-making that nobly fights all forms of tradition.</p>

Skywalkers: A Love Story

Jeff Zimbalist

<p>To save their career and relationship, a daredevil couple journey across the globe to climb the world&rsquo;s last super skyscraper and perform a bold acrobatic stunt on the spire.</p> <p>This immersive, vertiginous nail-biter takes audiences nearly 2,230 feet up in the sky. But to get there, filmmaker Jeff Zimbalist crafts a real-life heist film with actual life-or-death stakes, following its daredevil protagonists every dangerous &mdash; and highly illegal &mdash; step of the way of their mission. From carefully staking out their target and selecting an ingenious time to make their attempt, to evading security and risking their freedom &mdash; not to mention their lives &mdash; the Russian rooftoppers bring the viewer along for a wild and breathtaking ride. Just as importantly, the film captures a strong-willed couple as they meet, develop trust in the most harrowing and exhilarating of circumstances, and fall in love in the process. <em>Skywalkers: A Love Story</em> is a riveting, edge-of-your-seat experience about facing your fears and coming out the other side.&mdash;BT</p>

Good One

India Donaldson

<p>On a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, 17-year-old Sam contends with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend.</p>

In The Summers

Alessandra Lacorazza

<p>On a journey that spans the formative years of their lives, two sisters navigate their loving but volatile father during their yearly summer visits to his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico.</p> <p>With grounded thoughtfulness, debut feature director Alessandra Lacorazza weaves a rich tapestry of memories in New Mexico as childhood and adolescence collide with the realities of adulthood. Ren&eacute; P&eacute;rez Joglar (also known by his musical moniker Residente) gives a layered and gut-wrenching performance as the charming-yet-troubled Vicente, struggling to fully connect with his daughters through games that slowly lose their luster in the shadow of his habits. A talented cast, including Sasha Calle and L&iacute;o Mehiel (Sundance Special Jury Prize for Performance as the lead of last year&rsquo;s <em>Mutt</em>), inhabit Violeta and Eva through cinematic ellipses as their understanding of their father deepens. <em>In The Summers</em> proves both an emotional capsule of growing up within a fragmented family and a love letter to the resilience needed to survive.&mdash;AS</p>

Love Me

Sam Zuchero Andy Zuchero

<p>Long after humanity&#39;s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.</p> <p>As filmmakers Sam &amp; Andy demonstrate in their wildly imaginative debut feature, telling the love story of a smart buoy and an orbiting satellite that spans a billion years and probes the mysteries of being and consciousness requires legit storytelling dexterity. <em>Love Me&rsquo;s</em> whimsically philosophical, shape-shifting structure ingeniously weaves together the real, the virtual, and the surreal. Its star-crossed, web-paired metallic protagonists &mdash; inhabited in different forms by Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun &mdash; awkwardly navigate romance and companionship, equipped only with untold petabytes of archived web data, social media, and online videos. Awash in these mediated experiences and fabricated expressions of love and identity, they yearn to understand who they are, whether their feelings are real, and for that matter, whether <em>they</em> are real.&mdash;JN</p>

Stress Positions

Theda Hammel

<p>Terry Goon is keeping strict quarantine in his ex-husband&rsquo;s Brooklyn brownstone while caring for his nephew &mdash; a 19-year-old model from Morocco named Bahlul &mdash; bedridden in a full leg cast after an electric scooter accident. Unfortunately for Terry, everyone in his life wants to meet the model.&nbsp;</p> <p><em>Stress Positions</em> is as much a finely tuned time capsule of the frantic fear and formative power of the pandemic as it is a road map out of dark places guided by a profound humanity. A careful balance between a consistent, razor-sharp humor and the development of a distinctive cinematic tone creates a particular mood and energy that is not easily forgotten.</p>

Suncoast

Laura Chinn

<p>A teenager who, while caring for her brother along with her audacious mother, strikes up an unlikely friendship with an eccentric activist who is protesting one of the most landmark medical cases of all time. Inspired by a semi-autobiographical story.</p> <p>Writer-director Laura Chinn makes an unforgettable debut with a script inspired by her own teenage experience. Set in 2005 in St. Petersburg, Florida,<em> Suncoast</em> is a sensitively told coming-of-age story as Chinn&rsquo;s young heroine finds friendship through unexpected connections and gestures and is forced to reckon with the gravity of her brother&rsquo;s health. In a breakout role, Nico Parker embodies Doris, an awkward high schooler whose unique and troubling home life ultimately provides opportunities for her freedom and an unexpected entr&eacute;e into the popular kids&rsquo; clique. Laura Linney shines as Doris&rsquo; preoccupied mother and finds complex human behavior under unimaginable circumstances. Separately and together, a mother and daughter face a situation bigger than themselves that builds to a crescendo of deep emotional power and pathos.&mdash;KY</p>

Sugarcane

Julian Brave NoiseCat Emily Kassie

<p>An investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school ignites a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve.</p> <p>Filmmakers Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie deliver a multilayered film that invites audiences to confront profound questions about morality and justice, and to bear witness to the lasting intergenerational legacy of trauma from the residential school system &mdash; including forced family separation, physical and sexual abuse, and the destruction of Native culture and language. Drawing on their backgrounds in activism and journalism &mdash; as well as NoiseCat&#39;s own personal connection to the story and community &mdash; the filmmakers deftly weave together multiple strands to form this compelling, heartbreaking narrative. Demonstrating unparalleled humanity, compassion, and grace for the affected Indigenous communities in North America, their powerful documentary operates from a place of pure and total empathy. At the same time, NoiseCat and Kassie recognize the resilience of the survivors and their descendants, and their unflagging determination to seek answers to long-buried secrets. Ultimately, <em>Sugarcane</em> reminds us to respect the humanity in ourselves as well as in others.&mdash;BB</p>

Union

Stephen Maing Brett Story

<p>The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) &mdash; a group of current and former Amazon workers in New York City&rsquo;s Staten Island &mdash; takes on one of the world&rsquo;s largest and most powerful companies in the fight to unionize.</p> <p>Chronicling the historic efforts of the ALU, <em>Union</em> is an intimate and surprising story of dogged determination, unorthodox tactics, and speaking up despite David vs. Goliath odds. Capturing up-close, in-the-trenches moments with the upstart labor union leaders &mdash; including the charismatic Chris Smalls &mdash; as they try to build support for their movement on their own terms, filmmakers Brett Story and Stephen Maing bear witness to the realities of labor organizing in the United States &mdash; challenging at best; near-impossible when facing the unlimited resources and influence of a corporate giant. They track exhilarating victories and demoralizing setbacks along the way, but foremost spotlight the far-reaching ability of collective action to inspire hope and bring self-determination to workers who&rsquo;ve long felt disenfranchised and powerless.&mdash;BT</p>

Bug Diner

Phoebe Jane Hart

<p>A dissatisfied marriage, a secret crush, and workplace fantasies come to a head in a diner run by a mole with a hot ass.</p>

Drago

Daniel Zvereff

<p>A young boy&rsquo;s dream of becoming a doctor is challenged when war forces him and his mother to flee their village and start a new life in New York City.</p>

Matta und Matto (Matta and Matto)

Bianca Caderas Kerstin Zemp

<p>In a time when all interpersonal closeness is forbidden, the hourly hotel Vaip offers wondrous rooms where guests snuggle up to devices built with great skill and let themselves fall into the perfect illusion of human touch.</p>

Martyr's Guidebook

Maks Rzontkowski

<p>Tony is the ultimate good guy, sometimes to a fault. From nabbing the smallest slice of cake in grade school to guiding lost strangers in the city, his kindness knows no bounds. He also lives with an angel.</p>

Dona Beatriz Ñsîmba Vita

Catapreta

<p>Kimpa Vita fulfills the prophetic mission of leading her people in a racist and unequal society. Set in contemporary Brazil and inspired by the true story of Kimpa Vita, a 17th-century Congolese religious leader.</p>

Baigal Nuur-Lake Baikal

Alisi Telengut

<p>The formation of Lake Baikal in Siberia is reimagined, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat-Mongolian language.</p>

Larry

Takeshi Murata Christopher Rutledge

<p>Takeshi Murata and Christopher Rutledge continue their playful investigation of both the sharp-edged hyperrealism of commercial CGI and its oozing, anarchic breakdown in&nbsp;<em>Larry</em>, which propels its titular character&mdash;a droopy-eyed canine baller&mdash;through a series of increasingly bizarre and messy loops. Set to a soundtrack of maxed-out electronic rhythms, these vignettes form a ludic study in morphology and motion, as its pooch protagonist continually vaults, multiplies, gets buckets, and dissolves into digital goo.</p>

27

Flóra Anna Buda

<p>Alice is 27 years old today. Even though she is suffocating a bit, she still lives with her parents and tends to live in her dreams to escape her dreary everyday life.</p>

Dig! XX

Ondi Timoner

<p><em>DIG! XX</em> tracks the tumultuous rise of two talented musicians, Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols, and dissects their star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry. Through their loves and obsessions, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and ultimately to their chance at a piece of the profit-driven music business, they stage a self-proclaimed revolution in the music industry.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Originally seven years in the making, and culled from 2,500 hours of footage, Ondi Timoner&rsquo;s <em>DIG! </em>gets a 20th-anniversary refresh, featuring 35 minutes of previously unseen footage. Fresh, stylish, raucous, and raw, <em>DIG! XX</em> is a feat in rough-and-tumble filmmaking, but the conflicts it examines are as old as Mozart.</p>

To Be Invisible

Myah Overstreet

<p>Every week for the past three years, Alexis and Kellie have stood outside Durham County&rsquo;s child welfare agency, demanding the return of their children. Together, they embark on a journey to bring their children home.</p>

Winding Path

Alexandra Lazarowich Ross Kauffman

<p>Eastern Shoshone medical student Jenna Murray spent summers on the Wind River Indian Reservation helping her grandpa in any way she could. When he suddenly dies, she must find a way to heal before realizing her dream of a life in medicine.</p>

Object 817

Olga Lucovnicova

<p>A poetic journey to the heart of the Ural, where the discovery of an alien creature uncovers a haunting secret.</p>

The Smallest Power

Andy Sarjahani

<p>During the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran, in the aftermath of the murder of Jina Mahsa Amini, a medical resident finds her voice when the chaos in the streets comes to her hospital floor.</p>

历历如画 (14 Paintings)

Dongnan Chen

<p>The Chinese village of Dafen was once a place where thousands of professional painters made reproductions of Western masterpieces. At the government&rsquo;s instigation, these artists now paint their own original works. Their paintings hang all over China, in a wide variety of settings, from hospitals to museums, and from offices and commercial buildings to outdoor public locations.</p> <p>Fourteen &lsquo;still lives&rsquo; show the diversity of the works. In carefully composed wide shots, the paintings with their locations and the people moving through them present a cross-section of modern China and a society in motion. A written statement by the respective creator introduces each painting.</p> <p>The artists&rsquo; words sometimes convey hope and inspiration, but just as often, disappointment and fatigue. For most of them the shift to producing original work doesn&rsquo;t represent a real improvement. Questions remain about the degree of artistic freedom they have and how their work is valued. Does the buyer see their work as an investment or merely as decoration? Is the work replaceable, or does it have lasting value?</p>

Bob's Funeral

Jack Dunphy

<p>Searching for the root of generational trauma, the director takes a camera into his estranged grandfather&rsquo;s funeral.</p>

Go Fish

Rose Troche

<p>Max is looking for love. Her roommate, Kia, already has it in the person of Evy, who lives at home with her mom while still trying to shake off her ex-husband. Then there&#39;s Ely, Kia&#39;s ex-student who is seemingly available. Ely shares a place with Daria, the quintessential lesbian about town, constantly in and out of women&#39;s beds and hearts. Kia thinks Max would like Ely; Daria thinks Ely should like Max. Everyone schemes. We&#39;re treated to a date, a dinner party, pride, honor, friendship, laundry, nail clipping &mdash; and, of course, sex.</p>

Hit Man

Richard Linklater

<p>In a wily and charismatic star turn, Glen Powell plays straight-laced philosophy professor Gary Johnson, who moonlights as an undercover hit man for the New Orleans Police Department. Preternaturally gifted at inhabiting different guises and personalities to catch hapless people hoping to bump off their enemies, Gary begins to descend into morally dubious territory when he finds himself attracted to one of those potential criminals, a young woman named Madison (Adria Arjona)&mdash;setting off a chain reaction of play-acting and false selves. Richard Linklater&rsquo;s peppy sunlit neo-noir&mdash;based on an improbable true story, with a few wild embellishments&mdash;is a continually surprising delight: co-written by Linklater and Powell, it&rsquo;s a cleverly existential comedy about identity that deepens in meaning as it escalates in absurdity. A Netflix release.</p>

How to Have Sex

Molly Manning Walker

<p>Three British teenage girls go on a rite-of-passage holiday, drinking, clubbing, and hooking up in what should be the best summer of their lives. As they dance their way across the sun-drenched streets of Malia, they find themselves navigating the complexities of sex, consent, and self-discovery.</p> <p>While the girls seem initially equally captivated by the nonstop bacchanal, the film&rsquo;s increasing focus on bubbly, inexperienced Tara &mdash; who carefully reconsiders her vacation, her friendships, and herself after a questionably consensual late-night encounter on the beach &mdash; turns an incisive viewing experience into a searingly unforgettable one. In her feature debut, Molly Manning Walker embeds a devastatingly honest examination of sexuality and consent within a multifaceted portrait of female friendship, all set against the backdrop of a vivid rendering of alcohol-fueled party culture.</p>

Igualada

Juan Mejía Botero

<p>In one of Latin America&rsquo;s most unequal countries, Francia M&aacute;rquez, a Black Colombian rural activist, challenges the status quo with a presidential campaign that reappropriates the derogatory term &ldquo;Igualada&rdquo; &mdash; someone who acts as if they deserve rights that supposedly don&rsquo;t correspond to them &mdash; and inspires a nation to dream.</p> <p>Director Juan Mej&iacute;a Botero&rsquo;s exclusive access to Francia M&aacute;rquez&rsquo;s presidential campaign reveals an unwavering commitment to fight inequality. M&aacute;rquez&rsquo;s presidential aspirations grew from the roots of dedicated social and environmental advocacy in her rural community of La Toma. Botero integrates into M&aacute;rquez&rsquo;s trusted circle, closely observing her and the campaign team&rsquo;s tireless grassroots efforts to push her candidacy forward, while archival footage of a younger M&aacute;rquez in La Toma reminds us of her long-standing activism. M&aacute;rquez&rsquo;s resonant slogan, &ldquo;I am because we are,&rdquo; rings through gatherings, galvanizing the rural and Afro-Colombian communities M&aacute;rquez is fighting for, and echoing through the growing number of younger Colombians inspired by her message. They look to M&aacute;rquez, faces filled with hope for a future where they might finally be represented. Botero captures the thrill and magnitude of this historic campaign from an inspiringly intimate vantage point, guided by M&aacute;rquez&rsquo;s mission and the collective strength and aspiration of the people.</p>

Kidnapping Inc.

Bruno Mourral

<p>Tasked with what appears to be a simple abduction for hire, two hapless kidnappers find out that it&rsquo;s anything but and end up in the middle of a political conspiracy.</p> <p>Director and co-writer Bruno Mourral&rsquo;s explosive debut feature is a darkly funny but deadly serious political thriller set in one of the kidnapping capitals of the world. <em>Kidnapping Inc. </em>follows desperate criminals Doc (Jasmuel Andri) and Zoe (Rolaphton Mercure) on an irreverent, high-speed misadventure through the mean streets of Port-au-Prince, finding danger and intrigue at every hairpin turn. The film&rsquo;s outrageous slapstick violence and furious pace are fueled by a deeper outrage at the widespread corruption, class inequality, and insecurity in Haitian society. Unlike his bumbling protagonists, Mourral takes no prisoners, populating this vivid, vulgar landscape with a motley assortment of crooked cops, scheming politicians, and freelance assassins. Anchored by Andri and Mercure, who bring warmth and charisma to their roles as would-be mercenaries, <em>Kidnapping Inc. </em>is also an affectionate buddy comedy that finds moments of grace and humanity amid the flying bullets.&mdash;MC</p>

Krazy House

Steffen Haars Flip van der Kuil

<p>When Russian workers in Bernie&rsquo;s house turn out to be wanted criminals, Bernie has to man up and save his &rsquo;90s sitcom family.</p> <p>In their hotly anticipated English-language debut, Dutch directing duo Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil (<em>New Kids</em>) spare no one, unleashing a deliriously fucked-up ode to the sanctity of family that consistently outdoes itself. Taking a studio audience&ndash;approved world and nuking it from the inside, Haars and van der Kuil bless us with their demented sense of humor and depravity. Nick Frost embodies Bernie Christian with zest, doing justice to his last name as a meek, devout head of household who&rsquo;s suddenly forced into a bloodcurdling, jaw-dropping crusade when his spiritual foundations fail; Alicia Silverstone matches his madness as his gleefully mischievous wife. Miraculous in its very existence and gloriously unhinged, <em>Krazy House</em> begs to be seen to be believed.&mdash;AS&nbsp;</p>

Layla

Amrou Al-Kadhi

<p>When Layla, a struggling Arab drag queen, falls in love for the first time, they lose and find themself in a transformative relationship that tests who they really are.</p> <p>Amrou Al-Kadhi&rsquo;s propulsive direction shines alongside Bilal Hasna&rsquo;s breakout performance, and while Layla, the character, may be going through some qualms about identity, the film itself is a proud queer love story &mdash; with all the complications involved. Under Al-Kadhi&rsquo;s care, the audience is ushered into the sanctity of queer spaces, the nightclub and the beauty supply store, places for more than just entertainment, doors to a more embodied, honest existence, a home, an Eden of sorts. Al-Kadhi is unafraid to question who isn&rsquo;t welcome in these spaces and the isolation one faces when certain demarcation becomes too clear to ignore. <em>Layla</em> is a tale of self-acceptance and community love, so come for some fun and boogie to all the club hits! There&rsquo;s plenty of sparkle to go around.&mdash;AE</p>

Love Lies Bleeding

Rose Glass

<p>Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Las Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou&rsquo;s criminal family.</p> <p>Following her critically acclaimed first feature <em>Saint Maud</em>, Rose Glass makes her Sundance Film Festival debut with a bombastic, larger-than-life sophomore effort. An off-the-wall, rambunctious lesbian love story crashes into a family drama of the darkest ilk in this muscular thriller. As a small-town gym and a ravine just outside city limits become the playground for all flavors of mischief and mayhem, a heightened Americana sensibility and Glass&rsquo; deliciously distinctive, bold style create a world that is at once familiar and entirely fresh. Helmed by Sundance regular Kristen Stewart (<em>Speak</em>,<em> Adventureland</em>,<em> Certain Women</em>) and Katy O&rsquo;Brian, <em>Love Lies Bleeding</em> is somehow as sweetly romantic about loyalty as it is doggedly hedonistic. With a vaulting imagination and its roots in deeply human places, this film packs a gut punch unlike any other.&mdash;AH</p>

Luther: Never Too Much

Dawn Porter

<p>Luther Vandross started his career supporting David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, and more. His undeniable talent earned platinum records and accolades, but he struggled to break out beyond the R&amp;B charts. Intensely driven, he overcame personal and professional challenges to secure his place amongst the greatest vocalists in history.</p> <p>If you know, you know &mdash; there&rsquo;s only one Luther. Acclaimed Festival alum Dawn Porter invites audiences on a musical journey into the life of the iconic Luther Vandross, the man with the soulful velvet voice. An archival tapestry of performances and recording sessions immerse us in his legendary musical talent as a singer, songwriter, and producer. Porter then goes beyond the spotlight to delve into the man behind the music &mdash; insights from musicians and friends alongside archival interviews with Luther himself reveal his humor, frustrations, loneliness, and unwavering dedication to his craft.&nbsp;<em>Luther: Never Too Much</em> delivers a sensitive and jubilant celebration of Luther Vandross and his music that resonates with evocative power. Some will form newfound admiration for Luther, while others will be transported to moments when his timeless melodies were the soundtrack to their lives. Good luck not singing along and dancing in your seat.&mdash;SO</p>

Malu

Pedro Freire

<p>Malu &mdash; a mercurial, unemployed actress living with her conservative mother in a precarious house in a Rio de Janeiro slum &mdash; tries to deal with her strained relationship with her own adult daughter while surviving on memories of her glorious artistic past. Director Pedro Freire artfully depicts the tumultuous, at times toxic, relationship between three generations of outspoken women in his energetic feature debut, <em>Malu</em>. Freire&rsquo;s script carefully delineates how the ripples of generational trauma have permanently poisoned the family&rsquo;s ties, but a tattered, instinctual affection lingers beneath the resentments, as the women alternatively hurt and protect, offend, and care for one another.<br /> <br /> At the center is the larger-than-life Malu &mdash; a woman compelled to reassert her connection to her faded stardom at any cost &mdash; embodied by Yara de Novaes in a performance that masterfully balances volatility, magnetism, and vulnerability. Actors Carol Duarte and Juliana Carneiro da Cunha ably offer support and depth as Malu&rsquo;s frustrated daughter and feisty, embittered mother, respectively, as the fluctuating chemistry of their fraught familial dynamic further illuminates this fascinating, imperfect woman.&mdash;HZ</p>

The Rainbow Bridge

Dimitri Simakis

<p>Tina and her elderly dog MeeMoo discover a clinic promising human-to-pet communication. However, two sinister doctors uncover a bond between them so strong, it transcends time and space. They might be the key to something greater, but at what cost?</p>

The Looming

Masha Ko

<p>When a virtual home assistant speaker, Luna, picks up the strange noise Chester has heard in his house, he realizes that it may not be a symptom of dementia.</p>

Shé (Snake)

Renee Zhan

<p>Fei is the top violinist in her elite youth orchestra. When another Chinese violinist arrives to challenge her place, Fei&rsquo;s internal demons take external form. They whisper to her, urging her to be the best, no matter the cost.</p>

The Bleacher

Nicole Daddona Adam Wilder

<p>The disappearance of her sock at a local laundromat sends a fragile Rita over the edge. Hellbent on finding it, she searches deep and gets sucked into a washing machine, entering an otherworldly cycle from which she may never escape.</p>

Bold Eagle

Whammy Alcazaren

<p>Whammy Alcazaren&rsquo;s ribald&nbsp;<em>Bold Eagle</em>&nbsp;composites personal and national histories with the onanistic imaginariness of the internet. In a dark Navotas City apartment cluttered with encyclopedias, family albums, and wrestling posters, a man and his feline friend look at gay porn and cat videos, ignore the doorbell, and embark on a fantastical Hawaiian vacation via an acid tab in the butthole.</p>

Dream Creep

Carlos A.F. Lopez

<p>A couple awakens in the night to sounds emanating from an unlikely orifice.</p>

Mississippi Masala

Mira Nair

<p>Shot on location in Kampala, Uganda, and Mississippi, Mira Nair&rsquo;s second feature film tells the story of an upper-class Indian family forced to flee Idi Amin&rsquo;s tyranny in 1972. After nearly two decades of travel and expatriate existence, they find themselves in Greenwood, Mississippi, where they join relatives in running a motel. Their daughter, Mina, is basically &ldquo;Westernized&rdquo; and also capable of achieving more than the day-to-day jobs at the motel. When she meets Demetrius, an enterprising young carpet cleaner, their relationship creates an uproar amongst their respective family and friends. The closet racism that has remained hidden behind a veneer of unity rears its ugly head, resulting in dire consequences.</p>

Napoleon Dynamite

Jared Hess

<p>Napoleon is an outcast high school student in Idaho who spends his days drawing mythical beasts, duking it out with his fragile brother Kip, and avoiding his Uncle Rico, who is stuck in his &ldquo;glory&rdquo; days of high school football. When friends Deb and Pedro come into his life, the trio launch a campaign to elect Pedro for class president. Together, they must rely on their knowledge of cows, pi&ntilde;atas, and Napoleon&rsquo;s surprise special talent in order to defeat the stuck-up frontrunner, Summer Wheatley. Sporting some sweet moon boots and relying on his illegal government ninja moves, Napoleon Dynamite seeks to become a new kind of hero.</p> <p>In a modest film made with a ton of heart, Jon Heder gives a truly awe-inspiring performance as the titular character, while writer-director Jared Hess and his co-writer wife, Jerusha Hess, flesh out this world and its characters so brilliantly that it takes multiple viewings to truly savor the magnificence that is <em>Napoleon Dynamite</em>. Like all great comedies, the genius is in the details.</p>

Pariah

Dee Rees

<p>When forced to choose between losing her best friend or destroying her family, a Brooklyn teenager juggles conflicting identities and endures heartbreak in a desperate search for sexual expression.</p> <p><em>Pariah </em>first premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival as a short film. It later returned to the 2011 Festival as a feature film premiering in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, where it received an Excellence in Cinematography Award. Director Dee Rees workshopped <em>Pariah </em>in the Sundance Institute&rsquo;s Directors and Screenwriters Labs and received three separate Institute grants to support production of the film. After opening to critical acclaim, <em>Pariah</em>, a young Black lesbian&rsquo;s coming-of-age story, quickly became part of the LGBTQ+ film canon.</p>

Power

Yance Ford

<p>Driven to maintain social order, policing in the United States has exploded in scope and scale over hundreds of years. Now, American policing embodies one word: power.</p> <p>A cogent essay film inviting conscious engagement and reflection on a system of control that has gone largely unquestioned, <em>Power</em> is a sweeping chronicle of the history and evolution of policing in the U.S. With assured precision and deep insight, filmmaker Yance Ford (<em>Strong Island</em>, U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Storytelling, 2017 Sundance Film Festival) compellingly argues that the perceived danger of race to the status quo is central to the origins of policing and to its unchecked expansion. Asking pointed, uncomfortable questions about privilege and class; about who belongs to the social order and who is excluded; and about our collective responsibility in actively or tacitly permitting those in power to escape accountability, <em>Power</em> confronts us with the prescient words of Frederick Douglass: &ldquo;Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.&rdquo;&mdash;BT</p>

Sasquatch Sunset

Davide Zellner Nathan Zellner

<p>A year in the life of a unique family. It captures the daily life of the Sasquatch with a level of detail and rigor that is simply unforgettable.</p>

Sebastian

Mikko Mäkelä

<p>Max, a 25-year-old aspiring writer living in London, begins a double life as a sex worker in order to research his debut novel.</p> <p>In his assured sophomore feature, Finnish-British writer-director Mikko M&auml;kel&auml; explores the transgressive power of queer sexuality and the transformative impact that can result from embracing a new identity. Far from simply informing his secretly autobiographical fiction writing, Max&rsquo;s experiences as &ldquo;Sebastian&rdquo; awaken a deeper sense of self, unshackled from societal expectations. Ruaridh Mollica impresses in the lead role, embodying Max with an initially hesitant curiosity that blossoms into exhilaration and ease as he becomes subsumed within his nocturnal alias. Eschewing the sensationalism or moralizing that often accompanies stories of sex work, <em>Sebastian</em> instead offers a refreshing, sex-positive take in a film that ultimately celebrates the liberation that accompanies self-exploration.&mdash;BT</p>

Essex Girls

Yero Timi-Biu

<p>After an incident at her high school pulls her into the orbit of the only other Black girl in her year, &ldquo;Essex Girl&rdquo; Bisola is plunged into a journey to discover a whole new side of herself.</p>

Pathological

Alison Rich

<p>A woman who&rsquo;s a pathological liar wakes up one day to discover her lies have become true.</p>

Alok

Alexandra Hedison

<p>A compelling portrait of ALOK, acclaimed nonbinary author, poet, comedian, and public speaker. Executive-produced by Jodie Foster.</p>

Miisufy

Liisi Grünberg

<p>Digital pet cat Miisu gets tired of her owner and starts to revolt. Inspired by Tamagotchi &mdash; observing the world through the eyes of digital pets.</p>

The Heart

Malia Ann

<p>A lonely man grieves the death of his mother after an argument about groceries and an odd request in her will.</p>

Pisko the Crab Child is in Love

Makoto Nagahisa

<p>Pisko&rsquo;s father is a crab while her mother is human. Pisko falls in love with her teacher but is heartbroken when he leaves her because she is half-crab. Pisko finally finds love and companionship with her friend Kubokayo.</p>

Pasture Prime

Diffan Sina Norman

<p>A widow falls for a younger man she meets at the Cowboy Church.</p>

Thirstygirl

Alexandra Qin

<p>On a road trip with her younger sister, Charlie struggles to hide a secret sex addiction.</p>

Merman

Sterling Hampton IV

<p>A 58-year-old Black Queer man speaks the truth about his life as an emergency nurse, a leather enthusiast, husband, and civil rights advocate.</p>

公鹿 (The Stag)

An Chu

<p>At a deer farm in Changhua County, a middle-aged man is asked to cut off a stag&rsquo;s antlers in front of his two kids.</p>

The Masterpiece

Alex Lora Cercos

<p>Leo and Diana, a wealthy couple, meet Salif and Yousef, two scrap dealers, at a recycle center. Offering them more junk, Diana invites them to their mansion, but the immigrants actually might be the ones with something she wants.</p>

Viaje de Negocios

Gerardo Coello Escalante

<p>Daniel arrives at school wearing brand-new sneakers from America, gifted to him by his father. When he sees another boy wearing the same sneakers, he begins to suspect that their shoes are the key to a terrible secret.</p>

Guts (2023)

Margaux Susi

<p>Desperate for help, a woman in recovery asks an unlikely stranger on a dinner date.</p>

Dreams Like Paper Boats

Samuel Suffren

<p>Edouard and his daughter live with a cassette received from his wife in the United States, a long time ago. After years of absence, what can we expect from a distant love?</p>

Salone Love

Tajana Tokyo

<p>A scrapbook of opinions and advice about love in Sierra Leone.</p>

Flail

Ben Gauthier

<p>Allie, a distracted personal assistant, frantically prepares for her boss&#39;s birthday party through a blur of gridlocked parking garages and fast-casual salad chains on a desperate quest to achieve a single thing that she initially set out to do.</p>

Bye Bye, Bowser

Jasmin Baumgartner

<p>Punk singer Luna rebels against the indifference of her artsy friends by writing a song about Laugo, the construction worker from across the street. The collision of the worlds of affluent neglect and everyday work leads to a dramatic downfall.</p>

Border Hopper

Nico Casavecchia

<p>When a Latinx filmmaker is offered a dream job abroad, she discovers a supernatural way to navigate the U.S. immigration system and get the coveted travel permit she needs. But what seems like a magic solution soon shows unexpected consequences.</p>

Boi de Conchas (The Shell Covered Ox)

Daniel Barosa

<p>While mourning her missing sister, Rayane balances helping her fisherman father and practicing for the school&#39;s music festival &mdash; provided she doesn&#39;t become an ox first, a misfortune assailing several teenagers in the area.</p>

Didn't Think I'd See You Here

Dylan Guerra

<p>Rory thinks there&#39;s a ghost haunting his shower and decides to investigate its origin. But when he goes to a party and meets a romantic interest, his spectral mystery begins to unravel.</p>

Phoebe

Vaggelio Soumeli

<p>Having been recently discharged from rehab, 26-year-old Phoebe takes her young son on a road trip that will determine their future.</p>

Terra Mater – Mother Land

Kantarama Gahigiri

<p>There she stands, confidently, like a goddess of technological junk, surrounded by endless mountains of rubbish, plastic, stench and rare earths. An angry appeal to the world to take responsibility for the consequences of capitalism, colonialism and environmental destruction in Africa.</p> <p>For our land and bones. At the end of the world.<br /> Technology and waste,<br /> in our lands, our systems, our bones.<br /> Wandering our spaces, she cannot help but wonder, where is the space for healing?</p>

Say Hi After You Die

Kate Jean Hollowell

<p>A grieving woman believes her deceased best friend has come back to visit her&hellip; as a porta-potty.</p>

Voice Ever

Céline Perreard Pauline Archange

<p>Over the course of an evening, Romane, Sarah, Emmanuel, and Boris connect on Voice Ever, a new dating app where you choose your date based on their voice. Their weaknesses and vulnerabilities will surface in their desire to meet.</p>

Ekbeh

Mariah Eli Hernandez-Fitch

<p>While learning to make gumbo, the creator shares personal stories about their grandparents as a way to honor and preserve their Indigenous history and life.</p>

Shalal

Amir Ali Sisipour

<p>Mehran and his mother, Ziba, don&rsquo;t have shadows, so they use a black fur to catch the shadows of people and drink them. One day, Mehran decides to catch someone&rsquo;s shadow alone.</p>

The Looming Cloud

Matthew Tyler

<p>Three siblings return home after their mother&rsquo;s death and face their most daunting task: figuring out how to post about it on social media.</p>

Bay of Herons

Jared James Lank

<p>Calling on the strength of his ancestors, a young Mi&rsquo;kmaq man reflects on the pain of bearing witness to the destruction of his homelands.</p>

Grace

Natalie Jasmine Harris

<p>Sixteen-year-old Grace prepares for her baptism in the rural 1950s South. When she learns she must repent before the ritual, she begins to question the budding romantic feelings she has toward her best friend, Louise.</p>

Basri & Salma in a Never-Ending Comedy

Khozy Rizal

<p>A married couple who own an Odong-Odong spend their days entertaining other people&rsquo;s children. Between relatives, self-doubt, and an explosive confrontation, they uncover why they have not been blessed with a child.</p>

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Johan Grimonprez

<p>In 1960, United Nations: the Global South ignites a political earthquake, musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach crash the Security Council, Nikita Khrushchev bangs his shoe denouncing America&rsquo;s color bar, while the U.S. dispatches jazz ambassador Louis Armstrong to the Congo to deflect attention from its first African post-colonial coup.</p> <p>Director Johan Grimonprez (<em>Double Take</em>, 2009) returns to Sundance with this magnificent essay film that vibrantly embodies the historic and continually evolving colonial machinations that underpin what author and Congolese writer In Koli Jean Bofane refers to as an ever-evolving &ldquo;algorithm of <em>Congo Inc</em>.&rdquo;</p>

Sue Bird: In The Clutch

Sarah Dowland

<p>In her 21-year professional career, WNBA basketball legend Sue Bird has won five Olympic gold medals and become the most successful point guard to ever play the game. Alongside her fianc&eacute;e, U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, Sue confronts her next challenge: retiring from the only life she&rsquo;s ever known.</p> <p>A trailblazer in every sense of the word, Sue Bird achieved a powerful impact on the game of basketball. Navigating through adversity in the form of sexism, anti-LGBTQ+ prejudice, and racism toward many of her peers, she managed to forge a path for young women that previously didn&rsquo;t exist. The lack of resources for women&rsquo;s sports in the U.S. led Bird to spend her offseasons playing in Russia, where, ironically, she received the recognition and equity that her male counterparts enjoyed back at home. Emmy and Peabody Award&ndash;winning documentarian Sarah Dowland gets to the heart of what makes Bird one of the greatest and most influential athletes the world has ever seen, both on and off the court.&mdash;AM</p>

Sujo

Astrid Rondero Fernanda Valadez

<p>When a cartel gunman is killed, he leaves behind Sujo, his beloved 4-year-old son. The shadow of violence surrounds Sujo during each stage of his life in the isolated Mexican countryside. As he grows into a man, Sujo finds that fulfilling his father&rsquo;s destiny may be inescapable.</p> <p>A breathtaking film and the second collaboration of filmmakers Astrid Rondero and Fernanda Valadez (<em>Identifying Features</em>), <em>Sujo</em> recenters stories of cartel violence by exploring its aftermath, the collateral damage, and its orphans. With lyrical intensity and a penetrating humanity, it offers a moving, contemporary coming-of-age portrait of Sujo, a young man named after a strong-willed horse, and the way his identity, consciousness, and moral character are shaped through various episodes &mdash; by the women who protect him, the boys lured toward their fathers&rsquo; fates, the mentorship of a teacher &mdash; as if they are seasons in his growth. A rich tapestry of motifs reflects on how cycles are formed and broken. As a gunman&rsquo;s son, is Sujo&rsquo;s fate governed by circumstance or by something innate, akin to his spirited namesake?&mdash;JN</p>

Tendaberry

Haley Elizabeth Anderson

<p>When her boyfriend goes back to Ukraine to be with his ailing father, 23-year-old Dakota anxiously navigates her precarious new reality, surviving on her own in New York City.</p> <p>Writer-director Haley Elizabeth Anderson&rsquo;s moving debut feature is an intimately scaled character study and an openhearted love letter to Brooklyn. <em>Tendaberry</em>&rsquo;s elliptical narrative unfurls in an intricate patchwork of lyrical handheld cinematography, found footage fragments, spectral home movies, and documentary digressions. Anderson devotes the film&rsquo;s first movement to a tender and clear-eyed portrait of young love before shifting her attention to Dakota&rsquo;s (Kota Johan) life after loss and her struggles to stay afloat and forge community with fellow migrants in a rapidly gentrifying landscape. <em>Tendaberry</em> sensitively charts Dakota&rsquo;s inner journey while also looking outward to craft an elegiac portrait of the city she calls home. In a breakout performance, Johan brings Dakota&rsquo;s delicate but defiant voice to the foreground, both through poetic narration and lovely musical performances. &mdash;MC</p>

The Moogai

Jon Bell

<p>A young Aboriginal couple bring home their second baby. What should be a joyous time takes a sinister turn as the mother starts seeing a malevolent spirit she is convinced is trying to take her baby.</p> <p>Adapted from his award-winning short and made with the producers of <em>The Babadook </em>and<em> Talk to Me,</em> Jon Bell&rsquo;s debut feature draws from Indigenous lore for a thematically rich supernatural tale that quickly establishes the lurking menace of a child-stealing spirit. Its simmering suspense empathetically builds around the fragile psychology of a new mother, blurring the lines between exhaustion, paranoia, and postpartum depression. In exacerbating her isolation and hopelessness, Bell shrewdly accentuates traditional tools of oppression to reveal a darker allusion to Australia&rsquo;s stolen generations &mdash; the tens of thousands of First Nations children forcibly removed from their families through the government&rsquo;s assimilation policies &mdash; which the filmmaker calls a &ldquo;massive wound in the psyche of Australia.&rdquo; <em>The Moogai</em> bears its terrifying resonance out of sublimated trauma.&mdash;JN</p>

The American Society of Magical Negroes

Kobi Libii

<p>A young man, Aren, is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who dedicate their lives to a cause of utmost importance: making white people&rsquo;s lives easier. If <em>The Birth of a Nation</em> by D.W. Griffith is proclaimed &ldquo;the greatest picture ever made,&rdquo; then the &ldquo;Magical Negro&rdquo; &mdash; a Black supporting character who exists solely to serve a white protagonist&rsquo;s storyline &mdash; has been a stock character trope since the inception of American cinema.</p> <p>Debut director Kobi Libii engages this trope in this clever satire and delightful fairytale-like romantic comedy about the coming of age of a young Black man who is propositioned to become a real-life Magical Negro upon narrowly escaping death after a string of racial microaggressions get out of hand.&nbsp;<em>The</em> <em>American Society of Magical Negroes</em> is a must-see satire about what it means for Black people to protect and care for ourselves and each other. Libii&rsquo;s auspicious debut is destined to find its place in the cinematic canon of essential films about American culture.&mdash;SF</p>

The Babadook

Jennifer Kent

<p>&ldquo;Do you want to die?!&rdquo; 7-year-old Samuel asks his stressed-out single mother, Amelia. She wonders if his question is a threat or a warning. After dealing with Samuel&rsquo;s frantic tantrums his entire life, Amelia suspects that her son has begun directing his violent misbehavior toward her. However, after a dark and foreboding children&rsquo;s book called <em>Mister Babadook</em> mysteriously appears on Samuel&rsquo;s bookshelf, Amelia must decide if her son is truly deranged, or if there really is a bogeyman lurking in their darkened halls at night.</p> <p>First-time feature director Jennifer Kent vividly captured the vicious turbulence of Samuel&rsquo;s shrill outbursts, generating a real sense of horror from his aggressive unruliness, all the while subtly hinting at the weary Amelia&rsquo;s own deeply troubled nature. <em>The Babadook</em> builds up tension and dread in this damaged family&rsquo;s home before deftly introducing the terrifying possibility that something even more ominous may be stalking the dysfunctional pair.</p>

The Battle for Laikipia

Daphne Matziaraki Peter Murimi

<p>Unresolved historical injustices and climate change raise the stakes in a generations-old conflict between Indigenous pastoralists and white landowners in Laikipia, Kenya, a wildlife conservation haven.</p> <p>Co-directors Daphne Matziaraki (<em>4.1 Miles</em>, <em>The Me You Can&rsquo;t See</em>) and Pete Murimi (<em>I Am Samuel</em>) craft <em>The Battle for</em> <em>Laikipia</em> with empathy, compassion, and brutal truth. Weaving together themes of environmentalism, colonialism, and conservationism, the film delicately showcases the impact of these crucial topics on the Indigenous farming community of Kenya&rsquo;s Laikipia region. Handled with care, Matziaraki and Murimi&rsquo;s <em>The Battle for</em> <em>Laikipia</em> takes us through a journey that elicits frustration, awe, curiosity, and wonder.&mdash;BB</p>

The Greatest Night in Pop

Bao Nguyen

<p>In 1985, 46 music icons, including Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Ross, and Stevie Wonder, came together for the most star-studded recording session in history. This is the untold story of the legendary global pop song &ldquo;We Are the World&rdquo; &mdash; which very nearly didn&rsquo;t happen.</p> <p>You know the song, but do you know the whole story? When industry leaders and activists like Harry Belafonte first envisioned bringing the biggest names in music together for African famine relief, the dream for music to change the world was never stronger. In a time before email, cellphones, and the internet, &ldquo;We Are the World&rdquo; gathered an incredible assortment of artists that even nearly 40 years later seems unreal. With infectious energy and rare footage, director Bao Nguyen and co-songwriter Lionel Richie take you to those days and that special night. <em>The Greatest Night in Pop</em> is a fun document of the 1980s and one of the decade&rsquo;s most strange, openhearted, and iconic collaborations that changed pop music history forever.&mdash;SS</p>

كذب أبيض (The Mother of All Lies)

Asmae El Moudir

<p>Filmmaker Asmae El Moudir takes an unorthodox approach for her reconstruction of a painful period in the history of her homeland Morocco, and of her own family. Her father has built a miniature replica of the house and neighborhood where she grew up. El Moudir situates family members and neighbors in this set, where they recount what happened during and after the Casablanca bread riots of 1981, which the government brutally crushed.</p> <p>We discover that El Moudir&rsquo;s fragile-looking but still-savvy grandma played an important and none too savory role during this oppressive period when liquidations, arrests, and torture were commonplace. The filmmaker&rsquo;s questions, combined with the intimate but artificial setting of the scale model neighborhood, impel the interviewees to relive these events. This leads to painful recollections, new insights, and sometimes catharsis.</p> <p>A forgotten history comes to life in the minutely detailed re-creation of the old houses and streets, complete with furniture, lighting and local characters.</p>

The Outrun

Nora Fingscheidt

<p>After living life on the edge in London, Rona attempts to come to terms with her troubled past. She returns to the wild beauty of Scotland&#39;s Orkney Islands - where she grew up - hoping to heal. Adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot.</p>

The Times of Harvey Milk

Rob Epstein

<p>Set in San Francisco in the 1970s, <em>The Times of Harvey Milk</em> tells of the extraordinary rise to power of a long-haired, gay camera store owner from the Castro District who became one of the city&rsquo;s most colorful and influential elected officials, as well as one of the decade&rsquo;s most prominent leaders of the LGBTQ+ rights movement &mdash; that is, until he was shot and killed at City Hall by former police officer and fellow supervisor Dan White. Harvey Milk&rsquo;s journey to that fateful day is recounted brilliantly through the course of the film.</p> <p>A riveting, volatile, dynamic, and impassioned documentary, <em>The Times of Harvey Milk</em>&rsquo;s stranger-than-fiction story is immensely moving, combining real emotional urgency with a compelling grasp of filmmaking craft. A moving affirmation and revelation of how one man can make a difference, it is a quintessential work about American values in conflict, which highlights a courageous and charismatic individual while exposing an incredible miscarriage of justice. As political renegades go, Milk wasn&rsquo;t afforded the time to become a household name.</p>

Thelma

Josh Margolin

<p>When 93-year-old Thelma Post gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her.</p> <p>Inspired by a real-life experience of writer-director Josh Margolin&rsquo;s own centenarian grandmother, <em>Thelma</em> puts a clever spin on movies like <em>Mission: Impossible</em>, shining the spotlight on an elderly grandmother as an unlikely action hero. With affectionate humor, Margolin employs the familiar tropes of the action genre in hilarious, age-appropriate ways to tackle themes of aging, mortality, and human frailty. In the first leading film role of her over 70-year career, Oscar-nominated veteran character actor June Squibb portrays the strong-willed Thelma with grit and determination, demonstrating that she is more than capable of taking care of business &mdash; despite what her daughter Gail (Parker Posey), son-in-law Alan (Clark Gregg), or loving grandson Danny (Fred Hechinger) might believe.&mdash;BT</p>

Ba Mùa (Three Seasons)

Tony Bui

<p>Four ordinary people living as strangers in their own land; a young girl hired to aid a reclusive spiritual master; a cyclo driver who becomes obsessed with a proud and ambitious prostitute; a very young boy hustling lighters, gum, and cheap watches in the streets; and an American Vietnam vet searching for the daughter he never knew. Disparate lives struggling to find both place and meaning in a nation that won the war but may be losing a piece of its soul.</p> <p>With sweeping directorial vision and a powerfully poetic narrative, Tony Bui&rsquo;s enormously impressive feature debut weaves together multiple stories into a striking pictorial tapestry of the &ldquo;new&rdquo; Vietnam, a contrast of the traditional to the modern, set within a nation in the chaotic throes of transition. As the first American film to be shot in Vietnam since the war, with a remarkable Vietnamese cast and emotionally provocative acting by the stalwart Harvey Keitel, <em>Three Seasons</em> achieved a pinnacle of excellence in filmmaking that was just as rare in its time as it is today.</p>

Veni Vidi Vici

Daniel Hoesl Julia Niemann

<p>The Maynards and their children lead an almost perfect billionaire family life. Amon is a passionate hunter, but doesn&rsquo;t shoot animals, as the family&rsquo;s wealth allows them to live totally free from consequences.</p> <p>In this social satire, directors Daniel Hoesl and Julia Niemann push the rich&rsquo;s untouchability to an extreme, revealing the consequences of an unchecked system and the dangers of a world where people are not accountable for their actions. The Maynards cannot be stopped, not by another man&rsquo;s word, or journalistic evidence, or even the law. Now there&rsquo;s only freedom: without limits and impossibilities, no matter the violence. Those with wealth are free to do as they please, and there&rsquo;s nothing anyone can do about it. The Machiavellian family study allows the rich to be as fearsome and violent as they pretend to be kind and giving.&mdash;AE</p>

War Game

Jesse Moss Tony Gerber

<p>A bipartisan group of U.S. defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations participate in an unscripted role-play exercise in which they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the U.S. military, in the wake of a contested presidential election.</p> <p>Award-winning filmmakers Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber seize a unique opportunity to bring audiences tableside to a simulation that dramatically escalates the threat posed by January 6, 2021. With the grip of a thriller, <em>War Game</em> posits active-duty military breaking ranks to join an insurrection that soon spreads to other state capitals, yielding a chilling moment when it&rsquo;s unclear whether the president fully commands the armed forces. The simulation&rsquo;s outcome hinges on several inflection points, from the government&rsquo;s capacity to counter the disinformation that&rsquo;s effectively spread by the insurgent side to the potential invocation of the Insurrection Act (i.e., the last resort). While the exercise served to stress test our institutions, the film is a critical wake-up call, underscoring the urgent need for bipartisanship in safeguarding American democracy.&mdash;JN</p>

Will & Harper

Josh Greenbaum

<p>When Will Ferrell finds out his close friend of 30 years is coming out as a trans woman, the two decide to embark on a cross-country road trip to process this new stage of their relationship in an intimate portrait of friendship, transition, and America. Will Ferrell and Harper Steele are humorously and lovingly vulnerable in director Josh Greenbaum&rsquo;s latest documentary, <em>Will &amp; Harper</em>. Through the frame of a decadeslong friendship (and the windshield of Harper&rsquo;s Jeep), the pair reconnect in emotional and unexpected ways as they journey across middle America.</p> <p>Layers of friendship are laid bare as Harper reenters once-safe spaces as her authentic self, reintroducing the eccentric yet earnest Will to the woman he&rsquo;s always known. Their levity is reinforced and challenged: Harper embraces her newfound identity amid adversity, as Will is invited to stand by her, negotiating his celebrity in the process. What emerges is an exploration of both silliness and strife, a sincere facet of the trans experience audiences rarely witness, and an affirmation of the unbreakable bonds of friendship.&mdash;CA</p>

Winner

Susanna Fogel

<p>Reality Winner is a brilliant young misfit from a Texas border town who finds her morals challenged while serving as an NSA contractor. A sarcastic, gun-lovin, vegan, yogi, and CrossFit fanatic, Reality is an unconventional whistleblower who ends up being prosecuted for exposing Russia&rsquo;s hacking of the 2016 election.</p> <p>At once heartwarming and hard-hitting, <em>Winner</em> captures a depth of character, nuance of ideology, and historical detail that brings Reality Winner&rsquo;s story to the screen with vibrancy and emotional thrust. Rarely can a true story be adapted so cinematically and with such fidelity to its subject matter. Weaving together the story of one unique family and a political landscape that has abandoned truth, <em>Winner</em> is a refreshing ode to people who have conviction and are willing to sacrifice to prove it.</p>

Your Monster

Caroline Lindy

<p>After her life falls apart, soft-spoken actress Laura Franco finds her voice again when she meets a terrifying, yet weirdly charming, monster living in her closet.</p> <p>Filmmaker Caroline Lindy invites us into the wondrous and dazzling world of her debut feature, a genre-defying monster mash that&rsquo;s equal parts twisted and romantic with a dash of musical whimsy. Melissa Barrera shines as Laura, capturing her ascent from pie-eating post-surgery doldrums to empowered theater stardom in which the sinister sides of herself are finally allowed to bubble freely to the surface. In Tommy Dewey, she finds a perfect match for her fantastical, unexpected monster &mdash; charming, witty, and dangerously likable. A welcome re-steering of the rom-com into darker realms, <em>Your Monster</em> encourages us all to liberate our inner demons.&mdash;AS</p>

Àma Gloria

Marie Amachoukeli

<p>Six-year-old Cl&eacute;o loves her nanny, Gloria, more than anything. When Gloria must return to Cape Verde to care for her own children, the two must make the most of their last summer together.</p> <p>In her solo-feature directorial debut, based on her co-authored screenplay, Marie Amachoukeli displays the careful observation of a masterful auteur in how she captures both the complex situation of Gloria, called back to a family that has grown without her but needs her more than ever, and Cl&eacute;o, too young and loving to say goodbye to another mother. The striking power of this beautiful film is in the loving relationship between Gloria and Cl&eacute;o, made more real by the incredible performance of 6-year-old Louise Mauroy-Panzani as Cl&eacute;o, who gives a nuanced performance unlike any other this year.&mdash;SS</p>

Lea Tupu’anga / Mother Tongue

Vea Mafile'o

<p>A young speech therapist disconnected from her Tongan heritage lies about her Tongan language skills to get a job. Out of her depth, she must find a way to communicate or risk her patient&rsquo;s life.</p>

God Save Texas: The Price Of Oil

Alex Stapleton

<p>Three directors offer their unique and personal perspectives on their home state of Texas, creating vivid portraits of a state that mirrors the United States&rsquo; past, present, and future. Inspired by the book <em>God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State</em> by Lawrence Wright.</p> <p>As the world&rsquo;s energy capital, Houston is a city that manufactures both its prominence and demise. Alex Stapleton explores the industry&rsquo;s impact on her family, who arrived as enslaved people in the 1830&rsquo;s, built thriving communities, and now must cope with the human costs of Texas&rsquo; biggest money-maker.</p>

God Save Texas: La Frontera

Iliana Sosa

<p>Three directors offer their unique and personal perspectives on their home state of Texas, creating vivid portraits of a state that mirrors the United States&rsquo; past, present, and future. Inspired by the book <em>God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State</em> by Lawrence Wright.</p> <p>Iliana Sosa examines how &ldquo;nepantla,&rdquo; an embrace of in-betweenness, characterizes relations to both her Mexican heritage and her hometown of El Paso, Texas. An exploration revealing how the city&rsquo;s humanity and unique hybridity catalyzed unity, nurturing healing in the aftermath of a devastating mass shooting in 2019.</p>

God Save Texas: Hometown Prison

Richard Linklater

<p>Three directors offer their unique and personal perspectives on their home state of Texas, creating vivid portraits of a state that mirrors the United States&rsquo; past, present, and future. Inspired by the book <em>God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State</em> by Lawrence Wright.</p> <p>Huntsville, Texas sits at the heart of an expansive prison industrial complex. Yet, for many residents, these prisons exist in another realm, disconnected from their lives. Richard Linklater revisits his hometown to explore its diverse inhabitants, painting a vibrant portrait that encapsulates the criminal justice system of Texas.</p>

Me/We

Nzingha Stewart

<p>Amaria &ldquo;Yaya&quot; Jones, an argumentative teenager with a passion for dance, must plead her case to her overprotective brother in hopes of winning his blessing to walk to school with her first crush. Yaya&rsquo;s story is a celebration of life.</p>

La Mesías

Javier Calvo Javier Ambrossi

<p>Siblings Enric and Irene have a dark childhood, unbearable memories, and a toxic relationship with their mother. They live outside their family sect and are now far from the reach of their mother, yet not completely free.</p>

The Synanon Fix

Rory Kennedy

<p>Exploring the rise and fall of the Synanon organization &mdash; through the eyes of the members who lived it &mdash; from its early days as a groundbreaking drug rehabilitation program to its later descent into what many consider a cult.</p> <p>Rory Kennedy, whose intuitive yet methodical nonfiction storytelling style demonstrated in Sundance Film Festival projects includes <em>Ghosts of Abu Ghraib</em> (2007), <em>Last Days in Vietnam</em> (2014), and <em>Downfall: The Case Against Boeing </em>(2022), returns with her signature commitment to first-person perspectives in <em>The Synanon Fix</em>. Former members recollect the hope and community the breakthrough treatment center and its dynamic founder initially provided, before the decadeslong transition to an organization centered on control and violence. Compellingly interspersed with newly found footage, this film presents authentic insights that transcend the presentation of an experiment gone horrifically awry, crafted as a cultural touchstone of charismatic leaders and vulnerable followers.&mdash;DC</p>

Bust

Angalis Field

<p>A trans cop with the New York City Police Department goes undercover to make a drug bust.</p>