Sundance’s decision to screen Michael Ritchie’s 1969 masterpiece as a tribute to Robert Redford, the festival’s founder, who passed away in September 2025, transformed a repertory showing into ceremony. Watching Downhill Racer in Park…
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Edward Lovelace and James Hall follow Courtney Love in London since 2019. The film presents something rarely found in celebrity documentation: genuine uncertainty. Neither hagiography nor excavation, this is a document of a woman…
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Macon Blair's The Shitheads announces itself with title and intent: this is cinema willing to treat failure and the criminal underclasses with the same attention cinema usually reserves for the ambitious. Dave Franco and O'Shea Jackson Jr.…
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Cathy Yan tries to build a satire of the art world around a Miami gallery owner. Natalie Portman plays Diane, a woman whose taste has been compromised by necessity. The setup has potential. Yan has shown she can handle ensemble comedy. But…
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THUNDERLIPS is Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor. Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant is their film about two isolated people who have sex and something extraterrestrial happens. It sounds silly. It is. But underneath the body horror comedy is…
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Adam Meeks filmed inside Ohio's recovery courts, mixing actors with real people who actually appeared in those rooms. The result is a film about addiction that doesn't traffic in redemption. Recovery here is provisional, fragile, one day,…
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Louis Paxton's The Incomer is a film about the violence of bureaucracy and what happens to human development when isolation is absolute. Set on a remote Scottish island, it begins with a premise that could be farcical: Daniel and Isla…
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Josephine Decker's Chasing Summer is a film at war with itself. Decker wants to make something bleak and formally risky. Iliza Shlesinger's script wants to make people laugh. The two impulses never quite align, and the result is strange…
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Amir Bar-Lev documents the first winter ascent of K2 (2020-2021) and creates a film that's less about reaching the summit than about what happens to mountaineering when every moment becomes content. Between the climbing sequences, there's…
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Alex Gibney's Knife documents the 2022 stabbing that nearly killed Salman Rushdie. It's based on Rushdie's own account. But what matters is how Gibney built it: as elegy, as historical record, as defiance.
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Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley's documentary follows Maria Bamford at a strange moment: successful enough to matter, fragile enough to break. Paralyzed by Hope runs 115 minutes and never feels long. It's an honest film about what happens…
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Daniel Roher’s The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist arrives as a brisk, visually maximalist primer on artificial intelligence for an audience presumed to know very little about the subject. A father-to-be attempts to understand…
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Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans construct an indictment of institutional abandonment. Their documentary reexamines the October 1985 assassination of Palestinian-American activist Alex Odeh, a murder that echoes in the silence that…
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Three television pilots. Three different approaches to comedy. Sundance's Episodic Fiction Pilot Showcase captured distinct sensibilities. Each suggests how contemporary comedy works when it refuses easy laughs.
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Vera Miao's debut ties a ghost story to the Rock Springs massacre of 1885, when Chinese miners were murdered in Wyoming. This history lives in the present through three generations of women. The film doesn't treat the massacre as…
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Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer's Wicker begins with a strange premise. A lonely fisherwoman commissions a husband made from wicker. Not metaphorically. Actually wicker. And the film takes this seriously.
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Two best friends at an English boarding school devise a plan to seduce their geography teacher. Molly Manners' Extra Geography announces this premise with genuine promise. What follows is half a good film watching itself run out of fuel.
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Rachael Morrison's Joybubbles is less biography than séance, an attempt to conjure the consciousness of Joe Engressia (who renamed himself Joybubbles) through archival fragments and audio recordings. The 79-minute runtime doesn't permit…
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Sharon Liese's documentary Seized is built entirely around the August 2023 police raid on the Marion County Record in Kansas. The raid itself carries the surreal tenor of authoritarian spectacle. Officers converged on the newspaper,…
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Ian Tuason's debut feature Undertone is a formally innovative horror film that makes audio itself the primary site of dread. Distributed by A24, the film tracks podcast hosts investigating inexplicable audio recordings while simultaneously…
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Olivia Wilde's The Invite is a dinner party film that remembers what Edward Albee understood: that marriage is where civility dies in real time. Written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, the film channels that specific claustrophobia,…
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Georgia Bernstein's debut unfolds in a memory care facility. Eleni, a caregiver, is drawn to Douglas, a resident sliding into dementia. What develops could have been exploitative. Instead it becomes something harder to categorize, a…
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Gregg Araki hasn’t made a feature in twelve years. I Want Your Sex announces itself as deliberately shocking, then spends ninety minutes deciding whether to actually go through with it. The film opens well: Olivia Wilde plays Erika Tracy,…
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Sara Dosa's "Time and Water" is a 90-minute meditation on climate catastrophe that locates its emotional center not in urgency but in stillness. Her previous film "Fire of Love" captured the passionate contradictions of volcanologists.…
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Selina Miles documents a weaponized legal system. Defamation law, designed to protect reputation, has become a tool for powerful people to silence critics. The film follows human rights lawyer Jennifer Robinson defending victims whose only…
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Valerie Veatch made Ghost in the Machine self-edited and self-funded. It's a polemic without apology. Two hours examining artificial intelligence's ideological roots, tracing the line from eugenics to contemporary tech evangelicalism. The…
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Josef Kubota Wladyka's Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! is a film that kills any easy separation between grief and life. A competitive ballroom dancer loses her husband mid-performance and finds herself navigating the unnavigable: how to keep…
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Liz Garbus and Elizabeth Wolff follow Billie Jean King across three distinct territories: her tennis career, her fight for equal pay in professional sport, and her emergence as a queer icon. The film doesn't present these as a timeline.…
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Andrew Stanton jumps from prehistoric caves to contemporary life to a distant spaceship bound for Kepler. The goal: find the universal human story threading through all three. Kate McKinnon, Rashida Jones, and Daveed Diggs anchor each…
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Judit Polgár was the greatest chess player of her generation. Yet her historical reckoning has always been shadowed by gender instead of achievement. Rory Kennedy's documentary captures the Hungarian grandmaster caught between Cold War…
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Olive Nwosu's feature debut Lady arrives as a neo-noir meditation on urban survival that finds grace within Lagos's teeming streets. The film follows Ujah, a taxi driver navigating the precarious economy of sex work from the driver's seat,…
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Padraic McKinley's feature debut is one of those rare films that justifies its ambitiousness. A depression-era heist with prisoners stealing gold. The film conducts a dialogue with William Friedkin's Sorcerer, matching it on desperation,…
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David Wain and Ken Marino wrote Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass. It’s absurd. A hairdresser named Gail discovers her fiancé used his "celebrity sex pass", that notional couple agreement allowing one guilt-free celebrity encounter,…
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Harry is a pickpocket in Manhattan where nobody carries wallets anymore. His skills, the brush pass, the double dip, sleight of hand executed so precisely it becomes invisible, now qualify him for obscurity. John Turturro carries the…
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Joanna Natasegara directed The White Helmets. She won an Oscar. Now she's made The Disciple, a film about a Dutch-Moroccan named Cilvaringz who has spent his life devoted to Wu-Tang Clan. Not as a fan. As an operational reality.
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Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris's Little Miss Sunshine won Sundance in 2006 and launched a thousand indie imitators. The festival honored it with a legacy screening in 2026 that proved something simple: great storytelling doesn't age, it…
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Tony Jones gained access to the University of Washington’s animal research laboratory, a space rarely open to cameras. The film is neither advocacy polemic nor corporate defense. It’s an examination of the moral gap between scientific…
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Walter Thompson-Hernández's film follows Lil Ant, twelve, as his father returns from prison in Watts. The boy has learned to measure love in small amounts, in ways that won't disappoint him. His father arrives as both present and absent,…
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Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth made this film as Marianne Faithfull was dying. She died in January 2025, during production. This fact transforms what could have been biography into something else entirely, a memorial.
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Jeffrey Walker adapts David Walliams' Fing for film. The premise is simple: spoiled 12-year-old Myrtle Meek's parents find a mysterious creature to teach her a lesson. It could be preachy. Instead Walker gets something right.
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Gabriela Osio Vanden and Jack Weisman position Churchill, Manitoba as ground zero: polar bears forced inland by melting ice encounter a town predicated on their absence. It's not a polemic. It's not a nature film. It's something more…
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Michał Marczak's Closure opens with a simple devastation: Father Daniel searches the Vistula River for his teenage son, who vanished from a bridge. The film doesn't resolve anything. It documents a man learning to live inside an open wound.
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Beth de Araújo's Josephine won both Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award at Sundance 2026. An eight-year-old girl witnesses sexual assault in Golden Gate Park. She responds with escalating violence. The film never explains where this…
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Casper Kelly’s debut asks: what if children’s television, all that cheerful safety, harbored violence? An orange unicorn named Buddy kills. Children become trapped in a vintage TV program. The premise is genuinely unsettling. The film…
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Didn’t DieMeera Menon's 'Didn't Die' takes the zombie apocalypse genre and filters it through the lens of millennial irony, creating a post-apocalyptic dramedy that's more interested in family dynamics than flesh-eating terror. Set two…
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Thelma directed by Ken Margolin, without a doubt has to be among the most humorous films from this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Thelma blends audience angers and affections in equal measure with an unexpected story of revenge, when, a…
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Rashad Frett's extraordinary directorial debut transforms the familiar story of post-incarceration reintegration into something profound and deeply moving. Based on his acclaimed 2023 short film, Ricky follows 30-year-old Ricardo Smith…
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In an era of performative politics and manufactured personas, Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz's Prime Minister offers something revolutionary: a leader being genuinely human on camera. This Audience Award-winning documentary follows…
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Thirty years after her murder, Selena Quintanilla remains a cultural force whose influence extends far beyond Tejano music. Isabel Castro's Selena y Los Dinos, winner of the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Archival Storytelling,…
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Dylan Southern's adaptation of Max Porter's prize-winning novella delivers an unflinching portrait of a London graphic novelist (Benedict Cumberbatch) whose world collapses when his wife dies suddenly on their kitchen floor. What emerges…
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David Osit's Predators examines the cultural phenomenon of NBC's To Catch a Predator with the precision of a master surgeon and the moral complexity of a philosopher. This isn't simply another true crime documentary, it's a searching…
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James Sweeney's Twinless shouldn't work. It's a comedy about grief, a bromance about deception, a thriller about playing The Sims. It juggles tones like chainsaws, constantly threatening to slice its own fingers off. But somehow,…
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In ‘Love Lies Bleeding,’ which is Rose Glass’s first feature, there are so many distorting factors such as darkness, polish and intensity that one could hardly escape the feelings of discomfort, authority and love as flesh and bone. The…
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Elegance Bratton just delivered the music documentary equivalent of a defibrillator shock to the chest. Move Ya Body: The Birth of House doesn't just tell the story of house music's origins – it reclaims it from the David Guettas of the…
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Cole Webley's directorial debut Omaha is the kind of quiet devastator that Sundance does best – a film so stripped-down and intimate that its emotional impact feels like a physical blow. Working from Robert Machoian's screenplay, Webley…
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Shoshannah Stern's directorial debut "Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore" creates an intimate portrait of the groundbreaking actress through extensive signed interviews that reveal both the public figure and private person. This documentary…
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Director Amel Guellaty has crafted something genuinely special with her feature debut - a visually stunning road trip film that defies every orientalist expectation about Arab cinema while delivering an authentic, heartwarming story about…
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Director Amel Guellaty has crafted something genuinely special with her feature debut - a visually stunning road trip film that defies every orientalist expectation about Arab cinema while delivering an authentic, heartwarming story about…
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Hitman , the film directed by Richard Linklater and co-written by Glen Powell, is by far the most quirky and fun film that was offered by Sundance this year. It’s combining many genres of the film, such as romance, comedy, and crime,…
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Bao Nguyen's explosive documentary investigates one of photojournalism's most controversial questions: did the wrong photographer receive credit for the iconic "Napalm Girl" photograph? What unfolds is a meticulously researched challenge…
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Addison Heimann's "Touch Me" is a vibrant, maximalist fever dream that blends psychosexual horror with queer comedy in ways that shouldn't work but somehow do. This surreal journey follows Joey (Olivia Taylor Dudley), dealing with OCD and…
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Super/man: The Christopher Reeve Story is a deeply moving and exquisitely made documentary film that depicts a life worthy of a person like Icarus who flew high as an eagle but instead it ended after a terrible accident. This documentary…
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Eighteen years in the making – that's how long it took Tom Basden and Tim Key to expand their 2007 short into The Ballad of Wallis Island, and every one of those years shows in the richness of this deceptively simple tale. What could have…
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Amalia Ulman's Magic Farm arrives at Sundance four years after her debut "El Planeta," and this sophomore effort proves she's an artist with a singular vision – even if that vision is sometimes impenetrable. This is a film that feels like…
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Paul Reubens might have died in 2023, but holy hell, did he leave us with one final gift that's as confrontational, messy, and brilliant as the man himself. Pee-wee as Himself isn't just a documentary – it's a 200-minute wrestling match…
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Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman have created the most important documentary of Sundance 2025, and possibly the most infuriating. The Alabama Solution isn't just an exposé of America's deadliest prison system – it's a masterclass in…
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Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine's Middletown delivers their most triumphant celebration of youthful idealism yet, transforming a 1990s high school investigation into toxic waste dumping into a masterclass in both documentary filmmaking and…
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Director Rachel Fleit has crafted a gut-punch of a documentary that lures you in with charm before hitting you with the brutal reality of economic inequality in rural America. Following college student Autumn Johnson as she creates an…
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Bill Condon just delivered the movie musical we didn't know we desperately needed in 2025. Kiss of the Spider Woman is a glittering, gutsy triumph that takes the Broadway show and transforms it into something even more radical – a love…
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Cherien Dabis's "All That's Left of You" is a devastating and essential chronicle of Palestinian experience across nearly 75 years, following three generations of a family from the 1948 displacement through present-day struggles. This…
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Amy Berg's long-awaited documentary about Jeff Buckley achieves something remarkable: it makes you fall in love with an artist all over again while breaking your heart for what we lost. Fifteen years in the making, Berg's passionate…
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The title alone makes André Is an Idiot stand out in the Sundance lineup, but Tony Benna's documentary about advertising creative André Ricciardi dying from colon cancer is far more than a colonoscopy PSA. It's a testament to humor as…
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What a revelatory cinematic experience! In his stunning feature debut, director Georgi M. Unkovski transforms the simple story of a young shepherd into a transcendent meditation on music, tradition, and the transformative power of finding…
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Hold onto your seats, because Amanda Kramer has delivered easily the weirdest film at Sundance this year, and honestly? We're absolutely here for it. By Design is pure experimental madness - a surreal body-swap comedy about a woman who…
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The Sundance Film Festival, known for celebrating fiercely independent cinema, is gearing up for its 40th edition, which is scheduled for January 18-28, 2024. This year's festival is particularly noteworthy as it marks the inaugural run…
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In an exciting announcement for documentary enthusiasts, the Sundance Institute has revealed the projects set to receive backing from its esteemed Documentary Fund for 2023. A total of just over $1,000,000 has been earmarked to support 23…
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“Little Death,” directed by Jack Begert, is a muddled but promising film that delves into addiction, creativity and identity in present-day Los Angeles. The movie premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival and boasts an ambitious…
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In the genre-defying "Your Monster," director Caroline Lindy creates a unique cinema that can be scary and touching at once. This is an unconventional romantic comedy with horror elements, and it shows us that sometimes the scariest thing…
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Kobi Libii’s first film as a director, “The American Society of Magical Negroes,” seeks to poke fun at and criticize the long-standing movie cliché of the “magical negro.” Although it does present interesting ideas and moments of promise,…
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Amy Liptrot’s memoir, The Outrun, has been reimagined by Nora Fingscheidt as this provoking and realistic story about addiction and recovery which wins the best of Saoirse Ronan. But, it seems that the ambition of Fingscheidt’s work and…
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In the Summers, directed by Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio, is a deeply felt and beautifully crafted coming-of-age film that perfectly captures the tumultuous and emotional world of teenagers. Lacorazza demonstrates a remarkable…
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Chris Nash's In a Violent Nature is a different breed of slasher. With surrender as the only given option, this film offers the creepy and chilling horror experience by showing the eyes of a killer sinner without looking through the lenses…
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Gaucho Gaucho is an extraordinary visual ethnographic film that reveals the world of Argentina’s gauchos in all its glory, quite alien to modernity, where tradition, people and land are of foremost importance. Frida Torresblanco directed…
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Directed by Sari Rae and Julia Patton, Daughters is a very disturbing and eloquent film which deals with the relationship of fathers and daughters as seen from the lens of the criminal justice system. Having said that, the film…
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Chris Smith is the director of a documentary called “Devo” that I have just seen and I can tell you it was one wild experiential ride. It is a vivid and engaging exploration of one of the most bizarre musical bands probably from the late…
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Aaron Schimberg's A Different Man, distributed by A24, is a daring, entertaining, and absolutely new movie on the topics of identity, appearance and reinvention. Its actors Sebastian Stan, Adam Pearson, and Renate Reinsve stood out with…
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Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil's “Krazy House” proved to be every letter of its name by setting the bar higher with a crazy, zany and most times shocking journey that encapsulates Sundance’s midnight programming spirit. This is an…
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In Jesse Eisenberg’s A Real Pain, one feels everyone’s heart and understands the sobbing reason why people are terrified of opening themselves towards other peoples and love or relationships more than themselves. Jesse Eisenberg A Real…
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Based on John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel, Thea Hvistendahl’s “Handling the Undead” presents an eerie and unconventional angle at the zombie genre that emphasizes emotional depth rather than traditional horror elements. A Norwegian film like…
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Megan Park's ‘My Old Ass’ is a charming and reflective addition to the coming-of-age genre that successfully combines comedy, drama and a touch of sci-fi thus creating one story that resonates with young audiences as well as older persons…
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Between the Temples is absurdities, the character of Carol Kane shines through in all her glory, her performance being marked by charming intelligence and the famous oddball passion. This movie is somewhat of a drama owing to how the…
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Andy and Sam Zuchero’s “Love Me” is a daring experiment with futuristic love that just like its artificial intelligence characters does not know what it wants to become. The movie is set in a post-human era and attempts to deal with…
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Didi is a remarkable coming-of-age tale where family, identity, and a sense of home are put into perspectives. Directed by Isaac Wang say the film has a lot of great performances and great stories that cut across the feelings and sights.…
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Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s "Freaky Tales" is a film that takes viewers on a ride through 1987 Oakland. This movie might not be what one would expect to see on the big screen but it definitely lives up to the Sundance premieres – gritty…
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Jeff Zimbalist and Maria Bukhonina’s documentary, “Skywalkers: A Love Story,” is visually stunning and breathtaking. This film takes extreme urban climbing to a whole new level while pushing the boundaries of what it means to be human.…
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As innovative and boundary-defying as the person it chronicles, “Eno,” the documentary that opened this year’s Sundance Film Festival, directed by Gary Hustwit, about Brian Eno, musician, producer and all-around visionary, is not your…
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When it comes to the film industry, "Stress Positions" is Theda Hammel's first ever directorial work. In addition, it is also a very strange piece of art that belongs within the category of viral era movies. Even though there are parts in…
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Molly Manning Walker’s ‘How to Have Sex’ isn’t a raucous spring break romp, but it is, and this is what matters, an exuberant, unfiltered examination of youth, desire and consent that feels as if it has put you through the wringer. Twice.
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Jay Duplass' See You When I See You, adapted from Adam Cayton-Holland's memoir Tragedy Plus Time, arrives wearing a template so thoroughly established by contemporary indie cinema that the film's struggle to locate original emotional…
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I Saw the TV Glow is an interesting piece of work on obsession, technology and the self, and while one can appreciate all the risks and ambition that the film possesses, I have to say that I was quite disappointed with the ending. All I…
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In Saim Sadiq's groundbreaking debut, "Joyland" delves deep into the complexities of love, relationships, and societal expectations. This poignant drama, the first to win the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of Cannes from the…
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"Still," directed by Davis Guggenheim, presents an intimate portrayal of actor Michael J. Fox's life and career. The documentary skillfully interweaves scenes from Fox's iconic roles in Family Ties and the Back to the Future trilogy with…
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Bad Press eloquently highlights the significance of journalism and the tenacity of those committed to safeguarding its integrity. The film brings to light the remarkable endeavors of Angel Ellis and her team, who persist in their quest for…
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In the murky world of "Eileen," director William Oldroyd masterfully weaves an intricate web of intrigue and desire. Adapted from Ottessa Moshfegh's novel, the film follows Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie), a young woman trapped in a dreary…
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"Stephen Curry: Underrated," directed by Peter Nicks, offers a captivating glimpse into the life of NBA superstar Stephen Curry. The documentary delves into Curry's early days at Davidson College and his triumphant return during the 2021…
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In Nicole Holofcener's latest film, "You Hurt My Feelings," she brilliantly dissects the fragile balance between love, honesty, and personal ambitions. The clever, character-driven story centers on Beth, a New York novelist working on a…
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"Talk to Me," a riveting horror film by twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, delivers an unforgettable and spine-chilling experience. Centered around Mia (Sophie Wilde) and her friends, the story plunges into the dangerous…
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As the world grapples with the economic fallout of an alien invasion, Cory Finley's "Landscape with Invisible Hand" presents a thought-provoking exploration of love, class, and humanity in a time of upheaval. Based on the novel by M.T.…
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"Drift" tells a poignant story of Jacqueline (Cynthia Erivo), a Liberian refugee grappling with the horrors of her past while trying to rebuild her life on a picturesque Greek island. Director Anthony Chen, known for his award-winning film…
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In "Cat Person," director Susanna Fogel explores the complexities of modern dating with a sharp eye, presenting a provocative portrayal of power dynamics, gray areas, and the challenges young women face in navigating relationships. Based…
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Matthieu Rytz returns to Sundance with "Deep Rising," a compelling documentary that delves into the potential consequences of deep-sea mining. Narrated by Jason Momoa, the film explores the complex geopolitical, scientific, and corporate…
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Chloe Domont's debut feature, "Fair Play," takes an unflinching look at the implications of ambition, gender dynamics, and shifting power balances within a relationship. Set against the backdrop of a ruthless financial firm, the film…
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In her wickedly funny and cinematically exuberant debut feature, "Polite Society," Nida Manzoor (creator of We Are Lady Parts) crafts an Austenesque tale with a loving, anarchic mashup of genres (action comedy, heist, martial arts,…
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In "Fancy Dance," director Erica Tremblay delivers a touching and thought-provoking exploration of the challenges faced by Indigenous women within a colonized world. The film tells the story of Jax (Lily Gladstone) and her niece Roki…
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In "Shayda," Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari draws from her own experiences to weave a poignant story of courage, hope, and the enduring bond between a mother and her daughter. Set in Australia, the film follows the struggles of…
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