January is not only my birth month, (this year marks the beginning of a new decade for me!), but it’s also the month of the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, widely considered the premiere festival for launching independent films. I have attended since 1995 as a board member of the Sundance Institute – a unique nonprofit created by Robert Redford to provide mentoring and support for independent storytellers through a unique series of programs called "Labs.” The festival extended the impact of the labs by providing a platform for the work of independent filmmakers from all over the world.
For the past two years, due to Covid, the festival has had to pivot from being a gathering of thousands in the middle of winter to a digital-only experience. Returning in a hybrid format this year, we are expecting thousands to gather again for the in-person experience, but we will also continue to offer digital screenings for those who can’t travel to Utah or who prefer watching the groundbreaking work from the comfort of their home.
For me, I am thrilled to be able to watch films with the Sundance film community in theaters. There is a magic that happens when you are watching incredible films with others in a dark theater, laughing and crying together, and listening to filmmakers, actors, and film subjects talk about their work and experiences in Q&As after screenings.
This year, Sundance Film Festival offers 110 feature films and 65 short films, chosen from over 16,000 submissions! There are so many amazing films in the line-up, but in this newsletter, I am going to focus on films you can watch at home. Get your tickets now because these online screenings do sell out.
Here are some of the films that I’m looking forward to seeing, knowing that the best part of the festival is DISCOVERY — walking into a theater and being totally swept away by the unexpected, the often untold, the new perspectives and discovering new talent, new voices, and new ideas.
Festival curators call this first feature-length film from Erica Tremblay "the arrival of a major directorial talent." Tremblay told The New York Times this week that she left her job in publishing at the age of 40 to "become a filmmaker, focused on telling the stories based in her Seneca-Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma." Her first short film, "Little Chief," premiered at SFF 2020. The next year, her script for "Fancy Dance" was accepted by the Sundance Lab Program and with the help of the Sundance Institute, she secured funding to make it.
"Tremblay’s juxtaposition of settler violence against the strength of Indigenous communities offers a nuanced account of the human costs of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic and the possibilities of healing for those left behind." —Sundance
Written and directed by Raven Jackson, this feature is "a decades-spanning exploration of a woman's life in Mississippi and an ode to the generations of people, places, and ineffable moments that shape us." Jackson is an award-winning filmmaker, poet, and photographer from Tennessee. Barry Jenkins ("Moonlight") serves as a producer under his Pastel banner.
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
I have long been a fan of Nikki Giovanni's poetry and writing. In this documentary, directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson (American Promise, The Changing Same) craft a vision fit for her "radical imagination."
“Through a collision of memories, moments in American history, live readings of her poetry, and impressions of space, Giovanni urges us to imagine a future where Black women lead, and equity is a reality." — Sundance
"Rae de Leon, a reporter working at The Center for Investigative Reporting, discovers a surprising number of legal cases nationwide that involve women reporting sexual assault to the police, only to be accused of fabricating their allegations. These women are then charged with crimes, sometimes facing years in prison... Director Nancy Schwartzman (Roll Red Roll) crafts a deeply compelling and provocative investigative documentary." — Sundance
Murder in Big Horn
This year, Sundance is featuring serial work, including this three-part docuseries. Directors Razelle Benally (Oglala Lakota/Diné) and Matthew Galkin craft a powerful portrait of tribal members and their communities battling an epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in this examination of the circumstances surrounding many of the cases, told solely through the perspectives of those involved: Native families, Native journalists, and local law enforcement officers.
Along with strong representation of native voices, Sundance has always focused on international stories, as well the often untold and the vitally current. This year, against the backdrop of a women-led revolution in Iran, the curators selected three films by Iranian women directors: Maryam Keshavarz, Noora Niasari and Sierra Ulrich. I will be interviewing them in a panel on Saturday, January 21 at the Women at Sundance event. These are their films. All are available online.
Filmmaker Sierra Ulrich grew up in "rural Vermont, a place and an upbringing far removed from Iran, the homeland of her mother, Mitra, and grandmother, Behjat." In Joonam, a Farsi term that means "endearment," Ulrich constructs a "deeply moving and sometimes disarmingly funny portrait of three generations of women and their complex relationship to an Iran of the past."
Following the debut of her first narrative feature film, Circumstance (2011 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award: U.S. Dramatic and Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award nominee), writer-director and producer Maryam Keshavarz returns to Sundance with this compelling, intelligent, and timely story of both the Iranian and the Iranian-American experience.
Shayda
"Drawn from personal experiences, Iranian-Australian filmmaker Noora Niasari’s powerful debut feature is a beautifully crafted, poetic vérité portrayal of courage and compassion, anchored by a heart-rending performance by Zar Amir Ebrahimi (2022 Cannes’ best actress award winner for Holy Spider)." — Sundance
I’m always on the lookout for films that inform viewers about our global environmental crisis and this year’s Deep Rising is bound to create some important conversations about the state of our oceans. "Filmmaker Matthieu Rytz brings us this up-to-the-minute tale of geopolitical, scientific, and corporate intrigue that exposes the machinations of a secretive organization empowered to greenlight massive extraction of metals from the deep seafloor that are deemed essential to the electric battery revolution." Narrated by Jason Momoa.
These are just a few of the films I'm looking forward to at the Festival, but there are so many more dramatic films, documentaries, short films and episodic series, as well as the groundbreaking categories, NEXT and New Frontiers. I hope you will sign up at the Sundance Film Festival website, check out all the offerings and watch some films at home. Please tell me what you watched and what you thought in the comments!
As in former festivals, many, many talks with filmmakers are planned during the festival and conversations that are also available virtually. I am particularly excited about these two:
HOLLYWOOD, RACISM, AND THE NEW AGE OF CENSORSHIP
Friday, January 20 11:30 AM–1:30 PM (MT)
This session seeks to inspire more robust storytelling about race and history to resist the rise of white nationalism and efforts to censor critical thinking about anti-Black racism. In a dynamic conversational format, Color Of Change President Rashad Robinson and AAPF Co-Founder (and Sundance board member) Kimberlé Crenshaw will address how historical and contemporary efforts to write Black history out of the national memory are impacting Hollywood, why creatives cannot allow the chilling effect of this censorship to affect cinematic storytelling, and what Hollywood's role should be in standing up to silence diverse storytellers from telling their truths. The conversation will be moderated by Janine Jackson, Program Director at Fair & Accuracy in Reporting.
THE STORY OF US: INDEPENDENT STORYTELLING AND THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACY
Sunday, January 22 2:00 PM–3:30 PM (MT)
Democracy narrowly escaped in our last midterm elections. So what happens next? This year as we think about the future of democracy, this Big Conversation builds on the previous two iterations of AAPF and Kimberlé W. Crenshaw’s The Story of Us to explore how storytelling has long been and continues to be a critical enterprise in grounding the shape and contours of democratic inclusion. Leading thinkers in the arts, history, and social justice—W. Kamau Bell, Rogers Ross Williams, Jason Stanley, and Holly Macarro—will challenge audiences to consider how narrative plenitude is not simply an expression of inclusion, but is essential to strengthening democratic ideals.
Both of the events are non-ticketed events and available on a first come first serve basis. We encourage all Sundance attendees to register and sign-in here: https://festival.sundance.org/sign-in. This will allow you to access the full Sundance schedule and to add AAPF events to your calendar.
For those at home, we hope to be able to share recordings of both events at a later date!
Look for a post later this month about these conversations and my own reflections on this year's festival. In the meantime, I am off to Utah and looking forward to watching these amazing films in Park City venues, Salt Lake theaters, and at the special screening room at the Sundance Resort.
When he began the Sundance Institute, Robert Redford believed that placing storytellers with new perspectives, ideas, and stories in nature with the freedom to experiment, to fail, and to try again, would transform the ecosystem of filmmaking and expand the horizons of audiences. He was right, and the Institute Labs and the Sundance Film Festival have literally shaped the ascendancy of independent film and its makers. I will be celebrating our founder this year, and the extraordinary Sundance Institute team in person, honored to serve as a Trustee and forever an admirer.
Join me in Utah or from your sofa!
Onward!
- Pat
