It's been exactly three years since the last in-person edition of the Sundance Film Festival — where the coveted North American institute decided to respectively shut down their theatrical operations for the well-being of their represented artists and community. In 2020, when participants indulged in their snow-glazed revelry, the occupants of Park City would have never predicted the series of outbreaks, lockdowns, and subsequent health-prevention measures which would later storm the world. As a result, the festival attempted to assimilate to the confines of the new Pandemic frontier — from satellite screens to virtual screening rooms — with varying degrees of success. Mutations such as Omicron would later delay the institute's in-person premiere status. After years of anticipation, the high-altitude malaise of Utahn suburbia is now back, more than ever, with the announced in-person return of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.
There is a catch this time around. The festival is also bringing back their virtual platform, to address important concerns regarding accessibility demands. The pandemic is far from over for many immunocompromised individuals. For select films at the festival, limited on-demand options are available for press members, industry delegates, and members of the general public who are located in the United States. Primarily, most films will premiere in-person a few days before their virtual screenings; to prioritise and sponsor Utah's local economy. Sundance is a festival for the people; celebrating stories of the mundane and the extraordinary, programmed for the conventional standards & reactions of the general public. While we're expecting the occasional stinker (as with any festival), there are still a great number of projects that our team at FilmHounds Magazine is excited to visit and cover at the festival. The following is a list of eight titles that we're heavily anticipating for this year's celebratory return to in-person exhibition.
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All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt – Dir. Raven Jackson
As part of the U.S Dramatic Competition
Our Take: Thanks to the ingenuity and attentiveness of the Sundance Institute and their programming team, there are always a good handful of standout discoveries, waiting to be found in Park City. When digging into this year's US Dramatic Competition, our bet for the breakout hit of the festival is on Raven Jackson's All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt. The film follows Mack, a young Black woman from Mississippi and her decade-sprawling life's story. The film is also produced by Barry Jenkins, who previously worked on Aftersun. With the success of Charlotte Wells' breakout debut (which premiered at a great handful of festivals such as the Semaine de la Critique, Telluride, TIFF, and even the New York Film Festival), we're expecting something special for his second producing venture. It also helps that Jackson has previously screened work at the San Sebastian Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, and the Palm Springs Film Festival — where some of her short films which premiered at the aforementioned venues are now available to stream on the Criterion Channel.
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AUM: The Cult at the End of the World – Dir. Ben Braun & Chiaki Yanagimoto
As part of the U.S Documentary Competition
Our Take: A restless account of the disastrous terrorist attack which rattled the entire globe, the documentary entitled AUM: The Cult at the End of the World attempts to dissect, analyse, and provide additional context on the perpetrators behind the Tokyo Subway Sarin attack. Chiaki Yanagimoto, one of the co-directors of the film, has a personal connection to the cult — as she grew up around the congregation grounds in which AUM held the majority of their doomsday practices. The film not only highlights the severity of the Subway Sarin attack, but also re-contextualises the cult's significant existence in Japanese Society — by examining their history, their belief systems, and their eventual acts of terror. We're expecting a controversial documentary that refuses to answer easy questions; an account which echoes the severity and legacy of the AUM cult.
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Divinity – Dir. Eddie Alcazar
As part of the NEXT Section
Our Take: After working in tandem with controversial auteur Darren Aronofsky on the short film The Vandal, many anticipated the return of Eddie Alcazar upon the release of his Quinzaine des Réalisateurs opus. Alcazar's projects defy the traditional expectations of the American Indie. His films are grotesque, surreal, and hallucinatory; as his method combines stop-motion animation with granular black-and-white footage. We're not sure what the hell Divinity is even about. The synopsis published on the Sundance listing only makes our head spin even further. Mad scientists, rogue kidnappers, and the search for immortality? Sign us up!
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Drift – Dir. Anthony Chen
As part of the Premieres Section
Our Take: Camera D'Or winner Anthony Chen is stepping into the same limelight as Wes Anderson and Yorgos Lanthimos in 2023. The Singaporean auteur is currently booked with two unique feature film projects this year, with Drift as his first project to debut. Drift stars Cynthia Erivo as Jaqueline — the former daughter of a government loyalist, struggling to make ends meet on a small Greek island, after fleeing her war-torn country. The atmospheric drama also stars Alia Shawkat and Honor Swinton Bryne in supporting roles. Drift is Chen's English language debut; a refugee drama with a promising premise at its pivotal crux.
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Fantastic Machine – Dir. Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck
As part of the World Cinema Documentary Competition
Our Take: In 2017, Swedish Filmmakers Axel Danielson & Maximilien Van Aertryck premiered Ten Meter Tower with great critical success — a social experiment about a group of random citizens who are forced into a fear-inducing dilemma. The reactions of their subjects, the simplicity of the short's narrative structure, and the timeliness of the material became the talk of the town at various short film festivals. Ten Meter Tower even landed a spot in the coveted Berlinale short film competition. Their feature debut entitled Fantastic Machine also studies human behaviour with comedic intensity. The archival documentary, produced by Plattform Produktion (the same team who brought Pleasure to Sundance two years ago), focuses on the relationship between mankind and the camera. Already confirmed with an international premiere at this year's Berlinale, we're personally very excited to see what Danielson & Van Aertryck have to say about our sociological obsession with media, power, and the images which surround our daily routines.
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Heroic – Dir. Zonana
As part of the World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Our Take: As a fan of radical Queer stories and new Latinx cinema, Heroic immediately stood out from the World Cinema program. Described almost as a 21st century Beau Travail (1999) riff, set in the enclosed mountain ranges of the Aztec gods; Zonana's sophomore feature promises a brutal critique on the ripples of militarism. The film is produced by Michel Franco, who most recently directed the enticingly cryptic Sundown featuring Tim Roth and Charlotte Gainsbourg. We're personally excited for Heroic; a film that may or may not be accessible for all, yet will likely provoke alluring conversations regarding the project's intense subject matter.
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Last Things – Dir. Deborah Stratman
As part of the New Frontier Section
Our Take: We're shocked about the limited hype and attention from the Sundance community, regarding the release and premiere of Deborah Stratman's Last Things. The Chicago-based multimedia artist, well-known for her avant-garde portraits of landscapes, industrialisation, and anthropology returns with another project told within the experimental documentary tradition. The project is a mid-length feature about the cycles of evolution & extinction, as dictated through a geographical lens. The film (told from the POV of rocks) implements both microscopic & landscape photography to tell its languid tale of mortality. We're always excited for this radically-nuanced experimental project, especially when an alluring film such as Last Things is unfortunately lost within a sea of three-act-narrative features.
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The Night Logan Woke Up – Dir. Xavier Dolan
As part of the Indie Episodic Program
Our Take: In the realm of Québécois cinema, no name in recent memory has divided critics, film communities, and even discussions on Canada's national cinema more than the work and legacy of Xavier Dolan. Dolan's vision is audacious & unfiltered; a renegade in Canuck pop-culture and LGBTQIA+ cinema. After premiering Matthias & Maxime in competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Dolan disappeared from the industry for a short while. Many questioned if the young iconoclast officially retired for good, after a slew of interviews with the young director were recently published for the release of his new project. From the ashes, Dolan is finally back in business — this time around with a brand new television series. Premiering the first two episodes at the Sundance Film Festival with a conjoined runtime of 115 minutes (about the same duration of a standard narrative feature film at the festival), The Night Logan Woke Up promises another lengthy melodrama about trauma, sexuality, and coming-of-age trials from Dolan's subversive subconscious. The Night Logan Woke Up could be Dolan's final hurrah for the time being, as he unwinds away from the manic film industry.
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The 2023 Sundance Film Festival runs from January 19th – May 29th
