By now, you’ve probably heard that this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which runs from January 20 through 30, pivoted to an online format following the rise of the Omicron variant, which sucks mainly for the business owners in Park City who depend on that revenue yet also is a bummer for the members of the film industry who enjoy their two-week stint of wearing Carhartt and pretending that they can ski well in between panic attacks. The upside to this is that you — yes, you, the reader at home — can participate in the festival without owning a pair of snow boots and/or fighting off film critics at the one and only Burger King in Park City. And, as such, we’ve selected five films that we’re particularly excited about in the program this year that you can add to your watchlist.
Each film is guaranteed to screen twice. It’ll show first in a three-hour premiere window, and later on, it’ll show as a “second screening,” which allows for one to watch it whenever they want over the course of 72 hours. For badges, single tickets and other business, head to the Sundance website and choose which option works best for you.
Here are five that we’re really looking forward to.
After Yang
If you’re a big Steven Spielberg fan — or, hell, even a big Steve De Jarnett person — Columbus director Kogonada’s latest effort might sound a little familiar. Though it’s based on a short story by Alexander Weinstein, one can’t help but be reminded of both A.I. or Cherry 2000 by the synopsis: it concerns a father (Colin Farrell) on a quest to find replacement parts for Yang, his daughter’s android companion. Though on the surface it may look like a warning not to buy things advertised as “refurbished” (and, honestly, anybody who’s ever bought a used game console from a back-alley pawn shop probably knows), Kogonada’s latest looks like it’ll apply the same elegant and meditative style he perfected in his first film to a new kind of sci-fi setting.
Cha Cha Real Smooth
Cooper Raiff’s Shithouse was one of the best and most empathetic modern depictions of college-age loserdom to emerge from the festival circuit in the last 20 years (especially when compared to the prior output of another second-film debuting filmmaker at this year’s festival), so it only makes sense that Raiff would follow that up with… a film about dude struggling after he left college. It’s not a sequel to his first film, though one might expect that character to go through similar experiences — after leaving college, Andrew (Raiff) is back at home, rudderless and lost in New Jersey, unprepared for the slings and arrows that life is gonna throw at him and totally without a future. But when he meets a single mom (Dakota Johnson), he sets out on a path that might lead him towards some great reward: Purpose. By the way, what is it about Johnson that causes her to get cast in movies where she helps people self-actualize by being a solo parent? Weird trend!
Dual
We’re big, big fans of Riley Sterns’ Faults and The Art of Self-Defense, which makes it super exciting that the filmmaker’s debuting his new thriller at this year’s festival. Though you might confuse it with both Duel and The Last Duel based on the title alone, Sterns’ Dual is a sci-fi thriller about a woman (Karen Gillan) suffering from a terminal illness who opts to have a clone of her made in order to take care of her affairs after she passes on. Sounds kind of like Swan Song, yeah? Well, though they might share similar loglines, Sterns is opting against that film’s navel-gazingly glum aesthetic and trading it in for a combination of thriller antics and high-concept satire. Color us pumped for this one.
Living
If we’re being totally honest, we spent a good 20 minutes dunking on Living simply based on these words in the Sundance synopsis: “a potent reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Ikiru.” We thought it’d be a fool’s errand to try and remake that iconic film — a meditation on a life worth living examined through a bureaucrat’s attempts to do something worthwhile before he dies — but as we read a little more, we started getting more and more excited. Oliver Hermanus (director of Beauty) helmed the picture, its screenplay was penned by the iconic author Kazuo Ishiguro (The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go), and it features the fantastic Bill Nighy in the lead role. If there was any crew capable of transforming Kurosawa’s most meaningful film into the emotional equivalent of A Fistful of Dollars, well, it most likely would be them. Regardless, we’re fascinated.
Something in the Dirt
In a few short months, directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead are about to blow the fuck up, given that they’re two of the minds behind the upcoming Moon Knight series, and now’s your last chance to get in on the ground floor with them as “indie” directors so that you can tell all your buddies that you knew who they were before it was cool. The pair, known for genre riffs like The Endless and Synchronic, are back at it again with another tale of life at the intersection of the real and the supernatural, concerning two buddies (played by the directors) who discover that some creepy shit is happening around them and who decide to monetize the phenomenon. If you’re looking for a dialogue-heavy sci-fi creeper to fill out their festival schedule, well, here’s a pretty goddamn good option.