With 91 features, 53 short films, 8 Episodic projects, and more, the 2024 Sundance Film Festival Program is full of diverse stories from artists across the globe. This year’s lineup includes 30 projects by filmmakers who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Revisit familiar favorites like Rob Epstein’s The Times of Harvey Milk or Dee Rees’ Pariah as part of the 40th Edition Celebration Screenings, and discover new gems by both Sundance alums — including Jane Schoenbrun, Yance Ford, Angalis Field, and more — and newcomers who are bringing their vibrant stories and unique perspectives to the Festival for the first time.
Pick out your favorites and start building your screening schedule (reminder — Single Film Tickets go on sale January 11)! Whether you’re interested in eye-opening documentaries, experimental cinema, comedies, quests for love, surreal animation, family portraits, or sci-fi horror, there’s something for everyone in the list of projects by LGBTQ+ filmmakers below.
FEATURES
Director: Shiori Ito
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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 Her quest becomes a landmark case in Japan, exposing the country’s outdated judicial and societal systems.
Director: Natalie Rae (and Angela Patton)
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Jules Rosskam
Section: NEXT
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Directors: Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Ondi Timoner
Section: 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events
Available to watch in person
DIG! XX 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.
Director: Rose Troche
Section: 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events
Available to watch in person
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’s Ely, Kia’s ex-student who is seemingly available. Ely shares a place with Daria, the quintessential lesbian about town, constantly in and out of women’s beds and hearts. Kia thinks Max would like Ely; Daria thinks Ely should like Max. Everyone schemes. We’re treated to a date, a dinner party, pride, honor, friendship, laundry, nail clipping — and, of course, sex.
Director: Molly Manning Walker
Section: Spotlight
Available to watch in person
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.
Director: Jane Schoenbrun
Section: Midnight
Available to watch in person
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 — a vision of a supernatural world beneath their own. In the pale glow of the television, Owen’s view of reality begins to crack.
Director: Alessandra Lacorazza
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Amrou Al-Kadhi
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Sam Zuchero (and Andy Zuchero)
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy and a satellite meet online and fall in love.
Director: Pedro Freire
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
Malu — a mercurial, unemployed actress living with her conservative mother in a precarious house in a Rio de Janeiro slum — tries to deal with her strained relationship with her own adult daughter while surviving on memories of her glorious artistic past.
Director: Dee Rees
Section: 40th Edition Screenings and Events
Available to watch in person
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.
Director: Yance Ford
Section: Premieres
Available to watch in person
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.
Director: Mikko Mäkelä
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Theda Hammel
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
Terry Goon is keeping strict quarantine in his ex-husband’s Brooklyn brownstone while caring for his nephew — a 19-year-old model from Morocco named Bahlul — bedridden in a full leg cast after an electric scooter accident. Unfortunately for Terry, everyone in his life wants to meet the model.
Directors: Astrid Rondero, Fernanda Valadez
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
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’s destiny may be inescapable.
Director: Rob Epstein
Section: 40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events
Available to watch in person
Set in San Francisco in the 1970s, The Times of Harvey Milk 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’s most colorful and influential elected officials, as well as one of the decade’s most prominent leaders of the LGBTQ+ rights movement — that is, until he was shot and killed at City Hall by former police officer and fellow supervisor Dan White. Harvey Milk’s journey to that fateful day is recounted brilliantly through the course of the film.
EPISODIC
Directors: Javier Calvo, Javier Ambrossi
Section: Episodic Pilot Showcase
Available to watch in person
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.
Director: Mel Eslyn
Section: Episodic Pilot Showcase
Available to watch in person
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.
SHORT FILMS
Director: Alex Hedison
Section: Short Film Program 1
Available to watch in person and online
A compelling portrait of ALOK, acclaimed nonbinary author, poet, comedian, and public speaker. Executive-produced by Jodie Foster.
Director: Whammy Alcazaren
Section: Midnight Short Film Program
Available to watch in person and online
Trapped at home with hallucinogenic drugs and his talking cat, an “alter” anonymously performs lascivious acts on the Internet, seeking refuge in the strong arms of strange men, hoping to masturbate his way to true happiness.
Director: Angalis Field
Section: Short Film Program 3
Available to watch in person and online
A trans cop with the New York City Police Department goes undercover to make a drug bust.
Director: Dylan Guerra
Section: Short Film Program 4
Available to watch in person and online
Rory thinks there’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.
Director: Natalie Jasmine Harris
Section: Short Film Program 5
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Masha Ko
Section: Midnight Short Film Program
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Alex Lora Cercos
Section: Short Film Program 2
Available to watch in person and online
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.
Director: Tajana Tokyo
Section: Short Film Program 3
Available to watch in person and online
A scrapbook of opinions and advice about love in Sierra Leone.
Director: Kate Jean Hollowell
Section: Short Film Program 4
Available to watch in person and online
A grieving woman believes her deceased best friend has come back to visit her… as a porta-potty.
Director: Gerardo Coello Escalante
Section: Short Film Program 3
Available to watch in person and online
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.
