Category: Festival

Getting a lush, classic look for jazz-infused period romance Sylvie’s Love—set in New York City in the ’50s and ’60s—was key for writer/director Eugene Ashe.
When an audience member told Ashe she felt like she just saw a new classic at the film’s premiere, he was thrilled. “We shot the entire thing in Los Angeles for New York, and we did a lot on the classic backlots,” he said.

Sean Durkin, who won a Directing Award for his 2011 Sundance Film Festival film, Martha Marcy May Marlene, premiered his new ’80s-set movie The Nest Sunday night at the Eccles Theatre.
The audience was treated to a pre-film mini-concert by Richard Reed Parry, the film’s composer, who performed selections from the score on stand-up bass, accompanied on piano and clarinet. (Parry’s previous film scores include Boyhood and The Life of Walter Mitty.

An old man is sitting with his back to a tree in the forest, his wire-haired dog, Birba, beside him. “You know what a lady told me?” the man says to the dog. “She asked me, ‘Why don’t you get married?’” He gives her a pet.

Immediately after his undeniably Freudian mother-son relationship drama Summer White (Blanco de Verano) finished rolling at the Egyptian Theatre, Mexico City–based writer/director Rodrigo Ruiz Patterson was quick to get one thing out of the way.

While the film’s fire-starting main character is also named Rodrigo, the plot is (mostly) fictional. “This story started as something autobiographical, but then at some point, when I started writing with Raul, we figured out that my life wasn’t that interesting, so for the sake of good drama, we decided to fictionalize and make a more interesting film,” Ruiz Patterson said with a laugh, reassuring the audience at his film’s world premiere that nobody in his past ever burned down an RV.

Now in its Fifth Consecutive Year, Fellowship Honors Artistic Contributions
of Late Māori Filmmaker
Park City, Utah — Sundance Institute today announced director and producer Leya Hale as the 2020 recipient of the Sundance Institute Merata Mita Fellowship, an annual fellowship named in honor of the late Māori filmmaker Merata Mita (1942-2010). The announcement was delivered today at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival by N. Bird Runningwater, Director of the Sundance Institute’s Indigenous Program.

At this year’s Sundance Film Festival, writer/director Julie Taylor arrived in Park City for the debut of her sixth feature, The Glorias, a biopic of feminist icon Gloria Steinem. The film begins streaming on Wednesday, September 30. Below, see what Taymor had to say at the film’s world premiere.

Shot in 21 days in New York City on black-and-white film using largely handheld cinematography, The 40-Year-Old Version has a comfortable, classic lo-fi ’90s indie aesthetic about it—and that’s all part of first-time feature director Radha Blank’s design.
“I was raised by a cinephile, so I was raised on films like Night of the Hunter, Lost Weekend—you name it,” the native New Yorker said at the film’s world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival. “I wanted to do something in a way to retrofit this story and film into this canon of films, because I feel this film should have been told 30 or 40 years ago.

Adrienne (Sienna Miller) is convinced she has been killed in a car crash. This is the central tension of Wander Darkly, which follows Adrienne as she stumbles through the weeks in a dreamlike fog. Unhinged in time, the film drifts—often violently—between past and present, and you’ll be bathed in a blending of memory and reality, surrounded by intimate and image-rich details as Adrienne relives the best and worst times of her relationship with Matteo (Diego Luna).

The Sundance Film Festival’s reputation may have been made on screen, but in recent years, as the Fest evolved into a hub of cultural conversation, there’s been a groundswell of live events, affectionately referred to as the Offscreen section. The best thing about Offscreen is its variety. Do you enjoy intimate fireside chats? Provocative conversations between some of the most prominent cultural icons of the moment? Engaging panels that convene unexpected combinations of well-known experts? Whatever piques your interest, there’s an Offscreen event for it.

Jumbo is a love story—but the leading couple are not exactly what you’d expect. Jeanne is a shy, awkward amusement-park custodian who likes tinkering with machines and listening to her radio. Her love interest? The park’s new attraction, a tilt-a-whirl ride whom she affectionately calls Jumbo.

Filmmakers Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and Eli Despres—whose previous documentary, Weiner, was a Grand Jury Prize winner—are back at the Sundance Film Festival with a new project, The Fight, which tells the story of the ACLU’s battle against the Trump administration on a number of civil rights cases.
At the Q&A, Steinberg shared that the decision to make the film began the night that lawyer Lee Gelernt won the first case against Trump’s Muslim ban.
“That night, I joined the protestors on the steps of the Brooklyn courthouse,” said Steinberg of the chaotic, joyous first scene in the film.

“I wish during the next hour and a half that each one of you will become an 11-year-old little girl,” Maïmouna Doucouré told the audience assembled at the Egyptian Theatre on opening night of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, before the curtain rose on her debut feature, Cuties.
Mission accomplished. Equal parts disturbing and joyous—just like being an 11-year-old girl, if my fairly distant recollections can be trusted—the French writer/director’s coming-of-age tale follows Amy, the daughter of Senegalese immigrants living in a Paris housing project, as she deals with the highs and lows of reaching that “not a girl, not yet a woman” age range.