Category: Festival

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.

Two years after he debuted his first feature film, Blindspotting, at the Sundance Film Festival, Carlos López Estrada returned with Summertime, a poetic odyssey through Los Angeles with more than 30 characters—including taggers, cooks, and would-be-rappers—through one hot, life-changing summer day.
At the Q&A after the screening, Estrada described the film, which was a collaboration with 27 young poets, as a “miracle movie.”
After attending a Get Lit teen poetry program seven months ago, Estrada said, “We saw these people talking about things that were important to them in a way that was creative and beautiful.

We get it—sometimes life gets in the way of you making it to Park City to attend the Sundance Film Festival in person. That’s why we provide plenty of ways that you can follow along with everything happening on the mountain over the next two weeks. Here at Sundance.

PARK CITY, UTAH — Sundance Institute today announced a first-of-its-kind collaboration with Sony Pictures Classics and Trafalgar Releasing: on January 26, the Utah premiere of The Climb, screening in the Spotlight category of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, will be simulcast across ten cinemas across the U.S., with the following Q&A simulcast live from The Ray Theatre in Park City, enabling independent film fans in markets nationwide to participate in the buzz of Festival from afar.

As always, during the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, we’ll be hosting a wide range of screenings, projects, and events at our five venues in Salt Lake City, located about 30 miles outside of the Festival’s home base in Park City. Below, we’ve rounded up everything you need to know about experiencing the Festival in SLC, complete with info on our venues, lounges, and box office. Note that individual tickets go on sale to the general public on January 21; in the meantime, you’ll want to look through our digital program guide’s schedule feature to see which films you can catch in Salt Lake City.

[Ed. note: Looking for updates from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony? Head here.]Updated 9:12 PM MTPalka introduces Rachel Grady, who along with co-director Heidi Ewing is an Academy Award nominee for the film Jesus Camp and has won numerous Emmy awards and a Peabody Award.