Growing up in the Salt Lake City area, I took the Sundance Film Festival for granted. It was just something that happened annually. Every year I'd see a handful of films and visit Park City's Main Street to take in the sights and sounds that came with the riotous 1990s when the parties and hoopla surrounding the festival threatened to steal all of the attention away from the films. I'm terrible at parties, I did get to see some remarkable concerts during that era. One of those shows eventually led to my "Almost Famous" moment whenBlack Rebel Motorcycle Club asked me, a lowly music journalist for Angela H. Brown at the legendary SLUG Magazine, to go on the road with them.
I wouldn't cover the Sundance Film Festival professionally until 2009. It was an incredible year for the festival. I think I watch nearly 40 films and managed to squeeze in a few interviews. I must have been insane. I certainly didn't sleep.
My plans in recent years have been far more modest. It's more of a Sundance roulette. I'll pick five or six films and then just build around them as time allows. Sometimes I miss the big title. It's okay, I'll catch it later. Even with an online festival, I like to spread the films out. I want to really think about what I've watched. Some films require a greater amount of time to digest. So, for this year's preview I enlisted the help of Sundance Film Festival Director Tabitha Jackson.
Before we could dive into this year's festival, Jackson and I paused to look at the festival's future. Last year there was a meritless anxiety that the Sundance Film Festival might not return to Park City in 2022. Most of those fears were silenced when the festival announced a hybrid schedule late last year that included in-person events in Park City. The in-person aspect of the festival isn't happening, but the initial plans provided a sense of relief. I'd suggest that we've also become more accustomed to uncertainty. Moral of the story? The future is unwritten but Jackson assures me that Park City is absolutely still the home of the Sundance Film Festival.
What follows is a conversation about women's reproductive rights, fighting the system, and Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave.
Here's the eight films that Jackson and I talk about and six that I've picked out on my own.
Film descriptions provided by the Sundance Film Festival.
HAPPENING
Spotlight
In 1963 France, Anne, a promising young university student, is devastated to learn she’s pregnant. She immediately insists on termination, but her physician warns of the unsparing laws against either seeking or aiding abortions, and her tentative attempts to reach out to her closest friends are nervously rebuffed. As weeks pass, without support or clear access, an increasingly desperate Anne unwaveringly persists in seeking any possible means of ending the pregnancy in hopes of reclaiming her hard-fought future.
CALL JANE
Premieres
Chicago, 1968. As a city and the nation are poised on the brink of violent political upheaval, suburban housewife Joy leads an ordinary life with her husband and daughter. When Joy’s pregnancy leads to a life-threatening condition, she must navigate a medical establishment unwilling to help. Her journey to find a solution to an impossible situation leads her to the “Janes,” a clandestine organization of women who provide Joy with a safer alternative — and in the process, change her life.
THE JANES
US Documentary Competition
In the spring of 1972, police raided an apartment on the South Side of Chicago. Seven women were arrested and charged. The accused were part of a clandestine network. Using code names, blindfolds, and safe houses to protect their identities and their work, they built an underground service for women seeking safe, affordable, illegal abortions. They called themselves Jane. Facing off against the mafia, the church, and the state, the Janes exhibited unparalleled bravery and compassion for those most in need.
NOTHING COMPARES
World Cinema Documentary Competition
Since the beginning of her career, Sinéad O’Connor has used her powerful voice to challenge the narratives she was surrounded by while growing up in predominantly Roman Catholic Ireland. Despite her agency, depth, and perspective, O’Connor’s unflinching refusal to conform means that she has often been patronized and unfairly dismissed as an attention-seeking pop star.
SIRENS
World Cinema Documentary Competition
True to their name, Slave to Sirens — the first and only all-woman thrash metal band in the Middle East — are utterly magnetic. Amid a backdrop of political unrest and the heartbreaking unraveling of Beirut, five bandmates form a beacon of expression, resistance, and independence. Director Rita Baghdadi follows founders and guitarists Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara as their tenderness, and sometimes bitterness, for one another grows in ways both unexpected and deeply moving. Joined by vocalist Maya Khairallah, bassist Alma Doumani, and drummer Tatyana Boughaba, these women negotiate their emotional journeys through young adulthood in tumultuous circumstances with grace, raw passion, and a ferocious commitment to their art. Their grit is tested as they grapple with the complexities of friendship, sexuality, and the destruction around them.
AFTERSHOCK
US Documentary Competition
An alarmingly disproportionate number of Black women are failed every year by the U.S. maternal health system. Shamony Gibson and Amber Rose Isaac were vibrant, excited mothers-to-be whose deaths due to childbirth complications were preventable. Now, their partners and families are determined to sound a rallying cry around this chilling yet largely ignored crisis.
AFTER YANG
Spotlight
When Yang — a lifelike, artificially intelligent android that Jake and Kyra buy as a companion for their adopted daughter — abruptly stops functioning, Jake just wants him repaired quickly and cheaply. But having purchased Yang “certified refurbished” from a now-defunct store, he’s led first to a conspiracy theorist technician and then a technology museum curator, who discovers that Yang was actually recording memories. Jake’s quest eventually becomes one of existential introspection and contemplating his own life, as it passes him by.
LIVING
Premiers
A veteran civil servant and bureaucratic cog in the rebuilding of Britain post-WWII, Williams (Bill Nighy) expertly pushes paperwork around a government office only to reckon with his existence when he’s diagnosed with a fatal illness. A widower, he conceals the condition from his grown son, spends an evening of debauchery with a bohemian writer in Brighton, and uncharacteristically avoids his office. But after a vivacious former co-worker, Margaret, inspires him to find meaning in his remaining days, Williams attempts to salvage a modest building project from bureaucratic purgatory.
THE MISSION
World Cinema Documentary Competition
Offering an unprecedented level of access into the journeys of missionaries, The Mission follows four American teens as they embark on one of the most religiously significant, ideologically challenging, and culturally unifying experiences in their community: their mission to Finland. As these young people reckon with the weight of their ambassador status, the film explores the varying ways in which their work shapes how they view themselves, the world, and their theology. Steadfast in its commitment to their perspectives, this film reveals the individuals behind the suits and nametags that have come to signify the work of Mormon missionaries globally. Through snubs on street corners, difficult Finnish lessons, triumphant baptisms, tearful goodbyes, and riotous welcomes home, The Mission is a full-bodied, complex presentation of missionary life.
DUAL
US Dramatic Competition
Recently diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease, Sarah is unsure how to process the news. To help ease her friends’ and family’s impending loss, she is encouraged to participate in a simple futuristic cloning procedure called “Replacement,” after which Sarah’s last days will be spent teaching the clone how to live on as Sarah once she’s gone. But while it takes only an hour for a clone to be made, things become significantly more challenging when that double is no longer wanted.
YOU WON’T BE ALONE
World Cinema Dramatic Competition
In an isolated mountain village in 19th-century Macedonia, a young girl is taken from her mother and transformed into a witch by an ancient, shape-shifting spirit. Left to wander feral, the young witch beholds the natural world with curiosity and wonder. After inadvertently killing a villager and assuming her body, she continues to inhabit different people, living among the villagers for years, observing and mimicking their behavior until the ancient spirit returns, bringing them full circle.
WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD
Premieres
From his bedroom home studio, high school student Ziggy performs original folk-rock songs for an adoring online fan base. This concept mystifies his formal and uptight mother, Evelyn, who runs a shelter for survivors of domestic abuse. While Ziggy is busy trying to impress his socially engaged classmate Lila by making his music less bubblegum and more political, Evelyn meets Angie and her teen son, Kyle, when they seek refuge at her facility. She observes a bond between the two that she’s missing with her own son, and decides to take Kyle under her wing against her better instincts.
RESURRECTION
Premieres
Margaret (Rebecca Hall) leads a successful and orderly life, perfectly balancing the demands of her busy career and single parenthood to her fiercely independent daughter Abbie. But that careful balance is upended when she glimpses a man she instantly recognizes, an unwelcome shadow from her past. A short time later, she encounters him again. Before long, Margaret starts seeing David (Tim Roth) everywhere — and their meetings appear to be far from an unlucky coincidence. Battling her rising fear, Margaret must confront the monster she’s evaded for two decades who has come to conclude their unfinished business.
INSTANT LIFE
Indie Episodic Program
Before she met Harold von Braunhut, Yolanda Signorelli was a young Bohemian actress floating through the exploitation film world of the late 1960s. A mad scientist with a tenacious entrepreneurial spirit, Harold ruled the back pages of comic books by selling novelty mail-order toys like X-Ray Specs, Invisible Goldfish, and his most successful product, Amazing Live Sea Monkeys. Harold perfected the formula for bringing these miniature sea creatures to life by combining practical chemistry with a magician’s sleight of hand. After Harold and Yolanda fell in love, the unlikely duo oversaw the rise of a pop culture phenomenon that still endures.