Sundance 2024: In-Person Notebook
Themes & Highlights From My Sundance In-Person Screenings
Note: This piece is my fourth post covering Sundance, and focuses on in-person screenings at the festival. Previous pieces can be found here, and a fifth piece is coming soon, covering at-home viewings on the Sundance virtual platform.
Sundance is many things to many people— a chance to party, a mix of meetings and films, a launching pad for new work, a marketing opportunity for a film or product or company or brand, a series of panels and conversations, a place to generate content for social media accounts, a moment to steal some time on the slopes, or some combination of all of these. For me, Sundance is a joyous impossibility, an ever-renewing river of ideas, an opportunity to dive in and see an unreasonable number of films in a condensed period of time in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the current state of American independent cinema.
I am, and pretty much have always been1, a satellite orbiting the festival’s Industry screenings, and every year I spend my days in constant rotation— wake up, grab an iced coffee, walk to the tent at Press & Industry screening venue2 , get my bag and coat searched by security, wait in line, walk into the theater, sit on an aisle seat, wait for the film to start, watch the film, walk out of the theater and back into the tent, get my bag and coat searched by security, wait in line, walk back into the theater, sit on an aisle seat, wait for the film to start, watch the film, walk out of the theater and back into the tent, etc. Yes, I am committed to the bit, but also looking to maximize my ability to see as many films as I can fit into each and every day at the festival.
In the wake of the COVID pandemic, Sundance seized upon the opportunity to offer films online, and as a result, the calculus of my screening routine has changed, requiring me and my team to do a little more planning and be a little more rigorous about how we schedule our screening time. Instead of being completely flexible to follow word of mouth or reviews that pique our interest, we divide the schedule into two— films that will be available on streaming are put on the back burner for viewing once we get back home, and films that are not streaming, which can only be seen in person at the festival, become the priority. It makes sense to see what you can when you can in order to get the most out of attending, and my team and I are not alone— most industry attendees use the same strategy to decide which films to see in person, and so, those films generate the biggest lines, with Premieres (usually featuring established actors, subjects, or directors) typically the most crowded or, in some cases, full, with some pass holders unable to get in. And so, scheduling becomes about establishing priorities each day— which film can I not miss in person? From there, work backward to see which film precedes it and lets out in time to get a good place in line, and then which one precedes that one, etc. Soon enough, each day takes care of itself.
Of course, because of scheduling, some of the films that are streaming align better with prioritized in-person screenings before or after, and sometimes, two high priority “in-person only” films are scheduled at the same time or too close to one another and so have to choose which one to see. And so, I end up with a shifting range of films, invariably missing things I should have seen3, seeing some films I shouldn't have bothered to see, and in this way, my festival ends up as a singular experience— no two Sundances are alike for anyone.
All of this is a prelude to say: my experience of Sundance is my own, and so this piece is not comprehensive or meant to exclude films I may or may not have seen, but instead, a chance to examine the films that stood out during the flood of ideas and stories that made up my time at Sundance.
This Year’s Theme: Processing Trauma & Grief
I am a deep, true believer in the power of cinema to crack us open and allow us access to feelings and emotions that we would otherwise keep in some inaccessible place inside us. Maybe it is my subjective experience, but I often find myself surprised at what I find welling up inside of me when I sit in a dark cinema, and while I don’t analyze that experience in the moment4, I often use it as an opportunity to look back at myself and think about what those feelings might mean.
In the case of this year’s festival, it was impossible not to feel an undercurrent of unprocessed grief and trauma moving through the program. To me, it makes perfect sense— our country is not only in denial about its recent history (over 1,000,000 dead during the pandemic, political and state violence underscoring a roll back of civil liberties via punitive new laws for the people while criminal political elites receive slow-moving, hypocritical impunity, etc.), but it demands silence about it, treating self-care, mental health, and emotional need as some sort of weakness or flaw, refusing us the support our society needs to heal ourselves. This year’s Sundance program featured multiple films about processing grief and trauma, providing critical, emotional space for artists and audiences to commune with not only one another, but with ourselves, allowing us to access those interior spaces where all of these feelings reside.
LOOK INTO MY EYES
Lana Wilson’s new documentary LOOK INTO MY EYES is, on the surface, a portrait of New York City psychics, utilizing their readings and interactions with their clients as a portal into their own lives and experiences. But Wilson is up to something far more meaningful than simply bringing us into psychic readings, movingly using the text of the readings themselves to examine the personal pain of her psychic subjects, each of whom brings a form of their own grief into their mystical channeling of the losses and struggles of their clients. Juxtaposing intimate interactions between psychics and their clients (the editing of these sequences— cutting between single medium shots, reaction shots in close up, over the shoulder POV shots, with wider two shots bringing us in and out of the mystical and back into the real world— are an absolute master class in non-fiction editing and pacing) with private interviews with the psychics in their own homes, Wilson connects the emotional content of the film in a way that not only eschews judgement, but underscores the beautiful meaning beneath readings that the rational mind can easily understand as fiction.
But there is a difference between lies and fiction, and Wilson brilliantly draws that crucial distinction, showing the ways in which these interactions allow both clients and psychics the opportunity to share their pain, find common understanding, and a sense of much needed relief from loss, shame, and guilt, a path toward self-forgiveness that, in the end, feels like a triumph. A skeptic walking into the theater, I found myself letting go of my judgments and seeing this process for what it is; a form of therapeutic help in a world that provides far too few options for psychological relief. I haven’t even mentioned how deeply connected this film is to life in New York City, a city of stories that silently fill the streets and subways— all of us creating a community of unknowable experience, a city of unique personalities, everyone trying their best to get by. There is no film at Sundance that I have talked and thought about more than LOOK INTO MY EYES, a major work of empathetic understanding that will stand out over time, one that I hope to revisit again and again.
BETWEEN THE TEMPLES
Nathan Silver is a filmmaker whose work I have been fortunate to program, but even I, a longtime admirer, was not prepared for the masterful creative leap he has taken with BETWEEN THE TEMPLES. Silver’s film is the story of Ben (Jason Schwartzman), a cantor returning to work at his local temple after the loss of his wife, and who rediscovers his capacity for love and connection when he agrees to help Carla (a peerless Carol Kane), his former music teacher from his childhood, study to become an adult Bat Mitzvah. One of the defining features of this hilarious and profoundly moving film is the harmony Silver has orchestrated among his collaborators, with the brilliant script (co-written by C. Mason Wells) served carefully and perfectly by the cinematography (by the great Sean Price Williams, who continues to stun by connecting the texture of film and shot composition with the emotional content of the actor’s performances— it is his enduring super power) which is the engine of the film’s brilliant editing (by filmmaker and editor John Magary, who makes a cameo in the film and whose editorial voice gives the movie its “melancomic”5 momentum and rhythm) which honors the performances (literally every actor in this film is outstanding— the movie is a murderer’s row of comic genius). Importantly, the film is filled with hilarious6 insight into working class, suburban Jewish life, and the social and spiritual conflicts of love, family, community, faith, and grief. BETWEEN THE TEMPLES was my favorite film at Sundance, a portrait of a man asked to put aside his loss and move on and who, instead, searches for and finds another path forward.
ETERNAL YOU
Over the course of the festival, ETERNAL YOU became twinned in my mind with LOOK INTO MY EYES— two films about attempting to converse with lost loved ones as a form of self-healing. But while LOOK INTO MY EYES forges a moving three-way connection between psychics, clients, and the audience, ETERNAL YOU is a terrifying look down the one way street of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool for techno-capitalism to remake our reality. The film explores the development of AI tools that are geared toward creating onscreen connections between living humans and their dead loved ones and shows us not only the experiences of users, but the worrying thinking of the people behind the development of these products. Why do I see people talking to a psychic and exchanging money as consensual and people paying to chat with an AI bot that has consumed an unfathomable amount of langue and data (and returns it as communication with a dead loved one) as exploitation? Certainly, the approach of the filmmakers and framing of the story made all the difference here, with directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck showing us the incredible cynicism of many of the companies looking to build AI and VR versions of the dead as a way to hook grieving loved ones on their products, but also, the impersonal nature of text and animation-based computer interaction comes off as distant, detached, inhuman— an emotional “uncanny valley” that is deeply troubling to me in ways that the personal readings of the psychics of LOOK INTO MY EYES are not. I have been juggling these two movies in my head for days— one a horror story about technology, the other a compassionate story of human interaction— and I know how I feel about them, but what really brings them together in my mind is not how these clients access these representations of their loss, but the commonality in their search for comfort and grace, the need for closure and forgiveness, and the deeply personal nature of that journey.
A NEW KIND OF WILDERNESS
Again, any thinking about a film comes first through my personal experience, and as a husband and the father of two boys, films about fatherhood, parenting, and loss are always going to catch me in a vulnerable place. In the darkest parts of my brain, scenarios of loss play a huge role in my anxiety and worry— it is terrible to think about, overwhelming, despite the fact that loss is universal and is coming for all us. Sundance is always filled with films about familial loss and this year was no exception, with fiction films like GHOSTLIGHT, HANDLING THE UNDEAD, and PRESENCE (among the films I saw) grappling with the experience of loss in interesting (if varyingly effective) ways. But while those films took on loss through the experience of fiction, A NEW KIND OF WILDERNESS examines the aftermath of a mother’s death in a way I hadn’t seen before. Focusing on the experience of a widowed farmer and his three children (and his step-daughter, who has moved away to the city), all of whom had been living on an idyllic, self-sustaining farm in rural Norway while homeschooling and finding joy outdoors working and playing in the natural world, the film finds beauty in small moments of innocence that come crashing down to earth in the aftermath of their maternal loss. Well, perhaps “crashing” is too much, because while the film does a lovely job of making the family’s grief tangible, it also, perhaps unintentionally, showcases the incredible social fabric of Norwegian society, built upon mutual aid, systemic support, and shared understanding. And while the film attempts to show the disconnect between contemporary life and the family’s choice to live “off the grid” (no TV, no phones, no computers, etc etc.), when circumstance finally requires the kids to attend a public school and use technology, the result is that they are more than prepared to live balanced, healthy, reasonable lives because they have experienced life outside of technology— they are resilient and want to be part of a world that supports them. Most tellingly, when the family are forced to sell their personal paradise to make up for the financial loss of their mother’s income, they move to another farm, a collective that allows them to utilize their experience, find work, and sustain their approach to living— from paradise to almost paradise. It was shocking, as an American, to see how the social supports in place in Norway allowed this family to grieve and thrive in the aftermath of their profound loss. The unexpected result of seeing A NEW KIND OF WILDERNESS was to be reminded of how absent social support and acknowledgement of grief as a legitimate form of human feeling are in my own culture.
Documentary Portraits
Non-fiction filmmaking is going through a well-documented crisis, with celebrity portraits and true crime tales finding overwhelming interest among streamers, and theatrical success being driven by concert films and event cinema. This year’s Sundance had its share of portraiture, and interestingly, most of the films in this category of documentary tapped directly into my interests, so instead of exclusively looking at political documentaries like POWER, UNION, AND SO IT BEGINS, and WAR GAME (all of which deserve to be seen), I leaned into my own interests to see what happens when films about some of my favorite, under appreciated subjects get the non-fiction treatment. Would these films give us something more than the status quo?
DEVO
I will forever remember the 2024 Sundance Film Festival as the Devo Sundance. Rarely have my personal interests been so wonderfully aligned with a film festival experience — Not only did I get to enjoy the film about them, but I got to see them play live. In a club. The performance was absolutely enhanced by seeing the film, which explores the political origins of Devo’s work with deep insight into their conceptual, anti-authoritarian art making. Founded in the aftermath of the Kent State massacre, Devo set out to reject the absurdity of contemporary political experience by transcending it with a visionary artistic understanding of satire. But instead of changing the world in the way they had hoped, they were embraced by it, working to change hearts and minds from within a music industry driven by money and conformity. Chris Smith does a great job enhancing Devo’s rich archive of experimental films, performance footage, and music videos with archival clips from the fringes of American culture, bringing a deep understanding of the band’s meaning and context to an audience who may just want to remember them as a New Wave curiosity. This is a tremendous reclamation project, one that I hope allows a new generation to appreciate the true genius and artistry behind the red hats and monkey masks and pop sensibility— at heart, Devo remain a political band with an unwavering belief in our collective need to evolve into a better society. That we continue to move in the opposite direction just proves that they were right all along.
LUTHER: NEVER TOO MUCH
Man. Luther Vandross was an incredibly gifted singer, songwriter, producer, and performer, an unbelievable talent who overcame years of musical and physical stereotyping by a racist music industry to achieve stardom in a world that never understood him. I went into this film knowing his hits and some of his work as a backup singer (especially his work with David Bowie on YOUNG AMERICANS) and came out blown away by him as a person— there are few people who have worked as hard and have triumphed over as much adversity as he did without being bitter assholes or petty tyrants, but wow, Luther Vandross was pure joy as a human being. When you see a film portray its subject with such love, you worry that maybe you’re experiencing hagiography, but Dawn Porter is too good a director to simply tell you what a great person he was— she allows the love his collaborators show for him to speak volumes about his loyalty and kindness as a leader and artist. Yet nothing says more than the skill and emotion Vandross brought to his performances— his is an unbelievable voice, a pitch perfect force of nature that carries the depth of feeling he was unable fully realize through his lived experience. Porter understands this and carefully, lovingly presents that dissonance, and the movie is great because of it, allowing songs to run, performances to resonate, creating space in the cinema for the music to take us to places no words or images can go.
ENO
I refer the honorable gentleman to my previous reply. An absolute favorite!
NOCTURNES
An unexpectedly moving cinematic experience, NOCTURNES is a documentary about a scientist named Mansi Mungee who spends her days scouting locations in the Eastern Himalayan forests so that she can spend her nights observing and documenting the Hawk Moth, a singular type of moth species living among an unbelievably varied and diverse population. Setting up a sheet of cloth with a grid that allows her to gauge the relative size of the moths, Mungee works through the night, scanning the brightly lit surface for her prized subject, capturing photos and measurements for her years-long study of variations in the population, variations that can tell us about the status and future of our planetary climate crisis. In reading about NOCTURNES, I picked up on the need to see the movie on a big screen with a cinematic sound system and it did not disappoint— the stunning sound design of the film was completely immersive, transporting me to the quiet of the forest, where the fluttering of wings and the sound of jittery movement became the center of my experience. But I was also deeply moved by Mungee herself, whose commitment to observing and understanding our world over a long period of time by focusing on a single insect ended up as a profound reminder of the power of human inquiry and, for me, drew a line connecting science with art— a celebration of the ways in which we use our senses to perceive and understand the world.
Transformations
Drama is driven by change, and these two films stood out to me as profound examinations of transformative experiences that not only changed their protagonists, but offered me new insights into human experience that I think I will be grappling with for a long time to come.
I SAW THE TV GLOW
I am learning that any honest thinking about the work of Jane Schoenbrun must come with two realizations— first, that Jane’s work is deeply personal, and second, that by making deeply personal work, Jane has an ability that very few artists have to tap into a universal feeling of dysphoria that speaks simultaneously to both gender and American culture. There is a lot of discussion of what Jane’s work is saying because of this complexity— instead of a typical depiction of the transgender experience as a series of social experiences that build up to a realization of trans identity (which, despite being more common, remains terribly underrepresented in film), Jane’s work is focused on the emotional experience of dysphoria across personal and social boundaries, emotions that have never been expressed visually, sonically, or narratively on screen before. What makes their work so revolutionary is that it takes the trans experience as its subject yet also explores it within the framework of the horror of being a young, media obsessed American teen, a consumer of images, isolated, hallucinating at the margins of social acceptance. In this way, it is universal, deeply empathetic, strange and, crucially, emotional— I have to confess, Jane’s work brings me inside their emotional world in ways that I sometimes can’t articulate but that I know deeply, that reside in previously unexamined feelings and experiences.
Just one example among many in the film— the TV show with which the film’s protagonists are obsessed is called THE PINK OPAQUE, which also happens to be the title of an album collecting the singles of the band Cocteau Twins, whose work has always been like a favorite personal secret for me. To see that collection of songs name-checked as the title of a fictional TV show about a metaphysical connection between teenage girls made the hairs on my arms stand on end in recognition. So, I gave a listen to one of my favorite songs on THE PINK OPAQUE…
…which, you know, pointed me online, to this…
…which— A single, spiraling doorway through which I experience a single idea in Jane’s work leading me to and then away from something familiar to discover a moving online video that feels a part of another world — a personal, intimate video of a bedroom outsider musician covering a song from THE PINK OPAQUE.
It has to said: Jane is miles ahead of me, their work will keep bringing me back with its endless possibilities. Can’t wait to see this again.
ÁMA GLORIA
One last movie to discuss, and it is another small miracle of a film. Initially premiering as the opening of the 2023 Critic’s Week section at Cannes, ÁMA GLORIA was programmed at Sundance in the Spotlight section that showcases films that have already appeared on the festival circuit. Given this, I often skip Spotlight films, but with my schedule working out the way it did (see above), I slid into this film at the end of a long day knowing nothing about it and, reader, I was transformed by it. Marie Amachoukeli’s film is a brilliant, tender portrait of a young French girl and her deep connection with her nanny. And what a film— vibrating with awareness and compassion, Amachoukeli fills each and every frame with real feeling and conjures one of the all-time great child performances in film from Louise Mauroy-Panzani, whose Cléo is alive to every single moment. Her work alongside Ilça Moreno Zego as Gloria is a marvel, allowing the film to avoid cliché in favor of intimacy and honesty. Cinema is unfortunately filled with stories of the ways in which black lives have been coopted to provide spiritual and emotional uplift for white characters, but ÁMA GLORIA takes this notion and flips it on its head, giving full complexity, agency, and maternal grace to the shared experience between a woman, her children, and the small child who loves her because of her own experience of her compassionate care. I cannot recommend this film highly enough, a much needed dose of social realist beauty, of real, lived experience, in a world filled with detached artifice. An unforgettable film discovery, one for which I can’t help but be grateful.
Next time: My favorites among the films I watched at home on the Sundance Virtual Screening platform. Shockingly, I have even more writing to do… (Apologies!)
I’ve mentioned it before, but this year marked my 25th trip to Sundance.
The Holiday Village Cinemas, a four-screen art house cinema that I try to support each and every day by buying at least one thing from the concession stand.
Hello, LOVE LIES BLEEDING. I will find you soon! 😔
I just go with it. The tears come, and the release is extremely good for me.
This is my own portmanteau, but maybe it has been used before? Melancholy + Comedy = melancomic. My absolute favorite form of cinematic comedy.
I do not use this word lightly and I cannot pretend when films are not funny. BETWEEN THE TEMPLES made me legitimately laugh, real laughter, which, again, just underscores for me how much I like great comedies about grief and how few and far between they are… 🤷♂️
Ahhhh, so much treasure here! Thank you for writing about all of these films and Sundance. I can’t wait to see all of these!