Sundance 2025: A Personal Preview
The Movies I Am Looking Forward To Seeing In Park City...
On Wednesday, I am headed to the mountains of Park City, UT for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. This is my 26th Sundance and at this point, I think the memory foam seats at the Holiday Village Cinema are expecting me, ready to commune again, body to seat, as we take in another year of festival screenings. I read last year that The Holiday Village had closed down and, as the longterm home to the festival’s Press & Industry screenings1, I was worried about where the festival’s screenings may be forced to move. But it seems as though Sundance will be stepping in, cleaning them up, and using them again this year, so I look forward to what might be a farewell to my home away from home.
I have written extensively about the festival, and looking ahead to this year, I’ll be writing when I can— you can follow along here or on my Instagram page, where I will be posting my immediate reactions2 and offering thoughts on films I see and the experience of attending. In the meantime, I thought it would be worth highlighting some of the films that hold a special interest for me, and so, presented in alphabetical order, a quick preview of a few of the films I hope to catch at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU by Mary Bronstein
One of the great gifts of being a film programmer is having the opportunity to support emerging filmmakers and then watch them grow and develop as artists over time. I was incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to program Mary Bronstein’s debut feature YEAST (alongside my former programming colleague Holly Herrick) when we were programming together back in 2008, as well as her short film ROUND TOWN GIRLS in 2009. Mary’s singular voice is sorely needed on the screen, and I am so excited that she is back at it. But not only is she back, she’s got the support of A24, a stellar cast, and a Sundance premiere to launch this film straight into our faces. And oh, do we have it coming. Get ready to squirm?
THE LIBRARIANS by Kim A. Snyder
Another filmmaker whose work I have been honored to program down the years, Kim A. Snyder makes powerful documentaries that have sought to track the quest for justice among the families and young victims of gun violence. Beneath her work is a justifiable rage, a refusal to allow inaction by hypocrites whose pieties cynically contradict their refusal to enact common sense changes. How perfect, then, for Kim to take on the same cynics who crow about individual freedoms while seeking to strip them away from the rest of us. As a passionate reader and stalwart supporter of libraries as a central space of public, democratic engagement, THE LIBRARIANS looks to be a movie that I know will show us how important it is to keep our beloved institutions free for all people.
One of the discoveries of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival3, Amalia Ulma’s EL PLANETA is a beautifully made black-and-white comedy about a mother and daughter who hustle their way through Gijón, Spain. I remember exactly where I was sitting4 when I encountered Ulma’s absurdist style, and it was a breath of fresh air5 that winter, leaving me excited to see what was next for her. Her new film MAGIC FARM sounds like an exciting leap— the film is set in Argentina and, as someone obsessed with South American cinema, I am really looking forward to once again encountering her singular sense of humor in a new context. If things go according to plan, this will be the first film I’m seeing at this year’s festival— excited to kick it all off with such an original voice.
PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF by Matt Wolf
I love Matt Wolf’s movies. From WILD COMBINATION, his amazing portrait of the unclassifiable musician Arthur Russell, to RECORDER: THE MARION STOKES PROJECT to SPACESHIP EARTH, I have been very lucky to have been able to program Matt’s films over the years and have loved his approach to each of his subjects— there is a detailed intimacy to his filmmaking that just sings for me. So, when I saw that he was taking on Paul Reubens, I knew to get excited. The festival is showing both parts of this film in one sitting, and I can’t wait— from the very first time I saw The Pee Wee Herman Show in the early 1980’s (was it on HBO?), I was in love with this transgressive yet heartfelt sendup of kid’s TV. This one’s for me and I am so excited to see what Matt does with Paul’s story.
PETER HUJAR’S DAY by Ira Sachs
And speaking of reclaiming LGBTQ artists, Ira Sachs, another filmmaker I have been proud to program throughout the years, follows up his terrific PASSAGES with a new film about the photographer Peter Hujar, whose beautiful portraiture of New York’s gay and literary scene remains a powerful document of a lost time. Hujar’s work gained a new audience in recent years when his unforgettable 1969 photo ORGASMIC MAN was used as the cover image by Hanya Yanagihara for her novel “A Little Life”. Ira has been a true visionary in his complex and diverse on-screen depictions of gay experience, and this film, starring Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall, looks to be in a new register for him. I love a good “conversation” film (MY DINNER WITH ANDRE, anyone?), so I’ll be there for this one, too.
OK, any film that seems to be channeling BLOW OUT, THE CONVERSATION, STRAW DOGS, and names the cinematographer, composer, and sound designer in the description6? And it was shot on 35mm? This movie, above all others I have read about in this year’s program, seems to demand that I see it in a cinema. So, that’s the plan. I am not a huge Midnight movie buff, but this one seems to tick my boxes, and I will be there to get them ticked in person!
During the pandemic, Eva Victor caught my attention on pre-fascist Twitter7 with her hilarious one-sided conversations that eviscerated the era’s conservative idiocy. I watched all of her videos and loved Eva’s sense of humor— she absolutely got me through some dumb, dark days with a laugh. So, when I was browsing the Sundance program, I saw Eva’s face and just felt I knew it, but I didn’t know why? Then it clicked! So, welcome to my first-ever parasocial film festival screening! I can’t wait to see what she does here— in an era desperate for new comedic voices, I love Eva’s sensibility and hope this one is a breakthrough.
This past year, I performed a version of Brian Eno’s classic song BABY’S ON FIRE and, in researching the song for my performance, stumbled upon an interpretation that made a lot of sense to me: the song, it was argued, was based on a famous, unforgettable photo from the Vietnam war called “The Terror Of War” (warning: very disturbing image at that link), credited to a 21 year old photographer named Nick Ut. The photo, which depicts a nine-year-old girl named Phan Thu Kim Phúc running away from a napalm attack on the village of Trảng Bàng, is absolutely unforgettable. I dug deeply into the story, re-read Susan Sontag’s “On Photography” and “Regarding The Pain Of Others” and became very interested in the story behind the photograph. Eno’s lyrics, in this context, are chilling:
Photographers snip snap
Take your time, she’s only burning
This kind of experience
Is necessary for her learning…
This is not the only photo of a Vietnam war atrocity that haunts me—(again, a warning: very disturbing image at this link) “Saigon Execution” is another unforgettable, powerful, and devastating image from the war that I find unbearably painful.
The Sundance description does not say which photo (either of these or another) the film is about, but there are some context clues: “Saigon Execution” was taken on the streets of Saigon and the image being used to promote THE STRINGER (see above) shows an empty road in a rural context, with hand painted road signs, which makes me think this is a film about “The Terror Of War”— no matter which image the film is about, these or any other, this is one of the films I am very eager to see, which I hope will continue to shape our understanding of the horrors of war.
SUNFISH (& OTHER STORIES ON GREEN LAKE) by Sierra Falconer
I grew up in Michigan and, via my step-mother’s father, spent some time each summer at an inland lake8 in the late 1970’s and throughout the 1980’s. Lake life in Michigan is a subculture unto itself, and it seems that filmmaker Sierra Falconer has made an impressionistic movie about life on Green Lake which, I have never visited but which appears to be in West Michigan, just south of Grand Rapids? Anyway, I am extremely interested to learn more about this film and the world it depicts, not because I am looking for any sort of personal specificity, but more to settle in and share the experience that the film creates. Of all the films at the festival, this one feels like something personal for me to enjoy. I can almost smell it…
THE VIRGIN OF QUARRY LAKE by Laura Casabé
More cozy lake vibes, right? Wrong. I am a huge fan of the Argentine author Mariana Enríquez whose novel “Our Share Of Night”, a politically charged horror story about the darkest underbelly of authoritarian society, is one of my favorite books of the past few years. In 2020, she published a short story in The New Yorker entitled “Our Lady Of The Quarry”, which I love and which I am thrilled to see has been adapted by writer Benjamin Naishtat for director Laura Casabé and is screening at Sundance. This is, I think, the first ever Mariana Enríquez adaptation? If you don’t want to spoil this one by reading “Our Lady Of The Quarry” and want to try some short stories out before committing to “Our Share Of Night”, give her most recent collection “A Sunny Place For Shady People” a read! Or don’t? Either way, this one sits squarely atop my must-see list!
More soon from Utah… stay tuned!
These cinemas are the place where I and so many in the industry have spent decades attending screenings— the Holiday Village *is* Sundance for me.
…until we get a non-fascist Meta alternative. Hurry… please?
The COVID Sundance, attended from home. One day we’ll all process that…
It was on my couch, at home
No pun intended…
Not the credits… THE DESCRIPTION! You love to see it.
Remember? Ah, yes.
aka not a Great Lake