Next yr’s Sundance Film Festival will function Jennifer Lopez singing and dancing in Bill Condon’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Questlove exploring the legacy of Sly & The Family Stone and Associated Press journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s newest documentary in regards to the struggle in Ukraine.
The Sundance Institute on Wednesday unveiled 87 function movies set to premiere on the 2025 pageant, kicking off on Jan. 23 in Park City, Utah.
Now in its forty first yr, the pageant stays a spot of discovery for unbiased cinema and rising voices. Because of its January timing, it’s additionally a gathering that arrives alongside the presidential inauguration. At the 2017 pageant following Donald Trump’s first inauguration, Main Street was taken over by a energetic girls’s march stuffed with celebrities. This yr, no such plans have been introduced.
“Sundance as a pageant has endured as a spot to collect via inaugurations each 4 years, via totally different cultural moments and political moments,” mentioned pageant director Eugene Hernandez. “We have a program that each engages with the world and in addition gives at the exact same time an escape.”
Narrative movies and documentaries premiering this yr will contact on politicized subjects like transgender tales and rights, “stand your floor” legal guidelines, incarceration, the fitting to die and ebook banning. But Sundance doesn’t program by theme or have mandates about subjects, mentioned Kim Yutani, the pageant’s director of programming.
“I believe what you see throughout this system are tales which are advised with actual authenticity. There’s an progressive high quality to many of those movies,” Yutani mentioned. “And the concept of free expression is one thing that’s simply as essential to us.”
Urgent points and acquainted faces in documentaries
Documentaries are all the time a spotlight at Sundance, the place the dialog begins and infrequently continues via the yr into the Oscar race. Chernov follows his Oscar profitable“20 Days in Mariupol” with “2000 Meters to Andriivka,” which appears at a Ukrainian platoon on a mission to liberate a village from Russian occupation. It’s a joint challenge between AP and PBS “Frontline.”
“Free Leonard Peltier” appears on the Indigenous activist who has spent most of his life in jail since his conviction within the 1975 killings of two FBI brokers in South Dakota. In July he was denied parole.
Hernandez additional spotlighted Barry Levinson and Robert May’s episodic sequence “Bucks County, USA” about political divides in small city America and the friendship of two teenage women regardless of their opposing views.
There are additionally a number of docs about well-known musicians and actors together with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s “SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius),” Shoshannah Stern’s “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore,” Amy Berg’s “It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley” and Matt Wolf’s “Pee-wee as Himself.” Elegance Bratton additionally appears on the roots of home music in “Move Ya Body: The Birth of House.”
Marlee Matlin in a scene from “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” (Sundance Institute through AP)
Star turns to observe at Sundance
Some performances which will have individuals speaking into the yr embrace: Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Thing with Feathers,” a few father processing the lack of his spouse; Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones in “Train Dreams” a few railroad day laborer from the “Sing Sing” author and director; John Lithgow and Olivia Colman as father and daughter in “Jimpa”; Lopez in Condon’s lush and vibrant musical adaptation; Lily Gladstone and Youn Yuh-jung in Andrew Ahn’s “The Wedding Banquet”; Josh O’Connor in “Rebuilding”; and Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall in “Peter Hujar’s Day,” about New York’s downtown artwork scene within the Nineteen Seventies, from Ira Sachs.
New Voices
Over 40% of the movies, chosen from almost 16,000 submissions, are directorial debuts, like Rachael Abigail Holder’s “Love, Brooklyn” with André Holland.
Yutani additionally highlighted Rashad Frett’s “Ricky,” starring Stephan James as a person making an attempt to rebuild his life submit incarceration. Another notable debut is “Sorry, Baby,” which Eva Victor wrote, directed and stars in and Barry Jenkins produced.
“There are scenes on this movie that I’ve by no means seen earlier than,” Yutani mentioned. “It was an actual revelation.”
Sundance from house
Kelly Marie Tran, Lily Gladstone, Han Gi-Chan, and Bowen Yang in “The Wedding Banquet” (Luka Cyprian/Sundance Institute through AP)
Film fans don’t have to make the trek via the snow to expensive Park City to have interaction with the pageant’s choices anymore. As with the previous few years, about 60% of this system can be obtainable on-line beginning on Jan. 30. Tickets go on sale for particular person movies on Jan. 16 for most people and even earlier for members.
“It’s a extremely an amazing alternative to only get a sampling of what’s to come back within the new yr for movies that can journey far and huge to different festivals or make it into theaters down the road,” Hernandez mentioned.
Is Sundance leaving Park City?
This can be one of many final years that the pageant is based out of Park City. Over the previous yr, the Sundance Institute has been exploring choices for host cities beginning in 2027. Finalists embrace Salt Lake City, Utah (with some occasions nonetheless in Park City), Boulder, Colorado, and Cincinnati, Ohio. An announcement is predicted within the first quarter of 2025.
