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Eugene Hernandez and Kim Yutani Talk Sundance 2024 Along with 20 Films We’re Anticipating at the Festival
I Saw the TV Glow, courtesy of Sundance Institute. With its 2024 edition kicking off today, Sundance turns 40. In the words of festival director Eugene Hernandez and director of programming Kim Yutani, this anniversary edition will be a mixture of the old and new—with the heaviest emphasis, of course, on the new. “We sincerely thought it would best honor and celebrate the history and the legacy of the festival by nodding to it and certainly digging into it in a few key spots, but really it’s the looking ahead and discovery that is what Sundance is all about,” said Sundance Festival Director Eugene Hernandez to Filmmaker in an interview last month. Added Yutani, “We’re leaning into the second week of the festival, as we get all of the world premieres out of the way and have people a little more relaxed, ready to convene and watch new movies, watch old movies and just be with each other as a community.” Accordingly, that second half contains retrospective screenings of Sundance hits such as Go Fish, The Babadook, Napoleon Dynamite and Three Seasons as panels with veterans like Miguel Arteta, Richard Linklater, Dawn Porter and Christine Vachon and a workshop for new creators.
As always, though, the press and industry focus throughout the festival’s first weekend will be on the all the premieres, a mix this year that includes a rare acquisition title from Steven Soderbergh, a film from Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap Entertainment, and quite a number of films whose catalog descriptions have caused early watchers to preemptively declare this edition something of a back-to-its-roots affair. About the acquisition titles, Yutani said, “I think that this year we have a program that has been programmed with a lot of integrity and is full of stories that we think are exciting and interesting and will spark conversation. If I were a buyer, I would be running out and buying these films for sure.”
Of course, buying patterns reveal themselves always in retrospect, and Hernandez notes the uncertainty at the beginning of any new round of the marketplace, particularly in this post-pandemic era when conventional distribution patterns have been disrupted. “How do we as filmmakers navigate a marketplace in which the future might be unknown, if we’re going into a festival environment where the streamers, for example, may not be buying as many documentaries, or where buyers might be acquiring these films for digital platforms rather than theatrical?” he asked. “Our responsibility is just to give each of these films the best shot at being introduced at the festival. If we can help folks in all of our different audience categories— whether it’s industry, curators from around the world, who take these films to other festivals, or the press and critics who come to write about them—we’re just there at the starting gun.” Hernandez cited a recent panel he moderated for DCTV where the filmmakers behind four films from last year’s festival—King Coal, Bad Press, Fantastic Machine and Joonam—discussed recalibrating their plans after their Sundance premieres, embracing collaboration among their films, direct dealings with local arthouses and ways of “looking ahead to other opportunities that weren’t reliant on a more traditional acquisition model.” He added, “There’s definitely something brewing there that is yet to be revealed, and there are going to be more conversations [around these ideas].”
As for changes at this year’s festival, the biggest from last year is the adjustment of the pandemic-initiated virtual platform, which will start for most viewers in the festival’s second half, on Thursday the 25th. (Press and industry get a one-day jump.) Participating in the virtual platform was optional for films with the exception of any film in a competitive section; those will all be available online. Caps will be placed on the online audiences, with Hernandez saying, “There are a limited number of streams that are available [for each film]. I think some folks who don’t work in the industry think, ‘Oh, it’s virtual, I can just see [a film] as many times as I want.’ But there’s a finite number, and we negotiate those number of streams. So it’s an additional venue for us, a digital venue that’s the size of a theater that we limit it to, and then it’s not available.” Hernandez also talked about a new Salt Lake City venue, multiplex theater The Gateway. (Other venue news includes the loss of the Yarrow Hotel Theater, which this year becomes a Slamdance location.) And Yutani pointed out changes in the film’s programming of episodic work: “We reframed the branding for that section so it’s more umbrella. Rather than having episodic work all over the festival, it’s all in one place, and there’s really strong work in that section.”
As always, Filmmaker has invited all feature festival filmmakers to respond to one question, this year about the meaning of a single location. We’ll have interviews with many of the films’ directors, cinematographers, editors and first-time producers. Taylor Hess, a contributing editor and producer at Sundance with Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples, will be journaling her trip, and Vadim Rizov will be penning his reviews starting tomorrow. For now, read below our thoughts on 20 pictures our editorial team strongly believe will be worth your attention.
Presence
sex, lies & videotape is one of the signature movies that made Sundance’s reputation, but Steven Soderbergh hasn’t shown a film at the festival in well over a decade. (His last film to premiere in Park City, 2010’s And Everything is Going Fine, dropped at Slamdance.) For his return to the festival, Soderbergh offers a self-financed film with a horror-leaning logline (family moves into house, but they are Not Alone) and a synopsis that gives no indication of the film’s tone or genre. Per an anonymous acquisitions head, quoted in The Wrap: “You’re scratching your head thinking, ‘Why did Steven Soderbergh suddenly self-finance?’ [Editor’s note: Something he already did with last year’s mini-series Command Z,.] That’s unusual for something like that to be in the marketplace … no one really knows what to make of it.” That, of course, is why it’s interesting. — Vadim Rizov
I Saw the TV Glow
Jane Schoenbrun’s anticipated follow-up to We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, their 2021 debut feature, will likely hone the director’s established fascination with digital horrors and the young people encountering them. While World’s Fair is preoccupied with screens that connect us to forbidden corners of the online ether, Schoenbrun’s sophomore feature will examine an eerie late-night TV show that begins to mess with the psyches of two teen friends. Above all, it’s clear the filmmaker continues to investigate the trauma of suburban adolescence, both fostered and relieved by portals to another realm. — Natalia Keogan
Frida
The story of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is told largely in her own voice in editor-turned-director Carla Gutiérrez’s Frida, a documentary that draws its words from Kahlo’s letters, essays, her diary and interviews, and its images from a collection of 50 original paintings and the interpretive work of a team of animators. From the horrific bus accident that changed the course of her life (and inspired some of her imagery) to her complicated romance with artist Diego Rivera and relations with the French surrealists, this rendering of Kahlo’s life and career carries a real intimacy and depth given Gutiérrez’s approach and the deep archival work behind it. — Scott Macaulay
The Outrun
One of the greatest actors of her generation, Saoirse Ronan can do no wrong, even though her recent projects like Foe and See How They Run left a lot to be desired. German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt’s mostly Scotland-set The Outrun might just feature the next powerhouse Ronan performance—pure, vast and deeply heartbreaking like we came to expect from her Brooklyn era, with wild cliffs and massive waves to boot. Adapted from Amy Liptrot’s fierce memoir, The Outrun tells an alcoholism story and looks to be as chaotic as the experience of addiction itself. Sign us up. — Tomris Laffly
Stress Positions
The feature debut of writer, director and star Theda Hammel centers on a Brooklyn-based millennial friend group during the summer of 2020, when COVID, protests and contactless food delivery defined daily life. Hammel plays Karla, a trans woman in an increasingly strained relationship with a lesbian writer whose most famous book draws inspiration from Karla’s transition. When her longtime friend Terry Goon (John Early, Hammel’s frequent collaborator) takes in his 19-year-old nephew Bahlul (Qaher Harhash), a Moroccan model, everyone is eager to break quarantine in order to catch a glimpse of him. Now an incessant germaphobe, Terry must grapple with everyone’s piqued interest in entering his home, including his soon-to-be-ex-husband’s, and confront some of the group’s aging millennial sensibilities along the way. — NK
A Different Man
In contextualizing this, one of three A24 offerings at this year’s Sundance, it’s difficult to improve to improve on the official directors’ bio: “Aaron Schimberg lives in New York. He made two commercially disastrous features, but the second one, Chained for Life, was well-received by critics. A Different Man is his third film.” Billed as a thriller of sorts, A Different Man stars Sebastian Stan as an actor who gets plastic surgery and then has the life-changing operation backfire on him. Supporting players include The Worst Person in the World’s Renate Reinsve and Adam Pearson, the British actor with neurofibromatosis who appeared in Chained for Life and is best known for his role in Under the Skin. — VR
Ghostlight
We selected Chicago-based Kelly O’Sullivan and Alex Thompson for our 25 New Faces list based on their emotionally tranporting drama Saint Frances, which premiered at SXSW. They make their Sundance debut with their second directorial collaboration, about a grief-stricken construction worker whose emotions are channeled, and refracted, as he acts in a Shakespeare tragedy. — SM
Power
When discussing his new documentary, Power, about policing in America, Oscar-nominated Yance Ford says that the film isn’t about the kind of cop who might be one of three strands in another sort of character-based documentary. It’s not about “the one” cop, he says, but about “the one million law enforcement officers in the US and the impact their collective power has on our democracy.” Ford’s previous work, Strong Island, looked at race and crime in the U.S. through a personal lens as Ford depicted failures of justice around the murder of his own brother. Power looks to telescope out to an even larger view of how systems of race and class inform who holds power and who is allowed to push back against it. — SM
Exhibiting Forgiveness
Renowned painter Titus Kaphar makes his feature filmmaking debut in a sophisticated drama about trauma, artistic process and the importance of familial reconciliation. It looks like the always great André Holland has his work cut out for him as Tarrell, a sought-after contemporary artist who yearns to find peace with his troubled past and his abusive father through his art. The cast also includes Oscar hopeful Origin lead Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in the role of Tarrell’s spiritual mother. This one might just be the kind of Sundance premiere that requires tissues at the ready. — TL
Sasquatch Sunset
Fresh off directing episodes of the Nathan Fielder/Benny Safdie-created The Curse, the Zellner Brothers make a return trip to Sundance with their Sasquatch Sunset, in which a dialogue-free Jesse Eisenberg plays the elusive land creature. Riley Keough, Nathan Zellner and Christophe Zajac-Denek round out the cast of this recent Bleecker Street pickup. The last time the Zellners set a lonely protagonist afoot into the wilds was with their sublime Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, so I’ve got very high hopes for this one. — SM
Love Machina
Pete Sillen, whose films include the shorts Speed Racer: Welcome to the World of Vic Chesnutt, Grand Luncheonette, Branson: Musicland U.S.A., and the feature I Am Secretly an Important Man, makes his first trip to Sundance’s Documentary Competition with Love Machina, a romance-fueled story of AI. (Or perhaps the other way around—a tech-informed romance?) A story about the evolution of Bina48, a “social robot” commissioned by tech entrepreneur and CEO Martine Rothblatt and modeled on Rothblatt’s partner, Bina Rothblatt, Love Machina looks to find the tenderest angle on one of today’s most hotly contested technologies. — SM
Little Death
There’s often a film with a filmmaker protagonist at Sundance, and this year’s comes from Jake Begert, who makes his transition from music videos (credits include work with Dora Cat, Olivia Rodrigo, Flying Lotus and SZA) to features with Little Death. Darren Aronofksy produces and David Schwimmer stars alongside a supporting cast with much indie cred, including Talia Ryder (The Sweet East), Gaby Hoffman (C’mon, C’mon) and Karl Glusman (Gaspar Noe’s Love). — SM
Realm of Satan
Stories of the dispossessed struggling to uphold their values in the face of an ignorant and corrupt modern world have been a tradition of Sundance, even going back to its earliest years when it was the US Film Festival. But there’s never been one like Scott Cummings’s awe-inspiring Realm of Satan. Strikingly realized “in collaboration with the Church of Satan,” Realm of Satan is a true cinematic theater of the infernal as its everyday Satanists, in the words of the Sundance program, “fight to preserve their lifestyle: magic, mystery, and misanthropy.” If there’s a film not to miss with a Park City, Utah audience, it’s this one. — SM
Eno
As its short teaser indicates, Gary Hustwit’s Eno aims to cover the entirety of the British music pioneer’s career, from his glam rock days with Roxy Music to his extraordinary producing (Talking Heads, DEVO, U2) and collaborating (David Bowie) work to his development of apps (Bloom) and creative prompts (the Oblique Strategies playing cards) that seek to introduce systems thinking, randomness and chance to the creative process. Appropriately, Hustwit, whose previous design-focused films include Helvetica, Objectified and Rams, would appear to have found in Eno the perfect mode of presentation for its subject. As Shari Frilot writes in the Sundance catalog, “Each screening of Eno is unique, presenting different scenes, order, music, and meant to be experienced live. The generative and infinitely iterative quality of Eno poetically resonates with the artist’s own creative practice, his methods of using technology to compose music, and his endless deep dive into the mercurial essence of creativity.” — SM
Handling the Undead
The Worst Person in the World actors Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie reunite on first-time feature filmmaker Thea Hvistendahl’s adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, who co-wrote the script with the director. The premise revolves around an unusually hot summer day in Oslo that, for some unknown reason, results in the resurrection of the dead. Three families must grapple with the tandem joy and unease that follows their reunion with formerly deceased loved ones, confronting stages of grief that they’ve already encountered and must, potentially, face anew. —NK
Between the Temples
Director Nathan Silver and writer C. Mason Wells collaborate once again following 2017’s Thirst Street, this time setting their sights on the dynamic between a cantor played by Jason Schwartzman and his former music teacher, embodied by Carol Kane, who now re-enters his life as an adult bat mitzvah student. Lensed by acclaimed cinematographer Sean Price Williams (now feature director with his 2023 debut The Sweet East) and co-starring Triangle of Sadness‘s breakout star Dolly de Leon, the collaborative essence of Between the Temples is certainly alluring in its own right. —NK
Look Into My Eyes
Documentary filmmaker Lana Wilson sets her focus on New York City psychics and their diverse clientele in her latest project, which reveals a recurring theme of loneliness and fraught connections among Big Apple residents. With A24 already onboard as a producer and distributor, Wilson’s doc is certainly one to catch in Park City, particularly because it won’t be available during Sundance’s online screening window due to its inclusion in the festival’s Premiere category. —NK
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
Johan Grimponrez’s first feature, 1997’s Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, structured an aggressively edited all-archival history of hijackings with voiceover readings from Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Mao II. Now, the Belgian filmmaker (who has made nearly his entire filmography available for free on Vimeo) returns with a 150-minute history of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. With a particular emphasis on the Belgian government’s role, this heavily researched history is intertwined with an equally intricate consideration of the role jazz musicians from Louis Armstrong to Archie Shepp played in the ’60s, whether as CIA-sponsored cultural ambassadors or as dissidents. — VR
War Game
After a sales record for nonfiction films with 2020’s Boys State, Jesse Moss returns to Sundance with two features. The first, the self-explanatory sequel Girls State, is once again co-directed with his longtime producer Amanda McBaine; the other, co-directed with Tony Gerber, follows a simulated war game that includes a hypothetical fracturing and partial revolt within the US military. In a “Meet the Artist” video teasing the project, Gerber breaks down the production’s intriguing and slightly staggering logistics: “a cast of 40, a crew of 80, six cinematographers, with the action unfolding simultaneously in four different locations.” — VR
My Old Ass
In case you haven’t noticed, Barbie creator (and Margot Robbie-owned) LuckyChap has a new movie at this year’s Sundance. Add to that a teen love story, some time-travel flavor and the presence of Aubrey Plaza (hopefully as unhinged as we like her) and it’s no wonder that My Old Ass is one of this year’s hottest Sundance tickets. The oddly nostalgic sci-fi premise of meeting one’s older self has rarely looked this exciting. — TL
