The iconic Sundance Film Festival is coming up next week, from January 20th to the 30th, in a virtual format. As always, we’re looking for insights into culture, narrative and storytelling.
This year’s lineup includes “83 feature-length films from 28 countries, 41% of which were made by first-time feature filmmakers.” Tickets went on sale earlier today, January 13th. You can purchase passes to a single screening, or packages where you can select multiple films from the schedule. There are both live showings and second screenings where you can view the film anytime in a 24 hour period, as long as you finish the film within five hours. See the full schedule and get tickets at the festival site.
Here are five films our team is looking out for at at this year’s festival:
All that Breathes “Brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have made it their life’s work to care for the injured black kites.”
January 21, 11:00 pm eastern January 23, 10:00 am eastern
The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales “Americans are working harder for less pay. The rich are getting astonishingly richer, and the poor have come to define the U.S. workforce. The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales is the beginning of a conversation that most Americans, rich and poor, have a hard time talking honestly about — class equity and the shift in our values.”
One of the film’s directors, Abigail Disney, uses her family’s involvement in class inequity as a foundation for the story.
January 24, 7:00 pm eastern January 26, 10:00 am eastern
Descendant “History exists beyond what is written. The Africatown residents in Mobile, Alabama, have shared stories about their origins for generations. Their community was founded by enslaved ancestors who were transported in 1860 aboard the last and illegal slave ship, Clotilda.”
January 22, 1:30 pm eastern January 24, 10:00 am eastern
I Didn’t See You There “As a visibly disabled person, filmmaker Reid Davenport is often either the subject of an unwanted gaze — gawked at by strangers — or paradoxically rendered invisible, ignored or dismissed by society.”
January 24, 1:45 pm eastern January 26, 10:00 am eastern
Sirens “True to their name, Slave to Sirens — the first and only all-woman thrash metal band in the Middle East — are utterly magnetic.”
January 23, 4:15 pm eastern January 25, 10:00 am eastern
Top photo is from the film All that Breathes.