SUNDANCE Film Festival Coverage 2022

ORIGINAL POST January 20 – Feb 5 2022

LOVE THE SUNDANCE SPACESHIP – NEXT LEVEL STUFF!

The Sundance Spaceship is the interactive platform which acts as the Festival Lounge, where you put your face on an Avatar or use your webcam as your face on your Avatar and then you jump into a lounge and mingle or attend a New Frontier Virtual Event. The Avatar that is you can even take a seat on a couch or saddle up to the bar. There’s both a chat feature or use your laptop’s audio to speak and hear. You can also use a VR headset if you’ve got one. To move your Avatar use the arrow keys on your keyboard and the space bar to jump. You’ll see people just crazily running around the spaceship, it’s a funny sight

Click Image to View Photo Album

Film Scribes Episode 95 Sundance 2022 Discussion

“The scribes” on deck Rich Heimlich (/comment), Stephen Silver (Splice Today, Philly Voice), Gary Kramer (Salon), LeAnne Lindsay (Tinsel & Tine), Piers Marchant (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Phillymag.com) and Dan Tabor (Cinapse.co) give a rundown of their top films from this year’s virtual edition of Sundance.

2022 Sundance Film Festival AWARD WINNERS!

See Complete List

SUNDANCE DAY 10– Saturday. Jan 29

NAVALNY | documentary | Filmmakers Daniel Roher,
Odessa Rae, Diane Becker, Melanie Miller, Shane Boris

#Sundance2022 NAVALNY doc director Daniel Roher – Winner of the Audience Award US Documentary and Winner of Festival Favorite.

I think most of us in the US are aware of the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, (Aug 2020) a Russian opposition leader, and anti-corruption activist, and his subsequent arrest upon recovering from the Novichok nerve agent and returning to Moscow. This doc takes us behind the scenes. Roher and his team have unprecedented access to Navalny, his family and supporters. It unfolds like a spy thriller, particularly as Navany seems like a cross between Harrison Ford, Liam Neeson and Jimmy Stewart, but the reality of his situation and the deadly corruption in Russia is horrifically all too real.

I do wish the doc had more time for Navalny’s political history and rise to prominence. He answers some questions, but the film’s agenda focuses on the investigation into his poisoning and his return to Russia.

Which was a complete mistake, there was no plan set in place to avoid his being arrested. It’s unclear why they felt he’d be able to return without Putin ordering his detainment indefinitely. Technically no, Navalny didn’t do anything illegal to be arrested, but he knows the situation, there is no justice in a totalitarian dictatorship, disguised as a democracy.

SUNDANCE DAY 9– Fri. Jan 28

NANNY | Feature | Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu

Jury and Audience Awards were announced via Twitter on Friday starting 5pm ET.  I retweeted the live streaming acceptance speeches of the winners – See link to complete Sundance Awards list above.

Films I Didn’t Get To See…

SUNDANCE DAY 8– Thurs. Jan 27

NRDC’s Rewrite the Future presents MORE THAN A FEELING: CLIMATE EMOTIONS IN FILM & TV a panel of Hollywood storytellers and mental health experts discussing how to represent climate emotions in entertainment to better reflect our lived responses to the crisis. Featuring panelists Scott Z. Burns (Extrapolations, An Inconvenient Truth), Naren Shankar (The Expanse) and Dr. Britt Wray (Generation Dread). Moderated by actor and climate activist Zazie Beetz (Atlanta).

According to Grist, searches for “climate anxiety” increased 565 percent between October 2020 and October 2021. Meanwhile, a recent report from the Yale Program for Climate Communication found that an all-time record number of Americans—70 percent—are now very or somewhat worried about climate change. The crisis is being felt by communities across the globe, and this new reality is producing complicated emotions: anxiety, hope, grief, shame, anger, and numbness, to name a few.

Presented by NRDC’s Rewrite the Future in collaboration with: Good Energy Project, the Sundance Institute, Variety, Writers Guild of America East and YEA! Impact.

Personally, I don’t believe I have “Climate Anxiety”  I’m not sure why. I’m certainly not a Republican playing everything down because the fixes would be too expensive. I’m also not a Bible thumper who believes God won’t let our planet expire. Not that I don’t believe in God, just that our Creator lets us make a royal mess of things. I suppose I know our pure essence/energies will always exist and that spark that allows creation in the Universe will always be. So if we go the way of the dinosaurs, then that’s evolution and something else will form in its place.

AFTERSHOCK | documentary | Filmmakers Paula Eiselt & Tonya Lewis Lee

JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T | Mirimax |
Writer/Director Leslie Harris

T&T: In a nutshell what was the main inspiration for HALLELUJAH and/or the theme that is the heart of your film?

Victor Gabriel: The main inspiration for Hallelujah came from my personal dealings with loss, tragedy, and trauma, as well as my tendency to laugh at said loss, tragedy, and trauma. A consistent theme in all my work is the question of “Can one overcome suffering?” And in this piece, I am answering yes, through the means of connection and laughing with each other… READ MORE

Update 3/31/2021

You Won’t Be Alone | Focus Features | Writer/Director Goran Stolevski

SUNDANCE DAY 7– Wed. Jan 26

CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH | PitctureStart  | Writer/Director Cooper Raiff

THE COW WHO SANG A SONG INTO THE FUTURE | Persona Entertainment | Writer/Director Francisca Alegría

New Frontier Performance COSMOGONY featuring 3 live dancers in motion capture projected into 3D Environments, but moving like snails.  Don’t understand why it couldn’t have better pacing.  I get so impatient with slow moving things. I think I have ADD.

T&T: In a nutshell what was the main inspiration for THE PANOLA PROJECT and/or the theme that is the heart of your film? 

Rachael & Jeremy: We made The Panola Project at a time when we were looking for hope and inspiration. We found that in Dorothy Oliver, a retired county administrator, who took it upon herself to launch a COVID-19 vaccination campaign to keep her community safe. Through her diligent efforts, she’s gotten 99% of her community of Panola, AL vaccinated in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country… READ MORE

SUNDANCE DAY 6 – Tues. Jan 25

ALICE | Roadside Attractions |
Writer/Director Krystin Ver Linden (debut feature)

I thought this movie was going to have a Sci-Fi time traveling element to it.  Not so, instead it’s a mix between Janelle Monae in ANTEBELLUM (Gerard Bush & Christopher Renz) and M. Night Shymalan’s THE VILLAGE. Alice (Keke Palmer) is a slave owned by of course a very cruel slave master Paul Bennet (Jonny Lee Miller). When she escapes, Alice runs through the woods and eventually winds up on the highway in 1973. She’s nearly flattened by a tractor trailer driven by Frank (Common) (not a good actor). He thinks she’s got mental issues, but take pity on her because his mother died in a Sanatorium. He doesn’t wanna see that happen to Alice, so he takes her home.  This is when it should get good, it could become a romance with Alice learning about life in the modern world. Instead it cheats us, she just reads Encyclopedias along with Jet and Ebony Magazines to get caught up in the ways of the real world.  There’s one good scene where Frank takes her to see Pam Grier in the Blaxploitation Coffy; and yeah there’s definitely some romantic interest on both sides, but not so you care about them being together at the end.  Keke does shine in the role, just wish she’d been given more to play with.

In terms of slavery and freedom, I don’t feel it makes a particular point, other than the obvious; which I suppose would be fine, if you didn’t feel like everything gets wrapped up too quickly – it’s like she gets a fro, some groovy clothes, then it’s time for revenge and done.

DUAL | XYZ Films | RLJE Films
Writer/Director  Riley Stearns (The Art of Self-Defense, Faults)

The movie begins with something reminiscent of The Squid Games as it’s a spectator sport where two men stand on either end of a football field with a table of weapons in front of each of them. When the signal is given one gets the better of the other and just starts firing bullets and sending arrows at his opponent. Finally, the opponent gets it together and fights back, ultimately winning.  That’s when you see both people were identical, as one is a real person and the other is his clone. This is the foreshadowing you can assume will come at some point for the protagonist, Sarah (Karen Gillan (gill-n) better known as Nebula from Guardians of the Galaxy.

She’s a woman who is only half alive in terms of low energy and expectations in general, before receiving the news of having a terminal illness.  It’s crazy when she wakes up and finds all that blood on her pillowcase. I love how she takes her time going to the hospital, like it’s just a simple errand for that day.

But that’s the entire tone of the movie. Stearns has directed everyone to act with flat inflection, monotone delivery.  It doesn’t matter how hurtful someone’s being or what injustice is taking place, everyone just accepts it with a matter-of-fact-ness.  In terms of humor, it kind of works, and keeps the movie from going over the top after Sarah gets her own clone; who’s better at life than Sarah and whom both Sarah’s mother and boyfriend prefer. The story is also a satire on our healthcare system, so in that way, I see what he was trying to do, but on the whole, I think I’d rather have seen it played out with real emotions.

LUCY AND DESI | Amazon | Director  Amy Poehler

SUNDANCE DAY 5 – Mon. Jan 24

Palm Trees and Power Lines |Fiesta Island Films |
Writer/Director Jamie Dack

RESURRECTION | IFC Films | Writer/Director Andrew Semans

This is a disturbingly engrossing movie. Rebecca Hall delivers a gripping performance of a woman completely unraveling, with emotional impact.  And a completely chilling performance by Tim Roth. Margaret (Hall) is a single mother of a daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman) who’s about to graduate High School. They live a comfortable life in a nice high-rise complex, as Margaret works as a corporate boss of some kind. She’s secretly sleeping with a subordinate (not young), they only see each other outside of the office. Basically, she seems to have her life all nicely compartmentalized.  Until one day at a business conference she catches a glimpse of the back of someone’s head and freaks out! Has to immediately leave the conference.  Then she sees him, well, the audience isn’t sure if she’s really seeing him or imagining him, again and again.  Once I decided, okay he’s really there, a man from her past; obviously this is Abbie’s father back and wanting to rekindle a relationship with his daughter. We get that Margaret is very protective and close to Abbie, but still, the girl is practically grown, let her make up her own mind about seeing him, so I thought. Why is she so scared? Once we know the reasons, the movie becomes a full on psychological thriller, terrifying and hideous. It delves deeply into grooming, gaslighting and control…

I started writing RESURRECTION about 7 or 8 years ago while I was working on other scripts, so it was a long gestation period. I imagined a character of a single mother acting alone to protect her child from some sort of dangerous threat or predator, but I didn’t quite know who she was or why she must act alone. Around this time, a friend of mine became involved in a relationship with a very toxic guy, and I witnessed their relationship firsthand … I became interested in and terrified by the tactics employed by manipulative, controlling people to form and maintain intense emotional bonds with their victims. – Andrew Semans

My favorite Rebecca Hall movie remains Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, I wish more people knew how good it is.  It’s one of those movies I always recommend.  Now with this film,  The Night House and adapting and directing Passing, Rebecca Hall has elevated to a new level of Hollywood A List.  

SUNDANCE DAY 4 – Sun. Jan 23

BRIAN & CHARLES | Bankside Films | Director Jim Archer | Screenwriter David Earl |Robot Chris Hayward

AFTER YANG | A24 | Writer/Director Kogonada

JEEN-YUHS: A KANYE TRILOGY  | Netflix |
Directors Clarence “Coodie” Simmons & Chike Ozah

SUNDANCE DAY 3 – Sat. Jan 22

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSBY | Showtime | Filmmaker W. Kamau Bell

Kamau Bell’s docu-series “We Need to Talk About Cosby” premiered the first Saturday of Sundance, all 4 hours back to back and started streaming on Showtime Jan 30th. It tackles the difficult subject of reconciling Bill Cosby’s father/educator/comedian/good guy image with the man we all now know drugged women in order to sexually assault them. And it didn’t just happen once in a while or only after hitting ultimate fame or after the death of his son, it seems it goes back as far as the very early 60’s, if not further, but the doc starts at the very beginnings of Cosby’s career. I read where Kamau said he couldn’t find anyone willing to talk about Cosby’s childhood or collage years.

Our own former Philly Film Critics Circle Member Mike D of Reelblack fame was interviewed for this documentary. I happened to have a conversation with him, and he told me, which I’d never knew before, that he was an intern on The Cosby Show, but didn’t have a clue about what was going on at that time.  And in terms of the interview, he tried to walk a mid-line with Kamau, which he said wasn’t easy on a number of levels, not wanting to diminish or support.  The Cosby thing hasn’t been easy for most Americans over these last few years and particularly those of us in Philadelphia and even more particular for black Philly.  Like many “no matter what” Trump supporters, there are “no matter what” Cosby supporters that won’t listen to any of the evidence, even though he incriminated himself in his own deposition for the civil suit, which eventually landed him in prison, albeit briefly – but these folks are afraid of losing a hero and particularly a black one, since they are fewer in number.

I think the doc is done with a great degree of even handedness despite the number of women who get to tell their stories of blackout encounters with Bill Cosby. Although, I have to admit before seeing this documentary, I wouldn’t say that I ever defended him, but wanted to understand his sexual deviancy and wanted to believe that he hated himself for this incredible weakness and depravity.  But the doc shows Cosby in the light of someone who knew exactly what he was doing all the time. A mastermind who figured out how he could do it without getting caught, as he really has a grasp of psychology and grooming and laying groundwork, like I’ve never seen!  So now I believe there’s a mean, cunning nature to him that I never would have thought before.  And yet, there’s still the Cosby who seemed to genuinely believe in education and providing that for many. Love the part about him having integrated black stuntmen into Hollywood, this was an amazing thing I’d never heard before. And so many of the other things we knew about him prior to Comedian Hannibal Burress outing him to a bigger audience of viral listeners.  The doc doesn’t come to any conclusion, it’s more meant like the title says, for those who still Need to Talk About Cosby.

Link to the Full GOOD LUCK TO YOU, LEO GRANDE Q&A

GOOD LUCK TO YOU LEO GRANDE 
Genesius Pictures | Searchlight| Hulu Releasing 
Screenwriter Katy Brand |Director Sophie Hyde

Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson) is a 60 something retired schoolteacher and widow, who finds herself yearning for the one thing that has eluded her: a satisfying sexual experience. She was married for over 30 years, has 2 adult children, but the sex with her husband was always perfunctory at best. So she decides to hire a young sex worker who calls himself Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack) and meets him in a hotel room.  She doesn’t want an older man, she wants someone young and hot, but at the same time, it’s embarrassing to be so much older, than this beautiful mixed-raced, sensual guy, so much of their first encounter is very awkward. Leo tries to make her feel sexy with champagne, cooing her name, dancing, but none of it works. So they  eventually delve into deeper conversation to ease into things. 

The entire movie other than a few establishing shots, takes place in the hotel. In some ways, it has a stage play feel, but in no way to its detriment and there’s good movement as scenes take place all over the room with dancing and other physicalities.  But it’s the layers of their relationship formed over 3 sessions that’s so engaging and not all comically; there’s a lot to be said about motherhood, similar to films like The Lost Daughter & When You Finish Saving the World and discussion on the legalization of sex workers and much more.  I love a dialogue heavy movie of which this is. And admittedly (this definitely falls under the heading of TMI) but my own nothing much to speak of sex life, drew me to the idea of this movie in the first place, and I’m intrigued by the satisfying results!   FESTIVAL FAVORITE!!!

THE PRINCESS |Documentary | Filmmakers Ed Perkins & Simon Chinn 

SUNDANCE DAY 2 – Fri. Jan 21

FIRE OF LOVE | Documentary | Filmmaker Sara Dosa

WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY | Documentary | Filmmaker Joe Hunting

British director Joe Hunting has made a tender, affecting documentary about love, friendship and people finding a place where they can be themselves. It just happens that those people are digitally-generated aliens, horned sex demons and other outré creations (even Kermit the Frog). Made entirely within the virtual environments of platform VRChat, using virtual camera app VRCLens, We Met In Virtual Reality is a beguiling singularity – an observational documentary that resembles an animation only insofar as it takes place in an animated world. The film comes across more as a partisan advert for the joys of VR living rather than any sort of critical investigation. Yet We Met… is at once bizarre, charming, perplexing and rich with philosophical implications… READ MORE (Screendaily)

MASTER | Amazon Studios | Writer/Director Mariama Diallo

SUNDANCE DAY 1 – Thurs. Jan 20

Award-winning documentarian Sam Green returns to Sundance with a groundbreaking and immersive documentary that explores the elemental phenomenon of sound and how it affects our conscious and unconscious lives.

WHEN YOU FINISH SAVING THE WORLD | A24 / Fruit Tree | Writer/Director Jesse Eisenberg

EMERGENCY | Amazon Studios  |Director Carey Williams | Writer: KD Davila

ORIGINAL POST 1/7/2022

82 Features, 6 Indie Episodic, 15 New Frontier Projects to Debut

The full slate of works includes 82 feature-length films representing 28 countries; 75 (91%) of the Festival’s feature films will be World Premieres; 39 of 92 (42%) are first-time feature film directors. 15 of the feature films and projects were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs.

These films were selected from 14,849 submissions, including 3,762 feature-length films. Of the 3,762 feature film submissions, 1,652 were from the U.S., and 2,110 were International.

Luckily I received my press pass accreditation to cover the festival online, long before they had to move the entire festival to Virtual.  Here’s a few of the films I’m looking forward to seeing … Click Image to Start Slideshow

I also have an advanced Sundance Filmmaker Interview, for a short making it’s World Premiere – part of my 5 Questions Series

5 Questions for Indie Filmmaker DANIA BDEIR Director of  WARSHA

Synopsis: Warsha is set in Lebanon, where construction workers are often underpaid, undocumented and overlooked Syrian immigrants. The film stars Khansa, a multi-disciplinary artist redefining masculinity in the Middle East. Warsha follows Mohammad, a Syrian migrant working as a crane operator in Beirut. One morning he volunteers to take on one of the tallest and notoriously most dangerous cranes in Lebanon. Away from everyone’s eyes, he is able to live out his secret passion and find freedom.

T&T:  In a nutshell what was the main inspiration for WARSHA and/or the theme that is the heart of your film?

From artist talks to daily meetups and immersive experiences, these Beyond Film events will include artists from this year’s program including Eva Longoria Bastòn, Karen Gillan, Dakota Johnson, Keke Palmer, Amy Poehler, and Emma Thompson, bringing the art and craft of storytelling from the screen to wherever Festival audiences gather. Additional Beyond Film speakers include actor Roberta Colindrez, African American Policy Forum’s Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, director Cheryl Dunye, playwright Jeremy O. Harris, showrunner Sterlin Harjo, producer Lisa Joy, leading climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate, and climate legal advisor Farhana Yamin. 

Additional Beyond Film programming includes a daily talk show (“How to Fest: Daily”); a solo performance with multiple Emmy Award–winning artist, Lynette Wallworth; a sneak peek and conversation with the directors of Oscar’s Comeback about black film pioneer, Oscar Micheaux; Artist Spotlights with XR/VR/new media creators showing work in the New Frontier section; a conversation around the climate crisis; Sundance Collab and more….

SEE BEYOND FILM SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

Be sure to return to this post during Sundance Film Festival
(January 20-30, 2022) for #MiniMovieReviews and assorted coverage. 
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