Finally! After a couple of years of virtual-only screenings due to COVID-19, the Sundance Film Festival is finally allowing us back for in-person attendance. And it didn’t take long but I’m back to having the same apprehension and anxiety before the festival as I always do. It’ll all subside once I’m back on the ground in the frigid, thin air of Park City, Utah, taking in the movies that we’ll be talking about throughout the year.
There have been many changes to the festival, but one thing remains the same: It’s all about the movies. For me, I tend to go into Sundance with a handful of films in mind that are must-see, and others that I think could break out. But there’s always something that emerges and takes the festival by storm, and you never know where that’s going to come from. Nobody expected CODA to be the smash it turned out to be a couple of years ago, that’s for sure.
So here are my 10 most-anticipated features at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. If all goes according to plan, I’ll have reviews for them in the coming days.
Flora and Son
Director: John Carney
Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eve Hewson, Orén Kinlan, Jack Reynor
Synopsis: Flora, a young mother living in Dublin, lost touch with aspiration long ago. She juggles a sustenance-necessitated child care job and a fraught co-parenting arrangement with her unkind ex as she tries to raise her son, Max. Flora and Max’s brash rapport is both hilarious and revealing of their struggle to understand each other — she searches for autonomy and self-love masquerading as selfishness, while his longing for independence and self-expression manifests as delinquency. When the two connect over a twice-discarded used guitar, the uniting power of music brings them closer than what simple proximity can provide.
Buzz: It’s John Carney, and I’ll see anything from the director of Once, Begin Again, and Sing Street which lit up Park City with a raucous screening a few years ago.
Magazine Dreams
Director: Elijah Bynum
Cast: Jonathan Majors, Haley Bennett, Taylour Paige
Synopsis: Killian Maddox lives with his ailing veteran grandfather, obsessively working out between court-mandated therapy appointments and part-time shifts at a grocery store where he harbors a crush on a friendly cashier. Though Killian’s struggles to read social cues and maintain control of his volatile temper amplify his sense of disconnection amid a hostile world, nothing deters him from his fiercely-protected dream of bodybuilding superstardom, not even the doctors who warn that he’s causing permanent damage to his body with his quest.
Buzz: Bynum made a splash a few years ago with the Timothee Chalamet drama Hot Summer Nights, which I hated. However, it showed potential, and Bynum working with a red-hot (and chiseled) Jonathan Majors on a film that explores bodybuilding culture is too good to pass up.
Cassandro
Director: Roger Ross Williams
Cast: Gael Garcia Bernal
Synopsis: Saúl Armendáriz, a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character ‘Cassandro,’ the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world, but also his own life.
Buzz: Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams returns to Sundance following 2016’s awards favorite, Life, Animated. Yeah, that’s cool and all, but this is a wrestling movie. I love lucha libre. I love Gael Garcia Bernal. This movie is for me.
Run Rabbit Run
Director: Daina Reid
Cast: Sarah Snook, Lily LaTorre, Damon Herriman, Greta Scacchi
Synopsis: Fertility doctor Sarah begins her beloved daughter Mia’s seventh birthday expecting nothing amiss. But as an ominous wind swirls in, Sarah’s carefully controlled world begins to alter. Mia begins behaving oddly and a rabbit appears outside their front door — a mysterious birthday gift that delights Mia but seems to deeply disconcert Sarah. As days pass, Mia becomes increasingly not herself, demanding to see Sarah’s long-estranged, hospitalized mother (the grandmother she’s never met before) and fraying Sarah’s nerves as the child’s bizarre tantrums begin to point her toward Sarah’s own dark history. As a ghost from her past re-enters Sarah’s life, she struggles to cling to her distant young daughter.
Buzz: You had me at Succession star Sarah Snook.
Sometimes I Think About Dying
Director: Rachel Lambert
Cast: Daisy Ridley, Dave Merheje
Synopsis: Lost on the dreary Oregon coast, Fran wastes her daylight hours in the solitude of a cubicle, listening to the constant hum of officemates, occasionally daydreaming to pass the time. She is ghosting through life unable to pop her bubble of isolation. And then Robert starts up at the company. He is new to town and the dynamics of the office. He is a naturally friendly person who keeps trying to chat with Fran. Though it goes against every fiber of her being, she may have to give this guy a chance.
Buzz: Basically, I’m here for Daisy Ridley whose non-Star Wars output is still intriguingly slim. She remains an unproven commodity in my mind, but having this film opening the festival is an encouraging sign.
Rye Lane
Director: Raine Allen-Miller
Cast: Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson
Synopsis: From breakout director Raine Allen-Miller, RYE LANE is a romantic comedy that stars Vivian Oparah (Class, The Rebel) and David Jonsson (Industry, Deep State), as Yas and Dom, two twenty-somethings both reeling from bad break-ups, who connect over the course of an eventful day in South London – helping each other deal with their nightmare exes, and potentially restoring their faith in romance.
Buzz: I just talked about this one here!
Infinity Pool
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgard, Mia Goth
Synopsis: While enjoying an idyllic, luxury vacation, James (Skarsgård) encounters the seductive Gabi (Goth) who promises to show him the hidden side of the island resort. Once beyond the gates, she exposes him to a shocking underworld of violence and sex that pushes his boundaries, with terrifying consequences.
Buzz: So. Many. Reasons! Brandon Cronenberg continues to make his mark on Sundance following Antiviral and 2020’s Possessor, with another film that merges eroticism and violence. Add to that the irresistible pairing of The Northman‘s Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth, coming off an Oscars-worthy 2022 with X and Pearl, and this movie simply can’t be missed.
Polite Society
Director: Nida Manzoor
Cast: Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya
Synopsis: A London schoolgirl and tireless martial-artist-in-training, Ria Khan is determined to become a world-renowned stunt woman. She’s crushed when her big sister, Lena, drops out of art school, starts dating Salim — the charming, wealthy son of the prominent Shah family — and announces, after barely a month, that they plan to marry and move to Singapore! How could Lena abandon her artistic dreams to become some trophy wife? But Ria soon realizes that something isn’t right, leaving her no choice but to enlist her friends in a daring mission to kidnap Lena from her own wedding.
Buzz: The headlining image caught my attention before I knew anything about the movie. If I see anybody in a fighting stance, I’m there. Even more that it’s Bridgerton actress Priya Kansara, starring in the feature debut from We Are Lady Parts creator Nida Manzoor who combines comedy, romance, action, Austen-era themes, and Bollywood flavor into what looks like a fun package. Sundance always needs more fun.
Bad Behaviour
Director: Alice Englert
Cast: Jennifer Connelly, Ben Whishaw, Alice Englert
Synopsis: Lucy seeks enlightenment. The former child actress makes a pilgrimage to join her guru, Elon Bello (Ben Whishaw), for a silent retreat at a beautiful mountain resort with a Tesla-crammed parking lot. Before she shuts off her phone to the world, Lucy reaches out to her daughter, Dylan — a stunt person training for a dangerous fight scene — to interrupt her concentration and announce that she will be unavailable and out of range, and that she is very worried about her, and that she might extend her stay. It is co-dependent, bad behavior. When a young model/DJ/influencer at the retreat is paired up with Lucy to do a mother/daughter role-playing exercise, hellfire stokes Lucy’s bad behavior to an astonishing low.
Buzz: I smell a sleeper here. Actress-turned-director Alice Englert, who last was at Sundance for last year’s excellent You Will Not Be Alone, makes her debut with this starry dramedy about a toxic Karen played by Connelly. On paper, this is an obvious favorite for me, but we’ll see how Englert does in her first crack behind the camera.
You Hurt My Feelings
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Owen Teague
Synopsis: New York novelist Beth has been working for years on the follow-up to her somewhat successful memoir, sharing countless drafts with her approving, supportive husband Don. Beth’s world quickly unravels when she overhears Don admit to her brother-in-law, Mark, that actually, he doesn’t like the new book. She vents to her sister Sara that decades of a loving, committed marriage pale in comparison to this immense betrayal. Meanwhile, therapist Don faces his own professional problems as he finds himself unable to care about or even recall his unhappy patients’ issues anymore… and they’ve begun to notice.
Buzz: The last time Holofcener and Louis-Dreyfus teamed up we got 2013’s Enough Said, a perfect little film that had me laughing and crying in equal measure. That they are reunited is all that I need to know.
