SUNDANCE
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival kicked off yesterday! It’s not the IRL week of celebrating, co-viewing, and merry-making that we were hoping for, but the curation of films is just as extraordinary as ever, and we’re ready to settle in for a few very busy days of couch time. Omicron may have thwarted our best-laid plans, but the largest independent film festival in the United States forges ahead.
So we have an extra-special Sundance edition of this newsletter ahead, celebrating some of our favorite Sundance premieres of all time.
At PICTURESTART, we’re proud to have two films at the festival—AM I OK? (premiering 1/24 at 1:00pm PT) and CHA CHA REAL SMOOTH (premiering 1/23 at 1:45pm PT)—but below are a few more standouts that I’m looking forward to binge-watching over the next few days.
MASTER (premiering 1/21 at 5:30pm PT) is the feature directorial debut from Mariama Diallo, whose brilliant horror-comedy short HAIR WOLF won the US Fiction Short Film Jury Award at Sundance 2018. The indomitable Regina Hall stars in this psychological horror drama that takes place at an elite New England university, where three women navigate politics and privilege, encountering increasingly terrifying manifestations of the school’s haunted past and present. If MASTER is anything like HAIR WOLF, we’re in for a wholly unique and unnerving experience. I’m also keen to check out SHARP STICK (premiering 1/22 at 5:30pm PT), Lena Dunham’s first film in over a decade, since her initial foray into indie filmmaking with TINY FURNITURE. Described as a “sexual fable” about a naive 26-year-old (Kristine Froseth) exploring her sexuality after an exhilarating affair with her married boss (Jon Bernthal), SHARP STICK is certainly set to both push boundaries and elicit cringe-inducing laughs in signature Dunham style. Other highlights from the 80-something feature films programmed this year include FRAMING AGNES (premiering 1/22 at 1:30pm PT) (a compelling piece of docu-fiction aiming to "widen the frame through which trans history is viewed”), PIGGY (premiering 1/24 at 8:00pm PT) (based on the chilling 2018 short of the same name), FRESH (premiered 1/20 at 10:55pm PT) (a thriller on the perils of modern dating starring Sebastian Stan & Daisy Edgar-Jones), the Daniel-Kaluuya-produced HONK FOR JESUS, SAVE YOUR SOUL (premiering 1/23 at 10:45am PT), sci-fi thriller DUAL (premiering 1/22 at 5:00pm PT), and the spooky witch horror YOU WON’T BE ALONE (premiering 1/22 at 7:45pm PT), among many others.
The indie episodic and shorts programs contain plenty of highlights worth checking out, too, including: CHAPERONE (available until 1/30) (US Live-Action Shorts), an eerie, evocative debut by queer playwright Sam Max and starring Zachary Quinto, and MY TRIP TO SPAIN (available until 1/30) (Indie Episodic) which follows Alexis, a successful trans woman who’s going to Spain for cosmetic surgery and reunites with an old friend, Charlie (SEARCH PARTY’s John Early).
—Neal Mulani, Development Assistant
