Planned world premieres include documentaries on Brooke Shields, Judy Bloom and Michael J. Fox, films from veteran directors such as Nicole Holofcener, an adaptation of the New York short story "Catman" and the feature debuts of actors Alice Englert and Randall Park. for the Sundance Film Festival in January.
On Wednesday, the programmers at the world's most prestigious independent film company announced their 2023 line-up. After a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, they plan to return to Park City for the upcoming festival. From January 19 to 29, stars such as Anne Hathaway, Tiffany Haddish, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Alexander Skarsgård, Gael Garcia Bernal, Cynthia Eriva, Daisy Ridley and Jonathan Majors will top some of the 101 feature films on the list. Tickets are on sale now.
The festival, which helped launch the careers of filmmakers from Steven Soderbergh to Ryan Coogler, once again celebrates the diversity of feature films from up-and-coming directors. Among the premieres of feature films there are 16 novice directors, 7 of them are women. The feature films feature 16 young people, 14 of them women.
“Aspiring filmmakers are in the DNA of the festival. We are always looking for new voices to support,” said Kim Yutani, program director of the festival. "It's such a nice surprise to look back and see those numbers and our program and know it's happening organically."
As always, fascinating documentaries about famous names. Lana Wilson Beauty: Brooke Shields tells the story of the early days of her career as an actress and model, when Shields was sexualized by photographers and directors when she was very young, and how she found her own agency. Davis Guggenheim, in Still: A Michael J. Fox Film, explores what happens when "an incurable optimist faces an incurable disease." There are also documentaries on Little Richard, food writer Ruth Reichl, pioneering black model Bethan Hardison, and the Indigo Girls.
In US Drama Competition, the section where KODA debuted in 2021 before winning the Academy Award for Best Picture, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman's Camp Theater debut, Will Ferrell's comedy about an abandoned theater camp in New York City. Let's get ready for the summer with Ben Platt. Jonathan Majors plays an amateur bodybuilder in Elijah Bynum's Magazine Dreams, and Daisy Ridley shows off her non-Star Wars skills in Rachel Lambert's Sometimes I Think About Death, which premiered on the first day.
Flaws, a graphic novel adaptation by Adrian Tomin, marks the directorial debut of Fresh from the Boat star Randall Park, starring Justin H. Min, Sherry Kohl and Eli Mackie in a comically quirky take on Asian-American chests. . . . . Square.
Alice Englert also made her directorial debut with Bad Behavior, a mother-daughter film about a former child actress played by Jennifer Connelly and the mother of a stunt girl seeking enlightenment. Englert, whose mother is Jane Campion, plays the daughter in a dark comedy about a toxic, addictive relationship with Ben Whishaw as a young guru. We also find Whishaw with Adele Exarchopoulos in passages by Ira Sacks about attraction and psychological abuse.
There are also dozens of documentaries touching on the most pressing issues of our time, such as Rosella Benali's The Big Horn Massacre, about the deaths of Aboriginal women in rural Montana, and Tracy Droz Trago's Plan C, about grassroots organizations in the United States. . States. States are fighting to expand access to abortion pills, and Nancy Schwartzman is helping to expose a worrying trend of women reporting sexual harassment, who are then accused of creating false reports in Victim/Suspect magazine. 20 Days in Mariupol, filmed by AP video journalist Mstislav Charnov in collaboration with Frontline, provides an unprecedented look at the work of Ukrainian journalists stranded in Mariupol at the start of Russian occupation.
Bear fans might be interested in Fremont, a film about a former military interpreter now working in a Chinese cookie factory, with Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri at the Camp Theatre.
Continuity viewers will also find some of the show's stars in various films, such as Sarah Snook using her Australian accent in Dina Reed's Run Rabbit Run, about a fertility doctor battling the ghosts of her past, and Nicholas Brown who holds out Susanna's hand. Vogel's adaptation of Catman starring Emilia Jones as a college student who enters into a relationship with a man in his thirties.
Jones also presents Fairyland, an adaptation of Alice Abbott's best-selling father-daughter relationship set in San Francisco at the dawn of AIDS, directed by Sofia Coppola and directed by Andrew Durham.
The premiere installment, which debuted with Promising Young Woman and Big Sick, has plenty of stellar options. Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway star in William Oldroyd's Eileen, about a young secretary who falls in love with a charming young counselor in a Massachusetts prison where she works in 1964.
Sundance veteran and documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams will make his feature film debut Cassandra, starring Gael Garcia Bernal as Saul Armendariz, an El Paso amateur gay wrestler who becomes an international star. And Nicole Halofzener reunites with Julia Louis-Dreyfus in You Hurt My Feelings, about a novelist who hears her husband's "heartfelt reaction" to her new book.
Lead programmer John Nain noted that there are also quite a few films about the Diaspora in various sections.
“They reflect the changing film culture of some of the countries they come from,” he said.
Shaida Nouri Niasari tells the story of an Iranian woman (played by Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and her 6-year-old daughter who seek refuge from an abusive relationship in an Australian shelter. From the UK – "Girl" by Adura Onashile, which tells about an 11-year-old girl and her mother who came from Africa. In the northern part, Nida Manzur's cheerful genre work Polite Society tells about a robbery at a wedding. And from the US, Singh J. Woo Lee has a Vietnamese taxi driver runaway taken hostage by escaped prisoners in California.
“These filmmakers reflect the world around us through bold and compelling storytelling,” said Joana Vicente, CEO of the Sundance Institute. “It is very important that art promotes dialogue, especially in these unprecedented times – we need these stories to spark discussion, share different points of view and challenge us.”
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Follow AP author Lindsey Barr at www.twitter.com/ldbahr.