Three years have passed since some of us last set foot in Park City, Utah, where the Sundance Film Festival has been on COVID-mandated hiatus — at least as an in-person event — since January 2020. Not that the festival has exactly hibernated in the meantime: In 2021 and 2022, digital screenings and panel discussions helped sustain this annual event and its movie-hungry audiences. One of those pandemic-impacted editions even produced the first Sundance-premiered title ("CODA") to win the Oscar for best picture.
Even so, what a bummer. Anyone who's ever trudged through the snow from screening to screening — or slipped on black ice mid-transit — knows that there is no experiential substitute, virtual or otherwise, for a festival as physically immersive and meteorologically unforgiving as this one. And so it's a thrill to return to Sundance this year, masks and vitamin C tablets at the ready. Will it be a good, bad or average festival? Time will tell. The overall quality of the movies at Sundance, as at any festival, can vary from year to year, but any movie projected on a big screen stands a better chance of being a more indelible, more affecting and more lasting experience.
The six movies I'm recommending below are among just a small number of features I was able to see ahead. I'm looking forward to seeing (and thinking and writing about) much more in the days to come, but these already persist in my memory — and, if you seek them out in Park City or beyond, I hope they will also persist in yours.
