More so than other film festivals, Sundance can be a kingmaking force, shining light on an unknown film-maker and then entering into a mutually beneficial relationship with them. Directors return, shifted from smaller to larger venues, off-peak to primetime slots, and watching this steady climb can be a gratifying reward.
The Australian director Sophie Hyde has earned this more than most. Her first film, 52 Tuesdays, a thoughtful drama about a transitioning parent’s relationship with their daughter, won her the festival’s best director prize before she returned five years later with Animals, a sharp and spiky adaptation of Emma Jane Unsworth’s painfully perceptive novel of a fracturing friendship. She returned three years later with Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, an unusually frank and explicit comedy drama with a standout Emma Thompson (who, along with Animals’ Holliday Grainger deserved far more serious awards attention). In just over a decade, Hyde had established herself as someone whose name had become an instant sign of a certain top-tier Sundance quality, a skilled actors’ director whose films burrowed deeper than most.
