(L-R): Olive (Abigail Breslin), Sheryl (Toni Collette), Frank (Steve Carell) and Richard (Greg Kinnear) in Little Miss Sunshine. Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox/Eric Lee
By Jessica Herndon
The Sundance Film Festival is synonymous with innovative storytelling — and has been since its early years, when movies like the Coen brothers’ neo-noir debut Blood Simple and Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreines’s haunting documentary Seventeen helped define its audacious vibe. The Fest is where distinct voices emerge and artists are supported.
In November, we unveiled the Sundance Film Festival 101 watchlist, a sweeping portrait of independent Festival premieres curated by our programmers. Now, we’re narrowing the focus to highlight the debut features within that list. Among them are the first films that introduced now-iconic filmmakers to the world.
Before many of these storytellers became household names, their debuts cut through the noise, grabbing the attention of audiences with singular narratives and a unique visual language. Consider this selection a study in first impressions that linger. The movies in the list ushered in new creative forces, reshaping how cinema looks and feels, and paving the way for each filmmaker’s evolution.
In 1989’s sex, lies and videotape, Steven Soderbergh revamped the way films invite self reflection before going on to direct Traffic and Behind the Candelabra. In 1996, Lana and Lilly Wachowski emerged on the scene with the provocative Bound before creating The Matrix series. We were introduced to Darren Aronofsky through his offbeat 1998 thriller Pi, which laid the foundation for his groundbreaking films Requiem for a Dream, which went through our 1999 Screenwriters Lab, and Black Swan.
By 2000, Gina Prince-Bythewood gave us the hopelessly romantic Love & Basketball, paving the way for The Secret Life of Bees and The Woman King. Ryan Coogler’s powerful 2013 Fruitvale Station marked the arrival of a filmmaker grounded in emotional and cultural impact, setting the stage for the Black Panther franchise and Sinners. And in 2020, Emerald Fennell’s stylish revenge thriller Promising Young Woman led her to make Saltburn and Wuthering Heights.
Highlighted by decade, the watchlist below celebrates the jumping-off points of filmmakers and their idiosyncratic work. Consider it an invitation to revisit (or discover) the films that didn’t just introduce new talent, but changed the trajectory of independent cinema.
THE 1980s
Blood Simple (1985)
Director: Joel Coen
Original Festival Program Description: The plot concerns four people — a bar owner, his wife, the bartender with whom the wife runs off, and the unscrupulous and scuzzy private detective hired by the forlorn husband to kill the runaway couple. Their paths cross, re-cross and tangle to the point where the plot becomes a series of ingenious mistakes and misapprehensions.
Desert Hearts (1986)
Director: Donna Deitch
Original Festival Program Description: Desert Hearts is a tender and passionate portrait of two very different women as they develop a mutual understanding and friendship, culminating in a liberating experience together.
Smooth Talk (1986)
Director: Joyce Chopra
Original Festival Program Description: Fifteen-year-old Connie Wyatt (Laura Dern), is suspended between her freshman and sophomore years like an evanescent grace note. It is time to explore, to move beyond the confines of home, of other, of childish things. She is learning to assert herself and take those first tentative steps into womanhood, to bloom and discover her own sensuality. The excitement and danger of adulthood comes to her in the form of Arnold Friend (Treat Williams), a dark figure from the other side of the tracks.
Heathers (1989)
Director: Michael Lehmann
Original Festival Program Description: Westerburg High in Sherwood, Ohio, is an arena fraught with competitive vengeance, a peer pressure cooker ruled an elite feminine quartet known as “The Heathers.” Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder), their newest member, knows that high school isn’t child’s play: it’s war. In a gesture of defiance to the group, she attaches herself to J. D. (Christian Slater), an outwardly mature, philosophical rebel, and a motorcycle-riding newcomer to Westerburg. Their antics together to rid the high school of its bad apples turn increasingly calculated and serious, and ultimately lead to murder.
sex, lies, and videotape (1989)
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Original Festival Program Description: Sex, lies charts the complex interrelationship linking four characters in a southern town: Ann (Andie MacDowell); her husband, John (Peter Gallagher); her sister, Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo), who is having an affair with John; and John’s old college friend Graham (Spader), who drifts into their lives and, through his videotapes, changes the way they see themselves and relate to each other.
THE 1990s
House Party (1990)
Director: Reginald Hudlin
Original Program Description: House Party is a film set within the hip-hop culture of today’s Black teenagers. It centers around a particular day and night in the life of Kid and his “homeboys,” who are planning a booming party. Even though it’s a school night, everyone is getting ready for a big evening of wild talk, wild music, wild dancing, and the wild thing.
Metropolitan (1990)
Director: Whit Stillman
Original Program Description: A group of college-age children of the former upper class gather nightly in a sprawling Park Avenue apartment after their usual party or dance is over. Accidentally they meet and pull into the group Tom (Edward Clements), an ashy young man who’s drawn to, but professes to be-repulsed by, their attitudes and life-style.
Daughters of the Dust (1991)
Director: Julie Dash
Original Program Description: Daughters of the Dust is a drama about the struggle between tradition and progress. Set in the early 1900s, it is the story of the Pazants on the eve of the family’s migration from their Sea Island home to the mainland, leaving their land and legacy behind. It is the first dramatic feature film to explore the traditions of the Gullah, the descendants of African slaves who once worked the indigo, rice and cotton plantations and later inhabited the many islands dotting the South Carolina and Georgia coastlines.
Paris is Burning (1991)
Director: Jennie Livingston
Original Program Description: They call themselves “The Children.” They are black and Latino, part of the New York under class, and they are homosexual. They are absolutely marginal to the mainstream of society (indeed they are often rejected by their own families due to their sexuality). The Children belong to “Houses” — for example, The House of Chanel, The House of Saint Laurent and the House of Ninja — surrogate families which offer emotional, creative, and even financial support. But the focus of their lives is the Balls. The Harlem “Drag Queen” Balls are parades of House members who compete for trophies and cash prizes. These events take the form of “voguing,” which combines break dancing, gymnastics, assuming attitudes, and striking the poses of fashion magazines.
Poison (1991)
Director: Todd Haynes
Original Program Description: In three separate, but interrelated and intercut, stories inspired by the writings of Jean Genet, Todd Haynes reveals his ability to explore social issues within a popular form. “Hero” gives a mother’s odd account of her 7-year-old son’s disappearance after he has killed his father. “Horror” tells of a scientist who discovers the source of the sex drive, but an accident results in a frightening reaction. In “Homo” a prisoner falls in love with a fellow inmate and is drowned in obsession, fantasy and violence. Although completely different in content and form, the stories gradually move toward a focus on the themes of transgression and punishment.
El Mariachi (1993)
Director: Robert Rodriguez
Original Program Description: The story follows a lone mariachi musician who arrives in a Mexican border town at the same time as a hit man, freshly sprung from jail. They both wear black and carry similar guitar cases, except the mariachi’s contains his beloved instrument, while the hit man’s is a mini arsenal of gadgets and weapons. The mariachi falls in love with an enigmatic bar owner, who takes him in after he is accidentally mistaken for the hit man and finds himself ushered into a violent underworld.
Clerks (1994)
Director: Kevin Smith
Original Program Description: The filmic equivalent of a garage band, this low/no-budget movie, chronicling a day in the life of a convenience-store clerk, is a smart, funny, insightful wail of ennui. Shot in cheesy black and white, Clerks perfectly captures the fluorescent-lit banality of Quick Stop, the local hangout for the disaffected, disenfranchised denizens of a backwater Jersey town near Asbury Park (Springsteen country!).
Go Fish (1994)
Director: Rose Troche
Original Program Description: No fishing expedition, this first feature is an insider view of lesbian life in the nineties by a writer and filmmaker team who are as good at angst as they are at irony. At once gritty and lyrical, it tracks an interlinked cast of characters (most of them played by nonprofessionals) through a fanciful girl-meets-girl saga.
Hoop Dreams (1994)
Director: Steve James
Original Program Description: The basic message of Hoop Dreams, which chronicles the lives and high-school careers of two Chicago-area basketball players, might seem to be old hat. William Gates and Arthur Agee are both in junior high school when their skill on the court catches the attention of recruiters who want them to attend one of Chicago’s premier high-school basketball powerhouses, St. Joseph’s, which also happens to be the alma mater of NBA superstar Isaiah Thomas. Agee idolizes Thomas, and the coach’s assurance that he will help get Agee a college scholarship If he attends St. Joseph’s convinces him and his family to make the choice. Gates is even more heavily pursued, told by everyone that he is already a star and projected by many in the sports establishment to be the next Thomas. Thus begins a four-and-a-half-year odyssey which documents the boys’ separate sports careers.
Reality Bites (1994)
Director: Ben Stiller
Original Program Description: Reality Bites is the first film about young adults of the nineties that has the courage to notice that even though it seems like a moral wasteland out there, there are still some kids who are going to make it through.
Kids (1995)
Director: Larry Clark
Logline: A day in the life of a group of teens as they travel around New York City skating, drinking, smoking and deflowering virgins.
Bound (1996)
Directors: Lana and Lilly Wachowski
Original Program Description: Corky, an ex-con, who is fixing up an apartment in a high-class building, played with wonderful tongue-in-cheek flair and toughness by Gina Gershon, falls for Violet, the sexy moll of a Mafia money launderer who lives next door. Violet, played equally impeccably by Jennifer Tilly as the coquettish, “dumb” brunette, is also attracted to Corky, and once they’ve connected, both literally and figuratively, they concoct a plan to steal two million dollars.
Walking and Talking (1996)
Director: Nicole Holofcener
Original Program Description: In Nicole Holofcener’s film the psychosexual problems of two women, Laura (Ann Heche) and Amelia (Catherine Keener), experience a tear at their relationship, yet ultimately deepen their love and understanding of one another.
High Art (1998)
Director: Lisa Cholodenko
Original Program Description: Inflected with an edgy, urban realism and dark, laconic wit, High Art is an astute meditation on the interminglings of love and ambition, identity and addiction.
Pi (1998)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Original Program Description: Darren Aronofsky has crafted an intense, hallucinogenic, and extremely adept exploration into the world of independent science fiction. Depicting one man’s obsession to construct a theoretical, numerical order out of chaos in an attempt to decipher a pattern to both the stock market and existence as a whole, he has launched a sense-numbing expedition that simultaneously complies with and defies expectations of science-fiction cinema.
Smoke Signals (1998)
Director: Chris Eyre
Original Program Description: Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals is a superbly told, deeply moving portrait of coming to terms with one’s father. His direction of novelist/screenwriter Sherman Alexie’s tale of a young man’s journey to retrieve his estranged father’s body for burial is full of the kind of truth, spirit, and insight that only a remarkably original and genuine voice can offer.
The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Directors: Daniel Myrick, Eduardo Sanchez
Original Program Description: Shot in real time on video and 16 mm film, The Blair Witch Project is the firsthand account of three student documentary filmmakers who venture into Maryland’s remote Black Hills to discover the truth about the local scaremonger, the mythic Blair Witch.
THE 2000s
Girlfight (2000)
Director: Karyn Kusama
Original Program Description: Drenched in sweat, emotion, and attitude, Girlfight is a beautiful portrait of a young woman who, in harnessing her brain and brawn, is able to reconcile with her past and embrace life on her own terms.
Love and Basketball (2000)
Director: Gina Prince-Bythewood
Original Program Description: Two kids, a boy and a girl, meet on their neighborhood basketball court. Eleven-year-old Quincy doesn’t quite know what to make of a girl who plays as well as any boy, and Monica doesn’t hold much with the cockiness of a young boy who already thinks he’s the court’s superstar. But it’s obvious they are infatuated with each other, and their relationship slowly builds as they pursue their mutual dream to make it as professional ballplayers.
Donnie Darko (2001)
Director: Richard Kelly
Original Program Description: Donnie Darko is set in a typical upper-class suburb, certainly a familiar landscape for recent American films. The film’s protagonist is a maladjusted teenager; actually, he’s borderline delusional, beset by visions of a monstrous rabbit which is trying to keep Donnie under its sinister influence. Prompted by this apparition, Donnie commits antisocial acts while he is undergoing psychotherapy, surviving the vagaries of high-school life and romance, and fortuitously escaping a bizarre death from a falling jet engine. As the film develops, Donnie battles his demons, literally and figuratively, in a series of intertwining story lines that play with time travel, fundamentalist gurus, fate and predestination, and the machinations of the universe.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Original Program Description: With wicked humor, explosive imagination, and a gold mine of original rock ‘n’ roll, John Cameron Mitchell makes an illustrious filmmaking debut with this screen adaptation of his critically acclaimed off-Broadway hit, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
Director: David Wain
Original Program Description: “Are you ready for the summer, are you ready for the sunshine,” is an anthem which embodies the spirit of all great teen, summer camp movies of the ’70s and ’80s. What more could any teen (or adult for that matter) with a raging libido want than horny camp counselors in tight bathing suits gallivanting through the woods. Wet Hot American Summer delivers this and all the other summer camp elements we’ve grown to know and love as it offers a new comic sensibility to the genre all its own.
Real Women Have Curves (2002)
Director: Patricia Cardoso
Original Program Description: Real Women Have Curves is a humorous and warmhearted look at a Mexican American teenage girl coming of age in a boiling cauldron of cultural expectations, class constrictions, family duty, and her own personal aspirations.
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
Director: Andrew Jarecki
Original Program Description: The Friedmans are a seemingly typical, upper-middle-class Jewish family whose world is instantly transformed when the father and his youngest son are arrested and charged with shocking and horrible crimes. Caught up in hysteria and with their Great Neck community in an uproar, the family undergoes a media onslaught. But they shot the really interesting footage themselves.
DIG! (2004)
Director: Ondi Timoner
Original Program Description: Seven years in the making, and culled from fifteen hundred hours of footage, Ondi Timoner’s DIG! tracks the tumultuous rise of two talented musicians, Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols, and dissects their star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry.
Napoleon Dynamite (2004)
Director: Jared Hess
Original Program Description: Napoleon spends his days drawing magical beasts, working on his computer hacking skills to impress the chicks, and begrudgingly feeding his grandma’s pet llama, “Tina.” When his friend Pedro decides to run for class president, they must rely on their knowledge of cows, piñatas, and a surprise special talent if they are to defeat the stuck-up Summer Wheatley.
Brick (2005)
Director: Rian Johnson
Original Program Description: Brendan Fry is a loner at his high school, someone who knows all the angles but has chosen to stay on the outside. When the girl he loves turns up dead, he plunges into the school’s social strata like a fist through a honeycomb to find the “who” and “why,” with the same single-minded devotion to his self-appointed task as the hard-boiled heroes of old.
March of the Penguins (2005)
Director: Luc Jacquet
Original Program Description: Filmed in Super 16mm to convey the full visual impact of the penguins’ magnificent environment (including never-before captured underwater footage of the penguins’ winter activities), The Emperor’s Journey is a triumph of documentary filmmaking.
Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)
Director: Miranda July
Original Program Description: Miranda July’s film is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating and contemporary world.
The Puffy Chair (2005)
Directors: Jay Duplass
Original Program Description: Josh has found a great present for his father’s birthday: a puffy chair exactly like the one his dad used to have. He just has to pick it up from the eBay seller and drive it over for the big surprise, staying over at his brother’s house on the way.
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris
Original Program Description: When the Hoover family are all forced to hop into the old VW bus to take Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, this is either a portrait of the most dysfunctional family you’ve ever seen or the absolutely hilarious tragicomic journey of a family whose lives are in for a change.
The Cove (2009)
Director: Louie Psihoyos
Original Program Description: The largest supplier of dolphins in the world is located in the picturesque town of Taiji, Japan. But the town has a dark, horrifying secret that it doesn’t want the rest of the world to know. There are guards patrolling the cove, where the dolphin capturing takes place, who prevent any photography. The only way to stop the evil acts of this company and the town that protects it is to expose them… and that’s exactly what the brave group of activists in The Cove intend to do.
THE 2010s
Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
Director: Banksy
Original Program Description: Los Angeles–based filmmaker Terry Guetta set out to record this secretive world in all its thrilling detail. For more than eight years, he traveled with the pack, roaming the streets of America and Europe, the stealthy witness of the world’s most infamous vandals. But after meeting the British stencil artist known only as “Banksy,” things took a bizarre turn.
Pariah (2011)
Director: Dee Rees
Original Program Description: With a spectacular sense of atmosphere and authenticity, Pariah takes us deep and strong into the world of an intelligent butch teenager trying to find her way into her own.
Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
Director: Benh Zeitlin
Original Program Description: Hushpuppy, an intrepid 6-year-old girl, lives with her father, Wink, in “the Bathtub,” a southern Delta community at the edge of the world. Wink’s tough love prepares her for the unraveling of the universe; for a time when he’s no longer there to protect her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of whack — temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs coming, and Wink’s health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
Searching for Sugar Man (2012)
Director: Malik Bendjelloul
Original Program Description: Rodriguez was the greatest ’70s U.S. rock icon who never was. His albums were critically well-received, but sales bombed, and he faded away into obscurity among rumors of a gruesome death. However, as fate would have it, a bootleg copy of his record made its way to South Africa, where his music became a phenomenal success. In a country suppressed by apartheid, his anti-establishment message connected with the people. When his second album finally gets released on CD in South Africa, two fans take it as a sign, deciding to look into the mystery of how Rodriguez died and what happened to all of the profits from his album sales.
Fruitvale Station (2013)
Director: Ryan Coogler
Original Program Description: Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who loved his friends, was generous to strangers, and had a hard time telling the truth to the mother of his beautiful daughter. He was scared and courageous and charming and raw, and as human as the community he was part of. That community paid attention to him, shouted on his behalf, and filmed him with their cell phones when BART officers, who were strong, intimidated, and acting in the way they thought they were supposed to behave around people like Oscar, shot him in cold blood at the Fruitvale subway stop on New Year’s Day in 2009.
The Babadook (2014)
Director: Jennifer Kent
Original Program Description: “Do you want to die?!” seven-year-old Samuel asks his stressed-out single mother, Amelia. She wonders if his question is a threat or a warning. After dealing with Samuel’s frantic tantrums his entire life, Amelia suspects that her son has begun directing his violent misbehavior toward her. However, after a dark and foreboding children’s book called Mister Babadook mysteriously appears on Samuel’s bookshelf, Amelia must decide if her son is truly deranged, or if there really is a bogeyman lurking in their darkened halls at night.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Directors: Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi
Original Program Description: Consider the living quarters of vampires, and stodgy old castles in Transylvania may come to mind. But these aren’t your typical bloodsuckers. Viago (379 years old), Deacon (183 years old), Vladislav (862 years old), and Peter (8,000 years old) have chosen to share a flat in Wellington, New Zealand. Unfortunately for them, it’s hard to make new friends due to their constant thirst for blood. Without any mortal chums left to invite them into all of the hip establishments around town, they’ve lost touch with the current social scene. Can these creatures of the night put aside their differences as roommates and adapt to modern society?
Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)
Director: Chloé Zhao
Original Program Description: High school senior Johnny is fixing to leave the Pine Ridge Reservation when the unexpected death of his rodeo-cowboy father complicates things. Reluctant to leave behind his 13-year-old sister, Jashaun, with whom he shares a special bond, Johnny must rethink his future. While Jashaun seeks out answers from her older half-brothers, Johnny’s increasing inner conflict stands in the way of his departure, setting both of them on separate paths toward rediscovering the meaning of home.
The Witch (2015)
Director: Robert Eggers
Original Program Description: A colonial family leaves plantation life and attempts to reap their harvest on a fledgling farm at the edge of an imposing ancient New England forest. Soon, superstition and dread set in as food grows scarce, a family member goes missing, and the children’s play takes on a frenzied and menacing undercurrent. As they begin to turn on one another, the malevolent machinations of an ethereal presence from within the woods exacerbate the growing corruption of their own natures.
O.J.: Made in America (2016)
Director: Ezra Edelman
Original Program Description: The producers of ESPN’s 30 for 30, along with award-winning director Ezra Edelman, tell the story of one of the most polarizing people in American history, O.J. Simpson. They explore how Simpson’s rise and fall was centered around two of America’s greatest fixations — race and celebrity.
Swiss Army Man (2016)
Director: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
Original Program Description: Alone on a tiny deserted island, Hank has given up all hope of ever making it home again. But one day everything changes when a dead body washes ashore, and he soon realizes it may be his last opportunity to escape certain death. Armed with his new “friend” and an unusual bag of tricks, the duo go on an epic adventure to bring Hank back to the woman of his dreams.
Get Out (2017)
Director: Jordan Peele
Logline: A young African-American visits his white girlfriend’s parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.
Strong Island (2017)
Director: Yance Ford
Original Program Description: In 1992, filmmaker Yance Ford’s brother William was shot and killed by a 19-year-old white mechanic after a common complaint about a car repair spiraled violently out of control. The mechanic claimed he fired in self-defense, and though William was unarmed, he quickly became the prime suspect in his own death. When an all-white grand jury set the shooter free, Yance’s family retreated into a silent fury. Twenty years later, Strong Island invents a startling cinematic language to penetrate this devastating collision of paralysis, grief, fear, racism, and injustice.
Eighth Grade (2018)
Director: Bo Burnham
Original Program Description: Eighth-grader Kayla Day always has her phone in hand, hoping to find connections online that might make up for those she’s unable to forge in everyday life. She makes YouTube videos aimed at other adolescents dealing with similar issues — feelings of isolation, anxiety, and invisibility — but after so easily summoning this wisdom and confidence when addressing her (barely existent) audience, Kayla finds it paralyzingly difficult to apply in real situations. In the final week of a thus-far-disastrous school year—and with high school looming on the horizon — Kayla struggles to bridge the gap between how she perceives herself and who she believes she should be.
Hereditary (2018)
Director: Ari Aster
Original Program Description: The Graham family starts to unravel following the death of their reclusive grandmother. Even after she’s gone, the matriarch still casts a dark shadow over the family, especially her loner teenage granddaughter, Charlie, whom she always had an unusual fascination with. As an overwhelming terror takes over their household, their peaceful existence is ripped apart, forcing their mother to explore a darker realm in order to escape the unfortunate fate they’ve inherited.
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Director: Boots Riley
Original Program Description: Cassius Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a 30-something black telemarketer with self-esteem issues, discovers a magical selling power living inside of him. Suddenly he’s rising up the ranks to the elite team of his company, which sells heinous products and services. The upswing in Cassius’s career raises serious red flags with his brilliant girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), a sign-twirling gallery artist who is secretly a part of a Banksy-style collective called Left Eye. But the unimaginable hits the fan when Cassius meets the company’s cocaine-snorting, orgy-hosting, obnoxious, and relentlessly optimistic CEO, Steve Lift (Armie Hammer).
THE 2020s
Promising Young Woman (2020)
Director: Emerald Fennell
Original Program Description: Suspiciously unambitious Cassie (Carey Mulligan) leads a quiet existence as a barista who lives in her parents’ house since dropping out of medical school. She and her friendly boss, Gail (Laverne Cox), gab away days at the cafe. The way she spends her evenings, however, reveals a boiling vendetta. Men who cross her path are in serious danger, as beautiful and brutal Cassie seeks to heal from past trauma by doling out scathing lessons. When Ryan (Bo Burnham), a former classmate, re-enters her life, so does the possibility of healing — until new details about the death of her best friend infuriate Cassie and inspire her most potent confrontation yet.
Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)
Director: Amir “Questlove” Thompson
Original Program Description: In 1969, during the same summer as Woodstock, a different music festival took place 100 miles away. More than 300,000 people attended the summer concert series known as the Harlem Cultural Festival. It was filmed, but after that summer, the footage sat in a basement for 50 years. It has never been seen. Until now.
Past Lives (2023)
Director: Celine Song
Original Program Description: A budding childhood romance between Nora and Hae Sung, classmates at a primary school in Seoul, ends abruptly when Nora’s family emigrates to Canada. Twelve years later, Nora, now a playwriting student in New York, notices that Hae Sung’s been searching social media for her. They reconnect online, begin talking frequently, and even imagine a reunion. But another dozen years pass before they finally meet over a few fateful days during his visit to New York.
Sorry, Baby (2025)
Director: Eva Victor
Original Program Description: In an aching and tender debut feature, writer-director Eva Victor displays a tremendous specificity of voice, depicting graduate student-turned-professor Agnes with sensitivity and emotional clarity both before and after her trauma. Infusing the character’s sardonic wit into its cinematic language of isolation and confusion, Sorry, Baby uses its nonlinear formal structure and five-year duration to capture the complexities and inconsistencies, triumphs and setbacks of Agnes’ attempts to heal.
