[Ed. note: Looking for updates from the 2020 Sundance Film Festival awards ceremony? Head here.]Updated 9:12 PM MTPalka introduces Rachel Grady, who along with co-director Heidi Ewing is an Academy Award nominee for the film Jesus Camp and has won numerous Emmy awards and a Peabody Award.
‘Brittany Runs a Marathon’By Jeremy Kinser
Writer-director Paul Downs Colaizzo calls his inspirational feature film debut Brittany Runs a Marathon “a love letter to my best friend.” He says he based the script on his pal of the same name, after becoming inspired by her journey as a New Yorker in her late 20s to overcome bad habits and establish some balance in her life and believing that her story needed to be shown with dignity on the big screen. The comedy has emerged as one of the bona-fide crowd pleasers of Sundance 2019 and global rights were snapped up by Amazon for $14 million.
Imaginary OrderBy Jeremy Kinser
Imaginary Order, a comedic character study from Debra Eisenstadt, focuses on a woman at a crossroads, beginning to feel useless as she finds herself in the middle of a series of unwanted events that threaten to unravel her family.
Veteran comic actress Wendi McLendon-Covey (known for more ribald work in Bridesmaids and TV’s The Goldbergs) gets the chance to create a funny, moving portrait of Cathy, a middle-aged housewife and mother who increasingly feels her comfortable existence is slipping away—and she scores. Cathy’s teenaged daughter is becoming increasingly remote, and she fears her husband is having an affair.
Hail Satan?By Eric Hynes
“I made a mainstream audience film that’s pro-satanism,” said filmmaker Penny Lane after a screening of her U.S. Documentary Competition entry Hail Satan? at the MARC Theater on Wednesday.
GazaBy Eric Hynes
An antidote to politically-tinged cable news representations, Garry Keane and Andrew McConnell’s Gaza is a visually ripe, kaleidoscopic portrait of everyday life in the Palestinian territory. From fishers to ambulance drivers, artists to patriarchs, old folks to young, Mediterranean beaches to embattled border walls, the filmmakers strive to represent the full spectrum of life in Gaza, and allow residents themselves to provide personal perspectives and narratives via voiceover. While they don’t shy away from moments of unrest and conflict, the filmmakers give context for expressions of frustration by people—several million strong—who are effectively permanently trapped and abandoned in a narrow strip of land.
With Late Night, out Indian-American director Nisha Ganatra chronicles Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson), a female late-night talk show host who has reached a crossroads in her career. Her appeal to the young demo is non-existent, her ratings have begun to slip, and her producer has informed her that she’ll be replaced by a decades-younger male shock jock.
In an impulsive move, she hires Molly (Mindy Kaling) to join her all-male writing staff in an effort to make her comedy more diverse.
Official SecretsBy Dana Kendall
“This year we’ve seen a lot of stories about individuals challenging the system to do what they believe is right,” said Director of Programming Kim Yutani at the premiere of Official Secrets. “This is one of these stories, and it is an extremely powerful one.”
Adapted from the book The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War, South African director Gavin Hood’s political thriller tells the true story of Katharine Gun, a former translator for the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters.
LuceBy Eric Hynes
In Luce, the debut film by Julius Onah, the conflicts of a suburban American high school come to represent the fractures within the whole country, and complex ethical and moral issues are navigated with the stakes of a thriller. Based on a play by J.C.
The Last Black Man in San FranciscoBy Eric Hynes
“I made this movie with my best friend Jimmie,” director Joe Talbot said before the rousing world premiere of The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a film about two native San Franciscan men trying to navigate a gentrified city. In the film, Talbot’s childhood friend Jimmie Fails plays himself as a young man determined to return to his childhood home, a majestic Victorian house now occupied by an older white couple. Estranged from his parents, Jimmie crashes with his best friend Montgomery, played by Jonathan Majors, who lives with his blind grandfather across town.
There’s a new Harvey Weinstein film at Sundance this year, but it’s one the former movie mogul wishes didn’t exist. Although it had been whispered about for years, when the incendiary allegations of rape and sexual harassment against Weinstein were published in October 2017, many were shocked. Some wondered how he’d gotten away with it for so long.
Honey Boy
By Dana Kendall
When director Alma Har’el first met Shia LaBeouf, she discovered that both of their fathers were alcoholics—and “all children of alcoholics are my brothers and sisters,” she explained at the world premiere screening of Honey Boy, written by LaBeouf and based on his troubled childhood.
The two collaborated on a number of other projects before LaBeouf’s screenwriting debut—but this screenplay didn’t start off as a film project at all; it began as an assignment during his recovery. While in rehab, LaBeouf was tasked with writing down his life experiences, and they came out in script form simply because of his tendency for narrative.
Native SonBy Jeremy Kinser
Native Son, Richard Wright’s classic novel about the tragedy that befalls a young black man in Chicago, has endured many adaptations into feature films, television movies, and stage productions since its publication in 1940. Rashid Johnson, an influential visual artist who makes a very impressive directorial debut, has updated the story to the present day and created a potent version that speaks to contemporary audiences. Johnson’s nervy take on the material opened the festival’s U.