Now Playing

Matt Spicer's directorial debut is a cautionary tale for the social media age, and one shepherded by a patented performance from Aubrey Plaza, who plays an unstable young woman intent on parlaying her obsession with Instagram influencer and lifestyle guru Taylor Sloane (Elizabeth Olsen) into a picture perfect friendship. As most acts of creepy desperation go, this one eventually fails miserably, but not before Plaza's character cleverly schemes her way into Taylor's life while escalating her own fixation. Spicer's timely satire captures the absurdity and danger of curating our second lives – the ones that play out on digital screens and almost always portray us in our best light.

Cate Blanchett and director Julian Rosefeldt's flinty ambitions make for creative alchemy in Manifesto, which sees Blanchett seamlessly inhabit 13 different characters in a contemporary performance of seminal artist manifestos. Plucking the dialogue directly from textual works by Marx, Engels, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, and others, Manifesto challenges the premises of these edicts by constantly shifting time, space, and character in a film adaptation of Rosefeldt's original multi-screen installation. Below check out all of the Sundance-supported films coming to theaters and digital platforms this May.