By Stephanie Ornelas
Whether you’re heading to Utah for the 2023 in-person Sundance Film Festival experience, or enjoying the Fest conveniently from home, there are a number of projects created by filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+ that you don’t want to miss this year. Several of these storytellers have collaborated with Sundance Institute multiple times over the years. Dive into stories about the beloved Indigo Girls (It’s Only Life After All), the history of New York’s Meatpacking District told from the perspective of transgender sex workers (The Stroll), and other films that are sure to captivate you.
Visit our Festival site to browse ticketing options (locals of Salt Lake City, there’s an exclusive discounted package just for you). Then start building your schedule by adding a few of these titles to your favorites list.
Here are the 42 outstanding films screening at the 2023 Festival, from shorts to feature films and documentaries, created by artists who identify as LGBTQ+:
Director: Thanasis Neofotistos
Section: Short Film Program 2
Available to watch in person and online
In Neofotistos’s first project premiering at the Festival. In his short film, an air hostess collapses on flight, convinced that her problem is her new braces. However, her colleagues know the plane is carrying her mother’s dead body to her hometown.
Director: Anya Chirkova
Section: Short Film Program 2
Available to watch in person and online
Chirkova’s film is about a middle-aged Iranian man who makes a desperate bid to keep his apartment as his relationship with his son unravels. Chirkova was also a producer for Bump, a short that premiered at last year’s Festival.
Director: Alice Englert
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
Englert is known for acting in Sundance Festival screenings In Fear, Them That Follow, and You Won’t be Alone. But this year, she’ll be at the Festival for her film Bad Behaviour. In her film, Lucy, a former child actor, seeks enlightenment at a retreat led by spiritual leader Elon while she navigates her close yet turbulent relationship with her stunt-performer daughter.
Director: Angelo Madsen Minax
Section: Short Film Program 3
Available to watch in person and online
Through snowy stargazing, flirting with guys on dating apps, taking ketamine (or not), and watching YouTube lecture videos, outer and inner space collapse — to draw a warped cartography of desire and distance.
Minax also directed North by Current, which was supported by Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program. He was also a Fellow in 2021 for the Institute’s Art of Practice Fellowship.
Director: Maddie Brewer
Section: Animated Short Films
Available to watch in person and online
Brewer’s animated short follows two coworkers at a derelict fast food franchise who accidentally discover a yonic meat portal to another realm — a “burger” world, wherein they’re the only ones who can liberate an oppressed vegetable populace from the all-controlling hand of big meat. This is Brewer’s first project premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.
Director: Roger Ross Williams
Section: Premieres
Available to watch in person
Williams has a long history with Sundance Institute, having been an advisor for the Catalyst Forum in 2016, an Alumni Advisory Board Member in 2015, a Documentary Competition Juror in 2015, a Mentor for the Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellows program in 2020, and a panelist at a handful of Festival events. He was also the director, screenwriter, and producer of several Sundance Film Festival screenings.
This year, Williams will be at the Fest for Cassandro, coming to the Premieres section. In the film, Saúl Armendáriz (Gael Garcia Bernal), a gay amateur wrestler from El Paso, rises to international stardom after he creates the character Cassandro, the “Liberace of Lucha Libre.” In the process, he upends not just the macho wrestling world, but also his own life.
Director: Angalis Field
Section: U.S. Fiction Short Films
Available to watch in person and online
This will be Field’s first project premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. In his short film, Cam is used to seeing the same customers while working at his family’s cherry stand. After a handsome cyclist passes through and asks for directions to a local cruising site, Cam takes it as an invitation to follow him.
Director: Laura McGann
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person
In McGann’s film, a champion freediver and expert safety diver seemed destined for one another despite the different paths they took to meet at the pinnacle of the freediving world. A look at the thrilling rewards — and inescapable risks — of chasing dreams through the depths of the ocean.
Director: Gregg Araki
Section: From the Collection
Available to watch in person
Back in 1995, The Doom Generation premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in the Premieres section. This year, the film will be returning to the Festival’s From the Collection category. It’s one of 12 films directed by Araki that screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
In Araki’s film, two troubled teens pick up an adolescent drifter. Together, they embark on a sex-and-violence-filled journey through an America of psychos and convenience stores.
Araki was a Creative Advisor for the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive (2020), Directors Lab (2012), and Creative Producing Feature Film Lab (2008, 2010).
Director: Andrew Durham
Section: Premieres
Available to watch in person
Fairyland will be Durham’s first film to screen at the Sundance Film Festival — coming to the premieres section. Set against the backdrop of San Francisco’s vibrant cultural scene in the 1970s and ’80s, the film chronicles a father-daughter relationship as it evolves from an era of bohemian decadence to the heartbreaking AIDS crisis.
Erica Tremblay
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person
Tremblay’s Fancy Dance was supported by Sundance Institute through the 2021 Directors, Screenwriters, and Film Producing Labs, and the 2020 Intensive for Indigenous Artists. In the film, a Native American hustler kidnaps her niece from the child’s white grandparents and sets out for the state powwow in hopes of keeping what is left of their family intact. Tremblay’s project was also a Mark Silver Honoree in 2021.
Director: Zhen Li
Section: Animated Short Films
Available to watch in person and online
A crush has gone moldy in this animated short — Li’s first project to premiere at Sundance Film Festival.
Director: Adura Onashile
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
This will be Onashile’s first project to premiere at Sundance Film Festival. In her film, Eleven-year-old Ama and her mother, Grace, take solace in the gentle but isolated world they obsessively create. Ama’s growing up threatens the boundaries of their tenderness and forces Grace to reckon with a past she struggles to forget.
Taietsarón:sere ‘Tai’ Leclaire
Short Film Program 5
Available to watch in person and online
Leclaire’s short film follows a queer Native who is confronted by a non-Native wearing a ceremonial headdress at a music festival. He retreats into his mind to find the perfect response from various versions of his own identity. Leclaire was also the screenwriter for How to Deal with Systemic Racism in the Afterlife, which received support through Sundance Institute’s Native Lab in 2022.
Director: Aemilia Scott
Section: Short Film Program 1
Available to watch in person and online
Six women come to a consensus in this short film. Produced by Paul Feig and starring Ken Marino, this will be Scott’s first project premiering in the Sundance Film Festival.
Director: Kymon Greyhorse
Section: Short Film Program 2
Available to watch in person and online
Greyhorse’s short film is about the world around us as it shifts, and we adapt and change. Although we might look different, deep down we are still the same. We are made from Mother Earth — mud, wood, love, and patience. In 2022, Greyhorse was a fellow for Sundance Institute’s Full Circle Fellowship.
Director: Daphne Gardner
Section: Midnight Short Films
Available to watch in person and online
This will be Gardner’s first project premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. In her short film, Tracey is just trying to jerk off with her bathtub faucet like normal when some old memories dredge themselves up, the pipes explode with dirty water, and she starts leaking black goo.
Director(s): Chloe Alliez and Violette Delvoye
Section: Short Film Program 1
Available to watch in person and online
In Alliez’ and Delvoye’s short, on the night of a big party for Lucie, Maya, and their friends, Jimmy has also come. Everyone knows he is here for Maya, but does she have the same feelings for Jimmy? This will be the first project by Alliez and Delvoye that will be screening at the Sundance Film Festival.
Director: Frédéric Tcheng
Section: Premieres
Available to watch in person
In Tcheng’s film, co-directed by fashion revolutionary Bethann Hardison, Hardison looks back on her journey as a pioneering Black model, modeling agent, and activist, shining a light on an untold chapter in the fight for racial diversity.
Audiences might also be familiar with Halston (2019 Sundance Film Festival), which Tcheng wrote, directed, and produced.
Director: Ella Glendining
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person and online
Is There Anybody Out There? will be Glendining’s first project to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In her film, while navigating daily discrimination, a filmmaker who inhabits and loves her unusual body searches the world for another person like her, and explores what it takes to love oneself fiercely despite the pervasiveness of ableism.
Alexandria Bombach
Premieres
Available to watch in person
Bombach’s It’s Only Life After All is blending 40 years of home movies, film archives, and intimate present-day vérité, to create a poignant reflection from Amy Ray and Emily Saliers of iconic folk rock duo Indigo Girls. A timely look into the obstacles, activism, and life lessons of two queer friends who never expected to make it big.
In 2018, Bombach was a Fellow for the Sundance Institute | Warner Bros. Feature Film Directors Track, and in 2019, she was an Artist in The Sundance Institute Talent Forum. She was also the director and director of photography for On Her Shoulders, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.
Director: D. Smith
Section: NEXT
Available to watch in person and online
In Smith’s film, her first to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, four Black transgender sex workers explore the dichotomy between the Black community and themselves, while confronting issues long avoided.
Director: Jessica Bardsley
Section: Short Film Program 2
Available to watch in person and online
Bardsley’s short film is set in the outer space of consciousness, where the surfaces of far-out planetary bodies form the terrain for an exploration of 24/7 capitalism, insomnia, and the disappearance of darkness. Bardsley will be making her directorial debut with her short at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Director: Patricia Ortega
Section: World Cinema Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
MAMACRUZ is Ortega’s first project to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. With the help of her newly emigrated daughter, a religious grandmother learns how to use the internet. However, an accidental encounter with pornography poses a dilemma for her.
Director: Milisuthando Bongela
Section: World Cinema Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person and online
Director and screenwriter Milisuthando Bongela’s film received support from Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Grant in 2019. And in 2020, Bongela was a fellow for the Institute’s Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellowship.
Set in past, present, and future South Africa, the film is an invitation into a poetic, memory-driven exploration of love, intimacy, race, and belonging by the filmmaker, who grew up during apartheid but didn’t know it was happening until it was over.
Director: Bridey Elliott
Section: Short Film Program 6
Available to watch in person and online
Back in 2018, Bridey Elliott was a panelist Filmmakers’ Panel Discussion — The Story Lives in You at the Sundance Film Festival. She also directed three previous Sundance Film Festival screenings: Affections, Clara’s Ghost, and The Starr Sisters. This year, Elliott will be heading to the Festival for Mirror Party, a short film about two friends who role-play a breakup conversation.
Director: Vuk Lungulov-Klotz
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
In Lungulov-Klotz’s film, over the course of a single hectic day in New York City, three people from Feña’s past are thrust back into his life. Having lost touch since transitioning from female to male, he navigates the new dynamics of old relationships while tackling the day-to-day challenges of living life in between.
Director: Jacqueline Castel
Section: Midnight
Available to watch in person
In Castel’s My Animal, Heather, an outcast teenage goalie in a small northern town, falls for newcomer Jonny, an alluring but tormented figure skater. As their relationship deepens, Heather’s growing desires clash with her darkest secret, forcing her to control the animal within.
Castel is also known for writing and directing The Puppet Man, which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.
Director: Xenia Matthews
Section: Short Film Program 6
Available to watch in person and online
First-time Sundancer Xenia Matthews’ film tells the story of the long-dead Ourika, a Senegalese girl enslaved by a French aristocrat, who is awoken in the eerie space between life and death, between body and soul, where she finds her way back to life and into liberation.
Director: Ira Sachs
Section: Premieres
Available to watch in person
Ira Sachs has a long history with Sundance Institute having directed a whopping eight films that premiered at past Sundance Film Festivals. He was also a Creative Advisor for the Institute’s Directors and Screenwriters Labs and the Sundance in Tel Aviv Screenwriters Lab over the course of a decade.
This year, Sachs will be attending the Festival for Passages, an intimate examination of attraction and emotional abuse between men and women.
Director: Maryam Keshavarz
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Available to watch in person and online
In Keshavarz’ film, The Persian Version, a large Iranian-American family gathers for the patriarch’s heart transplant when a family secret is uncovered that catapults the estranged mother and daughter into an exploration of the past. Toggling between the United States and Iran over decades, mother and daughter discover they are more alike than they know. Available online.
Keshavarz’ Circumstance (2011 Sundance Film Festival) received a ton of support from Sundance Institute via the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art Grant in 2011, the 2009 Creative Producing Summit, the 2007 Directors Lab, a Adrienne Shelly Foundation Women Filmmakers Grant, and the 2007 January Screenwriters Lab.
Director: Sebastian Silva
Section: Premieres
Available to watch in person
After filmmaker Sebastian Silva goes missing in Mexico City, social media celebrity Jordan Firstman begins searching for him, suspecting that the cleaning lady in Sebastian’s building may have something to do with his disappearance. The film, written, directed, and centered around Silva, will be his first project screening at the Sundance Film Festival.
Silva is known for directing a slew of Festival screenings like Dolfun, TYREL, The Maid, Crystal Fairy, Magic Magic, and Nasty Baby.
Shirampari: Legacies of the River
Director: Lucia Flórez
Section: Documentary Short Film Program
Available to watch in person and online
In Florez’ short about one of the most remote places in the Peruvian Amazon, an Ashéninka boy must overcome his fears and catch a giant catfish using only a hook to begin his adult journey.
Director: Anna Hints
Section: World Cinema Documentary Section
Available to watch in person and online
Anna Hints received support for her project in 2021 through Sundance Institute’s Documentary Film Program. In her film, in the darkness of a smoke sauna, women share their innermost secrets and intimate experiences, washing off the shame trapped in their bodies and regaining their strength through a sense of communion.
Director(s): Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker
Section: U.S. Documentary Competition
Available to watch in person and online
First time Sundancers Kristen Lovell and Zackary Drucker’s film tells the history of New York’s Meatpacking District, told from the perspective of transgender sex workers who lived and worked there. Filmmaker Kristen Lovell, who walked “The Stroll” for a decade, reunites her community to recount the violence, policing, homelessness, and gentrification they overcame to build a movement for transgender rights.
Director: Samm Hodges
Section: Short Film Program 4
Available to watch in person and online
Hodges is also known for Downward Dog (2017 Sundance Film Festival), which he created and also acts in. This year, his film about a missing wallet that threatens to destroy a teenager’s life will be screening in the U.S. Fiction Short Film Category.
Director: Mike Donahue
Section: Short Film Program 2
Available to watch in person and online
In Donahue’s short, Troy has loud sex. Troy has loud sex 24/7. Troy shares a wall with Thea and Charlie. Troy is ruining their lives… Or is he saving them? This will be Donahue’s first project to premiere at the Festival.
Director: Melina Valdez
Section: Short Film Program 4
Available to watch in person and online
Coming to the Short Film Program 4 section is Valdez’ first project to premiere at the Festival. Unable to process her grief after the death of her stepfather, a teenage girl escapes reality by shooting guns in the woods.
Well Wishes My Love, Your Love
Director: Gabriel Gabriel Garble
Section: Animated Short Films
Available to watch in person and online
Newly orphaned and freshly wounded from a loss, a boy lends his companion a prosthetic arm for the day. The companion records the limb being exposed to textures and materials. What will become of the limb and the video recordings? This is the premise of Garble’s project, her first to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
When You Left Me On That Boulevard
Director: Kayla Abuda Galang
Section: Short Film Program 3
Available to watch in person and online
Teenager Ly and her cousins get high before a boisterous family Thanksgiving at their auntie’s house in southeast San Diego in 2006. This will be Galang’s first project to premiere at the Festival.
Director: Shalini Adnani
Section: Short Film Program 3
In Adnani’s short film — her first to premiere at the Festival — a man is summoned from Mumbai to his village to deal with a termite infestation threatening to destroy his childhood home.
Director: Shuli Huang
Section: Documentary Short Film Program
Available to watch in person and online
In Huang’s film, as a young Chinese filmmaker returns to his hometown in search of himself, a long-overdue conversation with his mother drives them into a quest for acceptance and love. This will be Huang’s first film to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
