Sundance Film Festival: Local Lens
Sundance Film Festival: Local Lens
Festival favorites. For Utahns. For free. Join us July 26–29 for nine free indoor and outdoor screenings of festival favorites from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Don’t miss these exciting four days in Utah, including events for local artists and film intros and Q&As from filmmakers and actors in attendance.
Schedule
July 26
SLC
The Deepest Breath
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.
July 27
Park City
The Pod Generation
In a not-so-distant future, amid a society madly in love with technology, tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share their pregnancies via detachable artificial wombs or pods. And so begins Rachel and Alvy’s wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world.
July 28
SLC
KOKOMO CITY
This wildly entertaining and refreshingly unfiltered documentary passes the mic to four Black transgender sex workers in Atlanta and New York City — Daniella Carter, Koko Da Doll, Liyah Mitchell, and Dominique Silver — as they hold nothing back while breaking down the walls of their profession.
July 28
Park City
Polite Society
A merry mash up of sisterly affection, parental disappointment, and bold action, Polite Society follows martial-artist-in-training Ria Khan, who believes she must save her older sister, Lena, from her impending marriage. After enlisting the help of her friends, Ria attempts to pull off the most ambitious of all wedding heists in the name of independence and sisterhood.
July 28
SLC
birth/rebirth
A single mother and a childless morgue technician are bound together by their relationship to a little girl they have reanimated from the dead.
July 28
SLC
Filmmaking Deep Dive: Pitching Your Project
This free event is offered exclusively to artists as part of Sundance Film Festival: Local Lens. Get a close-up look at the pitching process, as four emerging Utah filmmaking teams pitch their proposed feature-length projects to a panel of industry experts.
July 29
SLC
PLAN C
With a controversial visionary at the helm, a grassroots network fights to expand access to abortion pills across the United States, keeping hope alive during a global pandemic and the fall of Roe v. Wade.
*With special appearance from director Tracy Droz Tragos for a Q&A following the screening
July 29
West Valley
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
Through intimate vérité, archival footage, and visually innovative treatments of her poetry, Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project pushes the boundaries of biographical documentary film by traveling through time and space to reveal the enduring influence of one of America’s greatest living artists and social commentators.
*With special appearance from director Joe Brewster for a Q&A following the screening
July 29
West Valley
Fremont
Donya works for a Chinese fortune cookie factory in San Francisco. Formerly a translator for the U.S. military in Afghanistan, she struggles to put her life back in order. In a moment of sudden revelation, she decides to send out a special message in a cookie.
*With special appearance from lead actress Anaita Wali Zada for a Q&A following the screening
July 29
Oakley
Food and Country
Worried about the survival of small farmers, ranchers, and chefs hobbled by America’s policy of producing cheap food, trailblazing food writer Ruth Reichl reaches across political and social divides to report on the country’s broken food system and the innovators risking everything to transform it.