Sundance 2025: the ten movies to not miss at this 12 months’s competition

Sundance stays one of many hardest festivals to really predict – a smattering of unknown first-timers unfurling distributor-less movies which can be typically shrouded in thriller – and so making an attempt to guess what to see and what to overlook of the 90-odd premieres could be one thing of a idiot’s errand.

However a 12 months on from a competition that gave us I Noticed the TV Glow, Dìdi, My Previous Ass, The Outrun and A Actual Ache, there are sufficient causes to counsel that this version will likely be simply as spectacular. Listed here are the ten I’ve my eye on proper now:

Jimpa

Again in 2019, premiering criminally far below any Sundance radar, the sensible and messy coming-of-a-certain-age comedy Animals was essentially the most stunning and satisfying movie I occurred to see that 12 months. Its director, Sophie Hyde, who had already impressed along with her sensitively informed trans teen drama 52 Tuesdays, then returned with one other winner – Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, a frank and humorous comedy drama about intercourse that ought to have nabbed its star Emma Thompson an Oscar nod. It could due to this fact be reasonably silly to underestimate her newest, an intergenerational household drama starring Olivia Colman as a girl taking her non-binary baby to see their homosexual grandfather, performed by John Lithgow.

The Factor With Feathers

Benedict Cumberbatch’s final go to to Park Metropolis, main the old school spy drama The Courier, won’t have led to all that a lot (the movie was quietly launched to miniscule field workplace a 12 months later) however this January, with a first-rate Saturday evening premiere and a spikier, extra Sundance-appropriate premise, his newest ought to discover a far bigger viewers. Based mostly on Max Porter’s prize-winning novella, which was later became a stage play with Cillian Murphy, The Factor With Feathers stars Cumberbatch as a father coping with the dying of his spouse whereas caring for his or her two sons. Issues get unusual when a seemingly malevolent creature enters the body. If the writer-director Dylan Southern can discover a solution to stability the unhappy and the scary, this could possibly be a giant factor.

Opus

Sundance sometimes has at the least one horror breakout with previous years premiering movies like Get Out, The Babadook, Discuss to Me and Noticed and a straightforward guess for this 12 months can be Opus, a buzzy popular culture thriller that boasts the A24 seal of approval, an of-the-moment lead in The Bear’s awards magnet Ayo Edebiri and a artful premise. Edebiri performs a journalist headed to the distant compound of John Malkovich’s reclusive pop star who begins to fret that the sycophantic fanboys and women that encompass her could be falling for one thing much more harmful than the cult of movie star. A freshly launched trailer suggests the tone will likely be someplace between horror and comedy, a scary skewering of celebrity pomposity.

Rebuilding

Given the frequency of wildfires within the US (final 12 months there have been an estimated 38,415 of them), it’s not as if a movie like Rebuilding, a couple of cowboy grappling with the lack of his ranch, wouldn’t already really feel well timed. However with the devastation not too long ago felt in California, the writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s reportedly emotive drama ought to really feel like probably the most vital premieres of the competition. It stars Josh O’Connor, coming off a breakout function in Challengers, and The White Lotus MVP Meghann Fahy as his ex-wife, the pair reuniting at a Fema camp. Walker-Silverman’s final movie, the mild romance A Love Tune, was one of many best-reviewed of Sundance 2022.

Sorry, Child

Whereas the Moonlight Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins would possibly appear to have spent extra time and power on extra mainstream fare of late, having simply directed the Lion King prequel Mufasa, he has remained quietly dedicated to unbiased cinema. Collectively along with his producing accomplice Adele Romanski, they helped usher the Cannes hit Aftersun and the Sundance success All Dust Roads Style of Salt to launch and so now their newest, the darkly comedian Sorry, Child arrives with extra buzz than most. It’s the big-screen debut of author, director and star Eva Victor, who has gained viral fame as a comic, together with for her Straight Pleasure video again in 2019. She performs a school professor scuffling with the fallout from a sexual assault informed over a four-year interval.

The Alabama Resolution

Whereas his brother Eugene may need chosen not to indicate his new movie at this 12 months’s Sundance (a Julian Assange doc was pulled after “sudden developments”), Andrew Jarecki’s newest is all set for a splashy premiere, introduced as a late addition. Little is thought about The Alabama Resolution, which follows incarcerated males exposing a cover-up at one in every of America’s deadliest prisons, however early buzz suggests it should develop into a speaking level. His earlier documentaries, from Capturing the Friedmans to The Jinx, have definitely proven his knack for each beginning after which maintaining inside the dialog so anticipate huge issues when this one premieres on Monday.

Kiss of the Spider Girl

Jennifer Lopez won’t be a reputation one has come to affiliate with the Sundance movie competition, even post-critical hit Hustlers; her movies have largely remained each broadly pitched and for streaming audiences solely. So it was a shock when her newest, a supporting function in an adaptation of the Broadway musical Kiss of the Spider Girl was added to the lineup. Directed by Invoice Condon, whose work runs the gamut from the multiplex (Magnificence and the Beast, Twilight sequels) to the arthouse (Gods and Monsters, The Fifth Property), it’s the second filmed tackle Manuel Puig’s novel (the final premiering at Cannes and profitable William Damage an Oscar), telling the story of two politically totally different males sharing a jail cell and retreating into the world of fantasy. The stage musical swept the Tonys again within the Nineties, together with for the groundbreaking legend Chita Rivera, whose intimidating sneakers Lopez should now try and fill.

2000 Meters to Andriivka

Again at 2023’s Sundance, Mstyslav Chernov’s immersive documentary 20 Days in Mariupol offered a significant, if hard-to-watch, have a look at life on the bottom in war-torn Ukraine. It went on to win an Oscar and was deemed so important that it was even screened on the UN’s normal meeting. His follow-up, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, guarantees to be one other hellish reminder of the never-ending horrors being confronted by so many, following a Ukrainian platoon as they try and liberate the Russian-occupied village of Andriivka. Kicking off this 12 months’s world documentary competitors, anticipate it to be one of many competition’s most talked-about movies.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You

It’s develop into a secure guess to imagine that no matter boutiquey distributor A24 brings to the competition will more than likely be price testing (earlier years have seen them convey such standouts as I Noticed the TV Glow, Previous Lives, Eighth Grade and Hereditary), turning one in every of many italicised query marks to daring. Even with out their stamp, it’d be laborious to disregard the curiosity issue of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, a movie that boasts the weird solid of Rose Byrne, Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky. It comes from the writer-director Mary Bronstein and the producer Josh Safdie and focuses on a girl on the sting, coping with an absent husband, a mysteriously sick baby and a hostile therapist. It’s an thrilling prospect for Byrne, an typically untapped actor who has long-deserved tougher roles.

The Librarians

Given the grim state of politics within the US, many eyes will likely be on the documentary strand which has come to be an vital type of resistance on the competition. Sundance additionally tends to dictate the non-fiction dialog for the 12 months with this morning’s Oscars announcement revealing that 4 of the 5 greatest documentary nominees had been premieres finally 12 months’s version. There will likely be few as well timed as Kim A Snyder’s The Librarians, which focuses on the tough work of these making an attempt to fight guide bans in America, forcing these working within the system to develop into “first responders within the battle for democracy and free entry to data”. The movie additionally boasts Sarah Jessica Parker as an govt producer.