This year’s Sundance Film Festival was the last in its longtime home of Park City, Utah. But Sundance’s final hurrah there—it moves to Boulder, Colorado, in 2027—didn’t feel much like a finale; instead, it was a more muted affair than previous years, with few outright buzzy premieres. This is perhaps in part because the institution of Sundance is changing, as the potential for indie movies’ success seems less certain than ever. The slate did contain plenty of gems, however, many of which I couldn’t stop thinking about as I hopscotched across town. Below, based on nearly two weeks of screenings, are the most memorable, inventive films I saw; no release dates have been announced yet, but I’ll be keeping an eye out for them.
Josephine (seeking distribution)
This year’s festival darling—winning both of Sundance’s top honors, the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize—is a masterful drama about a harrowing event. Josephine, directed by Beth de Araújo, is named after its 8-year-old protagonist (played by Mason Reeves), who witnesses a violent assault. She unsurprisingly struggles to put what she saw into words, instead acting out in class and envisioning the perpetrator as an unnerving imaginary friend. But Josephine’s parents, Damien (Channing Tatum) and Claire (Gemma Chan), disagree over how to handle their daughter’s confusion; they don’t know how to articulate what happened, either. Such heavy developments could come off like the material of after-school specials, but de Araújo never loses sight of Josephine’s raw sensitivity. She captures the young girl’s delicate psyche while interrogating whether fully protecting a child’s innocence is ever possible.
Once Upon a Time in Harlem (Neon, release date TBD)
In August 1972, the filmmaker William Greaves threw a party at Duke Ellington’s home in the titular New York neighborhood. He invited luminaries to discuss and debate the legacy of the Harlem Renaissance, including the actor Leigh Whipper, the musicians Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle, and the librarian and playwright Regina Anderson. Over glasses of wine and champagne, they joked, bickered, and considered how the Black creative experience had evolved since they anchored the movement some 50 years prior. Footage of the evening taken by the late Greaves is already a priceless time capsule of a once-in-a-lifetime hangout session, but his son, David, has stitched the unvarnished conversations captured that day together with examples of their subjects’ many achievements—literary, artistic, and political. The result is an atmospheric, electrifying documentary and a moving testament to the importance of remembering.
The Invite (A24, release date TBD)
Forget infidelity, money troubles, or miscommunication: Marriage, according to Olivia Wilde’s latest directorial effort, is at its messiest when a couple simply refuses to acknowledge that it’s over. But the tightly wound Angela (Wilde) thinks she has the solution. One night, she blindsides her husband, Joe (Seth Rogen), by throwing a dinner party for their enigmatic neighbors, Hawk (Edward Norton) and Pina (Penélope Cruz)—who, judging by their constant, loud lovemaking, are absolutely thriving. Based on the Spanish film The People Upstairs, with a script by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack, The Invite begins as an anxiety-ridden relationship drama before turning into a riotous comedic showcase for its cast. Rogen is the ensemble’s MVP, finding an unexpected tenderness as a man trying to endure the night’s overwhelming discomfort without revealing any of his insecurities. As it turns out, the most chaotic dinner parties are the most fun—for us, anyway.
The History of Concrete (seeking distribution)
Don’t be fooled by the title: This latest project from John Wilson, who masterminded HBO’s idiosyncratic docuseries How to With John Wilson, isn’t really about the gray material that makes up much of our infrastructure. Rather, it’s a poignant exploration of society’s desire for what concrete symbolizes—order, uniformity, permanence—and how difficult it can be to defy that need. Like Wilson’s show, The History of Concrete is packed with gleeful detours that take him to, among many destinations, a wax museum in Italy and a bubble-gum-removal company in New York. Wilson is also drawn to creative types: He interviews an opera singer, shadows a short-film director, and even joins a room full of writers learning how to produce the perfect Hallmark-movie script. In his meandering, he gathers insights into what it’s like to make art—and how even the most unconventional work can last lifetimes.
Wicker (seeking distribution)
Something is wrong with Fisherwoman (Olivia Colman). Many things, actually: She reeks. She lives in a cottage on the outskirts of a medieval village. And weirdest of all, she’s acquired a husband made out of wicker (Alexander Skarsgård, in a terrific set of prosthetics). Based on Ursula Wills-Jones’s short story about a community unusually hung up on marrying off its women—brides are given collars, not rings, at their weddings—Wicker is a whimsical and romantic fable that critiques the limits of assigned social roles. Fisherwoman’s perfect, albeit woven, husband baffles her neighbors and the local queen bee (Elizabeth Debicki); her intention to continue working after her marriage only bewilders them further. The film’s eccentric flourishes may sound corny, but the writer-directors Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer ground the premise in a deeply sincere sense of yearning. And Colman is, as always, superb.
The Last First: Winter K2 (Apple, release date TBD)
Several documentaries at Sundance this year investigated the relationship between the world’s natural wonders and human interference. But whereas those films examined how people affect the environment, The Last First delves into the opposite. K2 is the second-highest peak in the world, and long offered a tantalizing challenge to climbers hoping to make history: The mountain had never been summited, in part because of its extremely steep faces. Using footage captured by climbers from various expeditions, the director Amir Bar-Lev constructs a portrait of perseverance—and hubris. The Last First makes clear from the outset that it will end in tragedy, yet it’s easy to get swept up in the competitiveness of the mountaineers. The film offers a sharp study of what drives so many to attempt near-impossible ascents, and why audiences can’t stop watching them in turn.
The Friend’s House Is Here (seeking distribution)
Pari (Mahshad Bahram) and Hanna (Hana Mana), roommates living in Tehran, pursue creative passions that could get them in trouble with the Iranian government: The former is a theater director of immersive, underground shows, while the latter is a performer who has built an Instagram following by illegally dancing in front of historical landmarks. The Friend’s House Is Here is itself a piece of protest art; the film was smuggled out of Tehran to its Park City premiere. Yet the movie isn’t merely dissident cinema. Though neither Pari nor Hanna can escape the political reality of their home country, their story is infused with charm and anchored by their exuberant friendship. The directors Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz spotlight how Pari and Hanna have built their bond by expressing themselves freely; they dance in their living room, throw raucous dinner parties, and turn whatever they can into a stage.
Silenced (seeking distribution)
In this chilling documentary, the director Selena Miles carefully recounts what happened to three very different women after they publicized allegations of sexual assault. Brittany Higgins, a former junior government staffer in Australia, and Amber Heard, the Hollywood actress, both made personal accusations against two powerful public figures; the Colombian journalist Catalina Ruiz-Navarro, meanwhile, reported on an anonymous group of women’s claims about a well-known filmmaker. The men, who denied any wrongdoing, filed retaliatory defamation lawsuits—turning their accusers’ accounts over to the court of public opinion. Through archival footage and a variety of interviews, Silenced carefully tracks its subjects’ commonalities, in the process illustrating the steady complexities of #MeToo a decade after it entered the cultural conversation.
Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty! (Sony Pictures Classics, release date TBD)
At first glance, the director Josef Kubota Wladyka’s third feature seems destined to make a misstep. Unusually ebullient title aside, the film is tonally and aesthetically ambitious: Set in Tokyo, the story follows Haru (Rinko Kikuchi), a young widow with a love for ballroom dancing, as she tries to overcome her grief while simultaneously falling for a new instructor at her local studio. Along the way, her flights of fancy manifest as fantastical dance sequences, and she has visions of her husband haunting their home while wearing, of all things, a giant raven costume. Like a stylishly choreographed number, the plot bobs, weaves, twists, and turns with dexterity. Its not-so-secret weapon is Kikuchi herself, who grounds the tale’s most over-the-top moments in a lovely, earnest warmth.
Everybody to Kenmure Street (seeking distribution)
In 2021, on the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, an immigration-enforcement van arrived in the Pollokshields district of Glasgow to carry out one of the United Kingdom Home Office’s dawn raids. Officers detained two men of Indian descent, but local residents stopped the van from leaving the neighborhood; one man even clung to the vehicle after sliding underneath. Other neighbors joined the barricade, and by the end of the day, the protesters numbered in the hundreds. In Everybody to Kenmure Street, participants reflect on what they did, and why: Many appear in talking-head interviews, but the director Felipe Bustos Sierra also recruited actors such as Emma Thompson (who serves as the executive producer) to play protesters who don’t. The documentary cleverly mixes theatrical elements with more conventional methods, such as archival footage showing the city’s rich history of civil disobedience, to emphasize a lineage of organized opposition and the vitality of everyday people acting together.
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