A Very Female Sundance Festival
Having Sundance in my adopted home state annually provides fun, excitement, pride, and, after 15 years, helps keep me from moving back to my native Denver. January is perhaps my favorite month because while I watch as many Sundance films as possible, I also see which from the prior year rise to the top during award-season. I'm so pleased that Sundance 2020's PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, MINARI, COLLECTIVE, and IDENTIFYING FEATURES are getting well-deserved acclaim.
Although I still desperately miss the communal theater experience - especially at our beloved Salt Lake Film Society's Broadway and Tower - I think Sundance's virtual festival made the best of it. Once again I had a great deal of fun and excitement and pride in the international festival that challenges people's perception of Utah. A majority (53%) of Sundance 2021 festival films were directed by women, and 26% were directed by a woman of color. This gender parity is the culmination of a multi-year, intentional trend of the programmers to meet the mission "to amplify the voices of storytellers and audiences across ethnicities, genders, abilities, sexual orientations, and geographic regions." I love the following Sundance films and they just happen to be directed by women and with women in the lead roles and ensemble cast. I'm thrilled to see them released in 2021 and can hardly wait for them to win 2022 awards.
CODA Apple acquired, but probably will have a theatrical release. Dramatic comedy. Deaf actors in great ensemble cast. CODA = Child of Deaf Adult.
Really funny, deep, and sweet. Set a record for awards, winning all major ones in the US Dramatic category. Its $25 million deal shattered previous Sundance records of $17.5 million for PALM SPRINGS and also BIRTH OF A NATION. Per Indiewire, Apple considers this movie a movement - not a moment - for the Deaf community. Apple previously partnered with A24 for theatrical release of BOYS STATE, so hopefully will do so for CODA.
HIVE not yet sold, but likely will be. Historical drama, Kosovo.
Based on a real Kosovan woman as she starts a business after her husband doesn't return from the war. Really interesting with deeply moving performances. HIVE set a record, winning all major awards in the World Cinema Dramatic category at Sundance.
LAND In theaters 2/12/21. Drama.
Robin Wright directed, wrote, starred in Land as a grief-stricken woman who isolates herself in wilderness.
MAYDAY has unknown distributor. Drama.
Indie drama about women suffering violent situations who are transported to an island to become sirens who entrap and punish men.
PASSING from Netflix. Drama. Black women in lead roles and cast. LGBTQ+ themes.
Two childhood friends, Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, reconnect in 1920's Harlem. Both are light-skinned black women with repressed feelings for one another, and Negga is passing for white. Nuanced, gorgeous performances shot in black and white.
STREET GANG: HOW WE GOT TO SESAME STREET from HBO. Doc.
This year's WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR. It's the hilarious, touching, feel-good doc needed now.
WRITING WITH FIRE is not yet bought, but expect it to be. Doc from India.
Inspiring and fascinating doc about KHABAR LAHARIYA, India's only all-women-run newspaper, established 14 years ago by fearless female journalists from the Dalit group - which is considered so low in the Indian caste system that they don't even rank as part of it. Won major jury and audience awards at Sundance.
MY NAME IS PAULI MURRAY is seeking distributor. Doc. LGBTQ+, black, non-binary lead. Based on Pauli Murray's extraordinary life which influenced Justices Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Gingsberg, and many, many others.
AILEY a neon doc. LGBTQ+, black male lead, about dancer, choreographer, dance company founder, Alvin Ailey.
AMY TAN: UNINTENDED MEMOIR will appear on PBS American Masters, Chinese-American Woman lead, doc re: writer Amy Tan (JOY LUCK CLUB), Jamie Redford director, very recently passed.
RITA MORENO: JUST A GIRL WHO DECIDED TO GO FOR IT will appear on PBS American Masters, Latina director and lead.