What to Watch Coming Out of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival

| Photo by Dynamic Wang on Unsplash.

The opinions reflected in this OpEd are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the staff, faculty and students of The King’s College.

(REVIEW) My first ever Sundance Film Festival was spent on a new couch. Having been moved entirely online just over two weeks before the festival’s Opening Night due to rising concerns about Omicron, I canceled my travel plans to Utah and set up my online schedule. The festival took place from January 20-30. I can’t say it was the way I imagined my experience would be, but it was likely for the best considering how many classes I would’ve missed and homework that would’ve gone ignored. 

I also can’t call it the ideal experience for a festival. To give credit where it is due, the people putting on the festival are undeniably doing their best to create as authentic a festival experience as possible and can’t be faulted when backed into a corner. They are prioritizing the health of their people and those in attendance. The crowds, the theaters, the fangirling and the mutual love for movies lingering in the air as everyone is excited to be the first to see the newest batch of independent cinema all were dearly missed. Seeing Emma Stone on a Zoom Q&A doesn’t leave me quite as swooned as seeing her in person would have. 

Be that as it may, the movies were watched! And though the experience can’t be as romanticized or elevated by the various elements that make theaters so wonderful — of which I won’t currently geek out over — the heart of the matter is watching them. And after taking that upon myself, my job is now to recommend the ones I found to be the best and most worth your time. But it pains me to narrow it down to five, to leave out films such as Emergency, a timely and cunning subversion of the Superbad-tale fitted to a Black man’s experience; jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, an astonishing behemoth of a documentary about a behemoth of an artist only left out because we were just given part-one of the three-part story; Neptune Frost, a film, for the most part, unlike anything I have ever seen before; When you Finish Saving the World, a film I didn’t love despite having a sneaking suspicion my opinion will be much fonder when I get the chance to rewatch it — both a frustrating and welcome occurrence that comes with festival binging. 

My larger recommendation than the five following films is to seek out as many films in this catalog as you can — ones that sound interesting, different or outside of your comfort zone. You probably won’t love them all. I didn’t, but I have no doubt that seeking out independent films from filmmakers who are passionate about their work will expand your appreciation and understanding of the stories that can be told through the medium of film. But without further ado: 

Something in the Dirt

Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson’s newest film, Something in the Dirt, made this list, in part, because I have no idea how to begin to explain what it is about. If this list were solely interested in which films most warrant a rewatch, this film would be at the top. It follows two men played by Moorhead and Benson who soon after becoming neighbors witness a supernatural occurrence and seek to uncover its secrets while making a documentary over their adventure doing so, yet this leads them down an endless spiral of rabbit holes in which they doubt everything they thought they knew. Having only seen it once, I’m not sure if there are actually any answers that can be excavated from this mind boggling film or if it is intentionally impenetrable to be another rabbit hole in itself, but it is worth the rewatch regardless. Coined the DIY wonderkids, Moorhead and Benson don’t just star in it but also fill just about every other role in the process of making the movie. To the naked eye, it is noticeably a cheaper movie made by a few people, but it becomes inconsequential the more they find a way to do just about everything with nothing. They may not have a studio budget, but they have a script in which humor and strange sci-fi horror are so seamlessly intertwined, the film along with its endless mysteries becomes joyously inscrutable.  As the credits come to the end, the film is dedicated to “making movies with your friends.” That passionate sentiment seeps through every scene. 

(Prior to the festival, XYZ Films acquired Something in the Dirt and it is awaiting a release date.)

Emily the Criminal

As John Patton Ford was introducing his feature debut, Emily the Criminal, and in the Q&A afterward, it was mentioned a couple of times that 12 years ago Ford had a short film accepted into Sundance while he was still a film student, yet there was a 12-year gap between that and his recent feature debut’s acceptance into the festival. He remarked that he couldn’t believe it had taken this long and that he didn’t want to get into the details of those 12 years as things would start to get sad. 

This context shines a new light on his film, revealing further depths of anguish within the narrative. The film follows Emily for whom, crippled by art school debt, the prospects of a successful life as an artist becoming a mere fantasy, grinds out the 9-5’s to barely scrape by while one job interview after another ends disastrously. And when she finds herself in the company of credit card fraudsters, the dollar signs in her eyes grow bigger but so does the target on the back of her head.

We’re all too familiar with the cautionary tale of greed, only Ford’s is made good by the relatable blue-collar suffering embodied in an exceptional performance from Audrey Plaza as the film’s protagonist. The film seems to be shooting for the sort of frenzied, stress-inducing ride you’d find in a Safdie Brothers’ film, but if the Safdies are the bar, Ford comes up a bit short. In comparison, his directing as well as the editing are a bit too polished to create the same effect, and the script lets up on you for a few moments so you can breathe where a Safdies script would refuse to do so. However, the ride is thrilling nonetheless even if at points you are in awe of Plaza more than anything else. 

(After the festival, Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment acquired Emily the Criminal and it is awaiting a release date.)

Cha Cha Real Smooth 

Cooper Raiff is on a one-way track to becoming the darling of America’s indie film scene. His feature debut, Shithouse, (a film I slightly prefer to this one and highly recommend) won the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Feature at the SXSW Film Festival, and his newest film, Cha Cha Real Smooth, recently won the Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival. 

In accordance with his first film, Cooper wrote, directed, produced, starred in and helped edit this film. He plays a recent college graduate who is (once again all too relatably) in dire need of money, and being the happy-go-lucky, just about endlessly kind and great with children (less relatable) guy that he is, local mothers ask him if he’ll be the official “party-starter” at the many upcoming bat mitzvahs after taking it upon himself to make the one he attends with his little brother fun rather than lame. It’s there that he meets one of the local moms who stands out more than the rest, probably because she’s played by Dakota Johnson, who also co-produced the film, and isn’t long before he has a rapidly growing crush on her (relatable once more). 

The evolution of this relationship clarifies the broader fear and uncertainty that broods within a person with the rest of their life in front of them and less than a clue of which direction to take their next step. What the film sacrifices in emotional complexity and depth in its characters, it makes up for with a good sense of humor and unabashedly wearing its massive heart on its sleeve.

(At the festival, Apple acquired Cha Cha Real Smooth and it is awaiting a release date.)

Leonor Will Never Die

A really annoying thing people like to do on the Internet is call a film “Lynchian” because it's weird or reminds them of a David Lynch movie or whatever. This is ridiculous because what makes David Lynch movies David Lynch movies is being entirely, uniquely his and nothing else. In that way, Martika Ramirez Escobar’s Leonor Will Never Die is “Lynchian.” I’ve never seen anything quite like it and am certain nobody could make something overly similar. 

Although the film is unconditionally singular, it shares a lot of spiritual similarities with Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson is Dead, which is either a praise or a sign that you need to watch Dick Johnson is Dead. Escobar’s film is a joyous, endlessly creative and fascinating ode to movies, to making movies and to people. Much like Something in the Dirt, a quick plot synopsis is possible but simply won’t suffice. Leonor Reyes (Sheila Francisco) is an elderly, retired screenwriter who after trying to finish an old, dusted-off screenplay of hers, is hit in the head by a TV thrown out of a window and goes into a coma. We then travel back and forth from the real world to the world within her script, which she has woken up in and is roaming with creative editorial freedom. Leonor navigates the past, her regrets and ignored emotional wounds through her fiction up until a third act which reaches through the fourth wall and shows you a fifth wall. It is nothing short of a splendid way to spend an hour and forty minutes. 

(Leonor Will Never Die is awaiting distribution.)

Resurrection

Of the films I was able to watch, Andrew Semans’ Resurrection clearly stands tallest above the rest. In a festival known for marginally-amateur films from younger up-and-coming filmmakers that nonetheless are ambitious, creative and independent, Semans’ film displays the most mature and fleshed-out directing, performances and writing of the lot this year. 

It follows Margaret (Rebecca Hall) who is a successful businesswoman with a tidy life while being a single mother to Abbie (Grace Kaufman) who is soon leaving for college to her mother’s subtle chagrin. But things unravel upon the ominous arrival of David (Tim Roth) whose bizarre and petrifying history with Margaret is told in a mesmerizing single-take monologue that grabs you by the throat — it is quite possibly the best bit of acting the entire festival has to offer, and you’ll still be struggling for air as the credits have rolled. 

Of the films I was able to see, Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth’s performances undoubtedly are the best in the festival’s pool of great acting. Possibly an unfair comparison given the veterans that they are, but boy oh boy do they both deliver astonishing performances. Constantly bouncing off one another and pushing each other higher, Hall plays a woman gaslit in circles, her sanity leaving with the control she used to have over her life, and Roth plays an absurdly twisted manipulator stripping this control from her. He plays a real piece of shit doing irreparable things, but it is still wonderful to watch a demented Tim Roth talk about the baby that has been living inside of his stomach for decades. The film is a thrilling, confounding character study of a woman doubted by her loved ones, made great by the sick and fittingly unbelievable lengths it goes to. All this culminates at a remarkable, ambiguous ending. A must-see!

(At the festival, IFC Films and Shudder acquired Resurrection, and it is awaiting distribution.)