Five Films to Watch from this Year’s Sundance Film Festival

1. THE MOMENT

Sundance’s splashiest debut is a fun and biting mockumentary about a hypothetical post-Brat Summer gone wrong. With striking visuals directed by Aidan Zamiri and a throbbing score by A.G. Cook, The Moment served as a playful goodbye to Charli XCX’s Brat era, making a satirical comment on the constant commodification of culture. Blood pressure rises as retina-burning logos strobe onscreen, this alternate version of Charli XCX moving closer and closer to the brink of commercial, personal, and artistic chaos. The Moment’s flashing neon promotional posts feverishly circulated social media for months before the film’s initial release, and A24 acquired it before it even hit Sundance festival grounds. As the latest installment in Charli XCX’s sustaining cultural chokehold and a home run for XCX’s creative circle, The Moment asks: How do you say goodbye to a good thing?

 

 

2. LADY

LADY follows the story of a young woman, Lady, played by Jessica Gabriel’s Ujah, living and working as a taxi driver in her hometown city of Lagos, Nigeria. When an estranged friend, now a sex worker, comes back into her life with a proposition to be a driver for her boss’s operation, Lady has to decide what she believes and grapple with the past while reaching for her future. LADY explores its characters alongside the pulsating streets of Lagos with a visual language that shows without telling, the use of intense sequences of color meant to signify the ebbs and flows of its characters’ emotional states. Through director Olive Nwosu’s deliberate vision, rooms swirl in reds “soaked in danger,” and ocean waves crash in fluorescent blue. A vibrant, emotional, and cathartic journey, LADY is truly original and a directorial debut from Nwosu that will stay with you.

 

 

3. THE GALLERIST

The Gallerist is a campy, gory, and darkly comedic art world chamber drama with an all-star cast. Natalie Portman plays Polina Polinski, a tightly wound Miami art dealer steeped in art-world cool but short on cash while her namesake gallery teeters on the brink of failure. With darting eyes and a choppy platinum bob, Polina clicks around a refurbished white-walled gallery during Art Basel, trying desperately to champion art, keep buyers interested, and cover up a murder, keeping her flustered assistant Kiki (Jenna Ortega) in tow. Director Cathy Yan’s (Birds of Prey) first Sundance premiere since her initial introduction with Dead Pigs in 2018, The Gallerist is a snarky dressing-down of art world ego and commercialism mixed with a healthy dose of shallow stupidity strong enough to hide a body in plain sight. In reference to the connection between bloody murder and the business of art, James Pedersen, who co-wrote the film with Yan, said, “It’s the commercial element impaling us.”

 

 

4. HOLD ONTO ME (Κράτα Με)

HOLD ONTO ME (Κράτα Με) is the debut feature of Cypriot filmmaker Myrsini Aristidou set against the sprawling salt flats and lapping waves of Cyprus. An unflinching portrait of a young daughter grasping at a bond with her absent father, HOLD ONTO ME (Κράτα Με) holds power in its moments of both tension and connection. In a stunning performance by newcomer Maria Petrova, the main character, eleven-year-old Iris, slinks around Cyprus on the back of her older friend Danae’s (Jenny Sallo) motor scooter until she spies her father, Aris (Christos Passalis), back in town attending the funeral of his own. Aris and Iris’s relationship unfolds through a subtly brutal push and pull of each’s will and care for the other amidst a sea of outside pressure until it remains the two of them, sinking in a dark ocean, holding on to each other for dear life.

 

 

5. JARIPEO

​Two men inch towards each other through a field of cornstalks in a flood of flashing red light, their faces almost hidden by ten-gallon hats, as if in a dream. Jaripeo, a debut new feature documentary from filmmakers Efraín Mojica and Rebecca Zweig, explores the manifestation of queer identity within the hyper-masculine culture of rodeos, or “jaripeos,” in the Mexican state of Michoacán. Vicious bull rides and tequila shots from the bottle are contrasted with quiet moments of self-expression and honesty as Mojica travels around Michoacán interviewing rancheros and community members as they explore their queer identity, masculinity, and relationships through intimate conversation. Jaripeo travels between reality and fantasy, in and out of daydream and desire, dancing in a crowd to standing alone in a field. With an emphasis on community and the expectations that bind us, Jarepio works to find a center in the acceptance of personal truth.