sundance 2022
‘Beyond Utopia’ Review: An Uneven but Gripping Doc About North Korean Defectors
Madeleine Gavin's film tells deeply personal stories about people attempting to defect from North Korea and a heroic pastor from South Korea making the dangerous escape possible.
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‘Mars One’ Review: A Tender and Tightly Wrought Film Foregrounds Working-Class Brazil
Gabriel Martins' 2022 Sundance feature, now streaming on Netflix, chronicles one Brazilian family's life following the election of Jair Bolsonaro.
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‘President’ Filmmakers on Zimbabwe’s Ban of the Doc and Long Fight for Democracy
From her home in Copenhagen, Denmark, director Camilla Nielsson is fighting for justice. Justice in Zimbabwe. The filmmaker has shot two acclaimed documentaries in the landlocked African nation: Democrats, which won the best documentary feature honor at Tribeca in 2015, and President, which premiered in Sundance in January, where it won the World Cinema Documentary […]
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Kino Lorber Lands North American Rights to Sundance Doc ‘Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power’ (Exclusive)
Kino Lorber has landed the North American rights to the Sundance documentary Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power, which scrutinizes the “male gaze” and visual objectification of women in film. Brainwashed, which debuted in the Park City fest’s Premieres section and later screened at the Berlin Film Festival, argues that many of cinema history’s most iconic and acclaimed films […]
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‘Dos Estaciones’: Film Review
Natural disasters and multinational corporations threaten the survival of an independent tequila company in the Mexico-set drama, a selection of New Directors/New Films and an award winner at Sundance and True/False.
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Magnolia Pictures Lands North American Rights to Sundance Doc ‘Riotsville, USA’ (Exclusive)
Magnolia Pictures has acquired the North American rights to the Sundance documentary Riotsville, USA, which uses a model town constructed by the U.S. military as a lens by which to examine the militarization of law enforcement. The doc, which world premiered at Sundance in the NEXT category and is currently playing at Film at Lincoln […]
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Berlin: Showtime, Bleecker Street Sign Output Deal
Bleecker Street has signed a new three-year output deal with Showtime Networks that will see the ViacomCBS unit take TV, on-demand and streaming rights to Bleecker’s slate of upcoming features, all of which Bleecker will release theatrically in the U.S. The deal, unveiled Thursday, kicks off in March and will see Showtime take up to […]
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Lena Dunham’s ‘Sharp Stick’ Goes to Utopia
The Lena Dunham-directed feature Sharp Stick has landed at Utopia in the U.S. Kristine Froseth stars in the movie, Dunham’s first in over a decade, as a sensitive and naive 26-year-old living on the fringes of Hollywood with her disillusioned mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and influencer sister (Taylour Paige). Working as a caregiver and just […]
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Sundance Dealmaking Adjusts to Indie Film Market in Limbo
While the Sundance Film Festival officially ended on Jan. 30, the market is still far from over for buyers and sellers. “We’re still in the middle of Sundance as far as I am concerned,” laughs ICM Partners’ Jessica Lacy. The 2022 Sundance saw a possible market correction. It was the first fest in several years […]
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‘Speak No Evil’ (‘Gæsterne’): Film Review | Sundance 2022
Danish director Christian Tafdrup puts a family through hell when they make friends with the wrong folks on vacation in this Netherlands nightmare.
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Sundance: ‘I Didn’t See You There’ Director on Documenting Disability
“I didn’t know if it was going to make sense, but I just couldn’t stop filming it,” remembers filmmaker Reid Davenport of a circus tent that was erected outside of his Oakland apartment. But Davenport kept the camera rolling on the circus tent, using it as a jumping-off point for what would become his feature […]
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The Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 20 Best Films of Sundance 2022
A Spanish revenge thriller, Lena Dunham's latest polarizer, a sex comedy starring Emma Thompson, and documentaries about a fallen TV icon, French volcanologists and a Korean immigrant's wrongful conviction were among THR critics' faves from the (virtual) fest.
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