While the Sundance Film Festival mulls a big move for 2027, the 2025 program is beneath manner. The occasion’s forty first version kicked off January 23 in Utah, and you may look under for all of Deadline’s critiques from the fest to this point.
Sundance founder Robert Redford promised that audiences “can count on a 2025 program that showcases diverse and vibrant filmmaking globally.” Running by means of February 2, the lineup contains greater than 85 options and 6 episodic tasks set to display screen in Park City, Salt Lake City and on-line.
Below is a compilation of our critiques from the fest, which final yr awarded its U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize to Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers. Click on the movie’s title to learn our full take.
‘By Design’
Patrick Meade Jones
Section: Next
Director-screenwriter: Amanda Kramer
Cast: Juliette Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Melanie Griffith, Samantha Mathis, Robin Tunney, Udo Kier
Deadline’s takeaway: The plot by no means solely goes out of the window, nevertheless it actually will not be uppermost within the director’s thoughts. It’s not business fare, however competition audiences certainly will reply to By Deisgn’s open-ended concepts about consumerism, standing and the bags we accumulate each emotional and bodily.
‘Jimpa’
Sundance Film Festival
Section: Premieres
Director: Sophie Hyde
Screenwriters: Sophie Hyde, Matthew Cormack
Cast: Olivia Colman, John Lithgow, Aud Mason-Hyde, Daniel Henshall, Kate Box, Eamon Farren, Zoe Love Smith, Romana Vrede, Hans Kesting
Deadline’s takeaway: Above all else, Jimpa at the beginning is about household. The movie belongs to Lithgow, who will get one in every of his greatest outings lately as a self-centered man decided to do issues his manner, irrespective of the associated fee, however nonetheless with a loving coronary heart.
‘Omaha’
Sundance Film Festival
Section: Dramatic Competition
Director: Cole Webley
Screenwriter: Robert Machoian
Cast: John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis, Talia Balsam
Deadline’s takeaway: In this household road-trip pic set throughout the 2008 monetary disaster, one disturbing sequence after one other is performed out on the morose face of John Magaro, who’s clearly conserving the reality from them — and us — of what this journey is definitely all about.
‘Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)‘
Stephen Paley
Section: Premieres
Director: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
Deadline’s takeaway: Sly Lives! has two issues happening, the primary being a celebration of a genius singer-songwriter-producer who by no means actually made it into the pantheon of greats. The second a part of Questlove’s thesis: fame didn’t sit simply on Sly Stone’s shoulders.
‘Twinless‘
Greg Cotten/Courtesy Sundance Institute
Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director-screenwriter: James Sweeney
Cast: Dylan O’Brien, James Sweeney, Lauren Graham, Aisling Franciosi, Tasha Smith, Chris Perfetti
Deadline’s takeaway: In James Sweeney‘s sophomore function, he navigates loneliness, nervousness, melancholy and different frequent millennial pastimes by means of an equally comedic and heartfelt arc … full with a couple of “WTF” moments.
Content Source: deadline.com