Sundance

“A genuine and emotional story of a multi-generational queer family that celebrates the joy and challenges of navigating supporting the current generation growth while honoring the previous generation’s struggles,” reads the official synopsis of Jimpa, a film premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Jimpa follows Hannah (Olivia Coleman), an Australian filmmaker, who is in the process of casting a film about her father, Jim (John Lithgow), and his life’s journey as a closeted gay man who marries, has two children, comes out, lives with his wife as they navigate an open marriage and supportive co-parenting until she’s 13, when he moves to Amsterdam and lives the rest of his life. Hannah’s focus of the film is to showcase how her parents navigated their complicated situation and showed kindness over conflict. It’s a film “without conflict.” 
At the same time, Hannah and her husband Harry (Daniel Henshall) are traveling to Amsterdam to visit Jim, bringing along their nonbinary child Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde). Frances loves their “Jimpa” (the name he chose for himself when Frances was born because being called “Grandpa” felt too old) and has been struggling to find community and acceptance within their small Australian town and school. Frances, who is only 16, has decided that they want to stay in Amsterdam with Jimpa and spend their last year of high school in a place that offers more adventures, excitement and acceptance. Harry doesn’t want to allow that (Frances is still a minor) and Hannah is hesitant. Jimpa, while being a dazzling force of nature, is someone who takes up all the oxygen in the room and always lets down the people around him. Hannah has been struggling with this since she was a child, though Jim is her hero and struggles to ever say anything less than praise about him. 
Jim has spent his life since coming out as an LGBTQ advocate and activist. He protested, marched and litigated for equality and acceptance. He sat at the bedsides of gay men as they died of AIDS. He has spent his life living as HIV positive. 
Frances is in awe of Jimpa and his group of gay friends. They offer a window into the past and a promise of a future of acceptance, love, and celebration. But as Frances spends time with them, Jimpa begins to mock their gender identity, question their sexuality and go on long rants against anyone who isn’t binary: gay or lesbian. Exhausted by having to constantly justify their existence, Frances turns to Hannah for support, who eschews taking a stand or making a choice. Hannah is nothing if not a complete people pleaser, always sacrificing her comfort and point of view to try and make others feel good and never have to face consequences for their actions. 
Jimpa is a complicated and complex character. He, at once, champions the rights of marginalized groups, gives of himself to everyone around him, and radiates love while also being narrow-minded about others’ experiences that don’t mirror his own, uses people around him for his own emotional needs before moving on or casting them aside, and looks for every opportunity to loudly declare his views and how right they are under the guise of “having a debate.”
In fact, we open the movie with Hannah talking about how Jimpa got his name—choosing a new name because the one society prescribed him didn’t fit—and yet he struggles, “provocatively,” to believe others can do the same when their gender, identity or name at birth don’t fit how they feel.
As the movie goes on and background conflicts simmer and begin to boil, everytime there might be a chance to confront the issues everyone is dealing with, the movie consciously decides to pivot and avoid that confrontation. Hannah is making a movie about a story without conflict, and Jimpa attempts to tell a story that acknowledges the conflict inherent in the story without ever addressing it. The choice to do so is an authorial one and makes for an interesting experience, if somewhat frustrating as it sidesteps emotional catharsis and character change. 
Jimpa is deeply personal and autobiographical. Sophie Hyde, the Director/Co-writer, based the story on her father Jim and his relationship with her and her child, Aud (who plays Frances in the film). The real Jim passed away six years ago, when Aud was just beginning to explore their identity and sexuality. So the conversations between the two, in the film, didn’t happen in real life, but by imagining what they could have been, Sophie found the story: 

“My child Aud (they/them) seeks out LGBTQIA+ elders. They look up to my dad even in his death. Just at the end of my dad’s life, my child was finding ways to articulate their own experience of sexuality and gender. They came out as queer, and then nonbinary. They began to seek out others who would understand them in ways that we might try but not always fulfill on, and they started to stand up for and support others who didn’t have families that would be open to do the same.
But what they didn’t get to do, because my dad’s death at 68 made it impossible, was discuss fully with him what it means to be LGBTQIA+, what it means to put yourself on the frontline of an ideology war that is arguing about your very right to be, to self-identify, to take up space. They didn’t get to debate with him the changing language for identity or find out about the AIDS-crisis-years from his personal point of view. They didn’t get to share with him their feelings or hear about his. And so I imagined this conversation that they never had the chance to have.
And that conversation led to this film.”

The movie presents an interesting conversation with itself in context of its autobiographical nature. We’re watching Hannah as she’s presenting a fictionalized version of Sophie’s life and relationship with her father and child. And Hannah is incapable of taking a stand, of voicing an opinion, of pushing back against Jim’s hurtful behavior. I spent the movie wishing she would stand up against her father in defense of her child. And she never does. And yet, knowing this story is being told by someone who experienced some version of these events, it becomes a way in which the director is taking a stand, of voicing an opinion, of pushing back against Jim. 
Olivia Coleman does a masterful job of playing a character who outwardly admits to little emotion besides smiling and trying to keep everyone happy, all while exuding this simmering rage, frustration, desperation, fear, love, and desire that lives just beneath the surface of her skin. John Lithgow perfectly encapsulates Jim—someone who is charming, warm, funny, cocky, condescending, and self-absorbed at the same time. Each person contains multitudes, and our two leads do an incredible job portraying those complex and often contradictory aspects of humanity.

Aud Mason-Hyde brings a quiet serenity to the film, doing an incredible job of showing the apathy and disaffection of Gen Z while giving us a powerful sense of the suppressed emotions they’re feeling. They’re quiet and reserved and keep things close, but have a fierceness in their eyes.

I especially want to call out the character of Harry and Daniel Henshall’s performance. Harry stands as an island in the movie—a character who knows what he wants, voices an opinion, and defends his beliefs. There are several quick, little moments in the film where Jimpa misgenders Frances and Harry, from often across the room or apartment yells out “THEY!” to remind Jimpa who his child is and that his child deserves to be respected and recognized. It’s a small moment that happens a few times, but each time it made me cry and made me wonder what it would be like to have a parent who fiercely understands and defends you. 
Coming in at 130 minutes, Jimpa could use a stronger edit, tightening up the scenes and sharpening the focus between the three leads. It’s frustrating at times and even if it purposefully makes choices that mute the emotionality of the story, it’s still so personally and beautifully crafted, it left me thinking and talking about it for days.

---

Read more of our ongoing Sundance coverage of the festival and enjoy all of our arts and culture coverage. And while you’re here, subscribe to our print magazine and get six copies a year of Salt Lake magazine.

Georgi Unkovski’s thoroughly entertaining DJ Ahmet brings us a familiar story of country mouse-city mouse teen romance inventively recast in a rural, predominantly Muslim community in North Macedonia. 

Ahmet lives with his father and younger brother, Naim, who make a sparse living from their small herd of sheep and sell tobacco. At the film’s opening, Ahmet’s father withdraws the boy from school so he can help out more at home. It’s another coming down in the world in the wake of his mother’s death, not just a tragedy but a stigma to some in the mostly tradition-bound community. “You should be here with us,” Ahmet’s father tells him, and Ahmet, never one to shirk his duties, submits without argument. Though father and sons appear stoic beneath their shared cloud, each has his separate way of expressing grief. In Naim’s case it’s remaining mute, a decision Ahmet empathizes with, but which the father misunderstands as an illness or a curse, leading him to carry the younger boy off to a healer most days, leaving Ahmet to tend to business.

Through this business, we begin to learn of Ahmet’s way of coping with his mother’s death, as well as his cleverness, generosity, and tech savviness. If Ahmet doesn’t seem to have big ambitions for himself, he is nevertheless a young man in a contemporary world, no corner of which remains untouched by social media. In this remote village, he more than most, it seems, is riding the incoming waves of the future-present and he can be inspired, to a point, by the lives and imaginations of others far away. 

In another early scene, arriving at a neighbor’s home to retrieve Naim—both adorable and an unfailingly precise and genius comic sidekick—Ahmet is introduced to Aya, a young woman who’s just come from Germany for an arranged marriage. Ahmet is stricken, as is Aya, and the illicit romance is on. The love story moves rapidly, the chemistry between Ahmet and Aya, and its endpoint, as obvious to the community as it is to the viewer. There are twists, but they are less the point of the film, it seems, than its broader narrative of expanding freedoms and finding one’s voice through music and dance as well as through everyday intimate dialogue, in finding the courage to speak up for others in a community that, despite the permissiveness it allows around its traditions, remains committed to these and its minor hierarchies when pressed.

In addition to its deft direction and editing, DJ Ahmet triumphs due to its casting. Arif Jakup, a local kid from the village where the film was shot, is reminiscent of Buster Keaton in his timing and comic responses. One pursuit scene actually culminates with him performing a Keatonesque physical gag. But Jakup is hardly stonefaced. The pursuit scene is driven by Ahmet’s real desperation and compassion, emotions that give DJ Ahmet a depth it might not have as a more pure romantic comedy. The soundscape of the film is another win, deftly intertwining strains of folk music with the danceable pop that binds its leads together, and then opportunistically amplifying the latter from a rebellious bleat emerging from low-grade speakers into a thumping and joyous score. 

More than a film about the pleasures and pains of first love, DJ Ahmet is also a fun and loving ode to the bonds of family and community, of understanding and enjoying their comfort and support without allowing them to tie you down—not quite. 

Read more of our ongoing Sundance coverage of the festival and enjoy all of our arts and culture coverage. And while you’re here, subscribe to our print magazine and get six copies a year of Salt Lake magazine.

Flora Lau’s labyrinthine second feature LUZ takes place in a near future, or perhaps an alternative present, in which the virtual reality game LUZ attracts players from all over the globe. 

Is it a game? Luz’s participants refer to “playing,” as in, “I’m going over to my friend’s house to play.” As in “playing with friends.” As in being with other people. And there is a certain, limited amount of community in the game world, in such places as a virtual bar where players gather, not to drink the inaccessible liquor, but to show off their weapons and fashion—one might consider the former as accessories to the latter—some of the most notable choices to be made as one constructs an online identity. In Luz, the game, it seems, you can’t help looking like yourself, but you can choose your tools and clothes. You can also choose your world from a menu of alternatives, ranging from the urban to the arboreal. None of these environments are entirely fantastic or enhanced—except that they seem much emptier than reality, cleaner in the sense that no humans, no sentient life at all, populate the landscape, just a handful of other players briefly passing through. There are no obstacles to overcome in Luz, though there are puzzles. No bosses to defeat, though there is, apparently, at least one goal: to locate a translucent deer that wanders all the worlds, leaving behind it a trail of light, a signal that you’ve just missed it. The buck is a mysterious figure of great beauty and grace. Strange then that most players pursue it with weapons in hand as if they aim to kill it. Is it an innate human impulse or a requirement of the game, this form of winning? And what would happen if the buck were caught and turned into a trophy?

In the game world and the other, non-game one we’ll call Reality, LUZ the film, tracks two central pairs: Wei, a dissolute father, seeking to reconnect with his long-estranged daughter Fa, and Ren, a young art gallery employee adrift in disenchantment, and her stepmother Sabine, a gallery-owner living in Paris, suffering from an unknown illness. Like the mystical buck of the game, both Fa and Sabine are elusive prizes, physically and emotionally distant, magnetic, and necessary. Though Wei and Ren’s real lives touch in other ways they don’t suspect (they’re both residents of Chongquing), they meet by chance in a fantasy forest in Luz, the game, an encounter that initiates a more and less tangible partnership in their respective quests. Whatever fulfillment Wei and Ren can hope for, they discover, requires a new tactic, the only one that might win Fa and Sabine’s trust and love, bind the other to them, making both pairs whole. In this sense, LUZ is a film about contemporary isolation, not just in the real, bustling, alienating landscapes of the media-saturated, post-industrial metropolis (represented here by Chongquing and Paris—the latter seeming quaint by comparison), but also in the virtual worlds of social media and the film’s imagined tech environment, which promise community but can’t escape the chilling qualities of allowing participants to fulfill personal fantasies in a communal space without boundaries or responsibility. You join the quest for the buck as the “you” you want to be, but your fellow hunters only ever seem to appear at the edges of your vision, dark, armed apparitions with unknowable intentions. They could as easily be enemies. Or, worse, they may have no interest in you at all. You’re alone. Again. Worse still, you’re divided: your body is in a room somewhere while your eyes and mind are in fantasy, insensitive as much to the pleasures as to the pain of real life.

This is to say that Luz is also a film about spaces, how we inhabit these with others, and the value of presence. What good are the wonders of the real or the virtual if they aren’t shared? Visually, Lau’s film seems not to prefer one over the other, focusing instead on the concept of shared experience, wherever this may occur. The real, lurid night world where Wei works is far more enticing to the eye than the virtual forest or even a real, sunlit beach. And when a character states, “It’s beautiful,” what she seems to be referring to is a smog-obscured downtown, observed across the tracks of a noisy monorail just outside the window. But what’s really beautiful, LUZ wants us to understand, is how humans connect, how emotion, and love for another, is developed and expressed communally in all our unbeautiful worlds. 

LUZ is a hypnotic film of ideas, which is to say its pacing can be slow, and what is said is maybe sometimes overly obvious, and what is unsaid might be better presented in subtle dialogue by its entirely capable performers, including Isabelle Huppert, as Sabine.

Some of the film’s most challenging moments for the performers, one assumes, as much as for the viewer, are those when we watch Ren or Wei, eyes hidden behind their VR glasses, seeing a world we don’t. It’s one thing to perform what you, the actor, is seeing. But for us out here in the dark, how should one also perform that kind of absence, obscurity, and isolation while still providing the emotional content we expect? Maybe the image itself is the answer—a body insensitive to its immediate environment, dead to the (real) world, is loaded with a crushing pathos. 

Read more of our ongoing Sundance coverage of the festival and enjoy all of our arts and culture coverage. And while you’re here, subscribe to our print magazine and get six copies a year of Salt Lake magazine.

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival begins this week! For two weeks starting in January, Park City and Salt Lake City feel culturally relevant in a way we can’t normally achieve without shameless forays into the salacious world of reality television (hello, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City) or ripped-from-the-headlines true crime series (Murder Among the Mormons, Under the Banner of Heaven, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, etc.). 

The Sundance Film Festival is different. It’s when Hollywood comes to us, rather than the other way around. This year’s festival will be as star-studded as ever, with films featuring the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Benedict Cumberbatch, Diego Luna, Conan O’Brien, Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe and many, many more.

For locals, there’s a number of free screenings you can attend. For everyone, here’s what has the editors, critics and contributors at Salt Lake magazine, as well as the festival programmers, excited for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. 

Film highlights at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival

Sally Ride was the first American woman in space and a powerful advocate for STEM education. The Sundance documentary SALLY shows a portrait of Ride, incorporating the perspectives from her once secret partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy and rare archival footage of NASA training and missions and Ride’s press appearances.  

SALLY also received the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize—an award for a Festival film that incorporates science or technology into the storytelling. 

“It’s an incredibly inspirational film about a real-life hero who’s no longer with us,” says Heidi Zwicker, a Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival. 

“I’m not at all surprised that the Sloan jury was moved by this detailed accounting of what it meant to be the first woman in space and what it took,” says Zwicker. “It’s incredibly powerful.”

A local filmmaker has his debut film at Sundance this year.  Cole Webley directed Omaha, about a family’s unexpected cross-country journey following a tragedy. Some of the film was shot in Utah, and it will be shown among the handful of free screenings for Utah locals. 

“I think about this film when I think about films that speak to the current moment in the United States,” says Zwicker. “It’s about a family struggling, houseless, and how they’re going to get by. It’s incredibly heartstring-pulling and definitely a tearjerker.”

Omaha stars actor John Magaro, “who I think is an amazing actor and, after Past Lives, is getting his due. I’m really excited for that one,” adds Zwicker.

Among the international films at Sundance this year, Zwicker draws attention to a film shot in North Macedonia, DJ Ahmet. The filmmaker, Georgi M. Unkovski, previously had an entry in Sundance’s shorts competition, and now he’s back with his first feature. 

“This feels like the movie I could recommend to anybody,” says Zwicker. The story follows a teenage boy who was growing up in a very rural shepherding village. He struggles to express his love is music, while navigating his father’s expectations in a conservative community. 

“So it’s kind of like Footloose in North Macedonia,” says Zwicker. “But it’s really about this battle between tradition and modernity, and it’s just such a good time.” 

When it comes to a star-studded feature premiere, look no further than Kiss of the Spider Woman, a film adaptation of the Tony-winning stage musical and a previous 1985 film. It stars a scene-stealing Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna and is directed by Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls), including showstopping musical and dance numbers.

“It’s just exciting to have big, cool talent come to the festival,” says Zwicker. “So I have to mention Kiss of the Spider Woman with Jennifer Lopez. She is so incredible in this movie. And so I’m really excited for that premiere.”

As far as themes and trends that emerge this year at the Festival,  the focus seems pulled in a variety of directions as filmmakers attempt to broach the myriad challenges in the current moment, including the challenges of the economy, the environment and political conflict. 

Sundance 2025 Recommendations 

From Jaime Winston, Salt Lake magazine contributor: 

While Sundance is giving us many worthwhile films this year, the festival program’s description for By Design definitely sticks out: “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.” The idea alone says dark comedy, but it also offers commentary on social interactions, friendships and self-worth. Juliette Lewis plays Camille, who becomes the chair. Amanda Kramer writes and directs. 
Other films to look forward to include Third Act, which tells the story of filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura’s career and battle with Parkinson’s in a documentary by his son, Tadashi, and Dead Lover, Grace Glowicki’s Midnight film about a lonely grave digger resurrecting the man she loves.
If in Park City, Top of Main Brew Pub for lunch and a pint of beer is also recommended.

From Salt Lake magazine contributor Phillip Sevy:

Looking at the Sundance Film Festival from a high-level, the thing I always look forward to the most is discovering something new and great. With no trailers, sparse descriptions, and almost no buzz to go off of, it’s always exciting to pick movies you hope are good and seeing what happens. Often, my favorite films of every festival are unexpected (Freaky Tales 2024, Infinity Pool 2023, Cha Cha Real Smooth 2022). Who knows what I’ll love this year! 
On a more specific examination, I’m really looking forward to seeing Didn’t Die—which sounds quirky, smart, and something I haven’t seen before (a podcast during the zombie apocalypse)—and OBEX (which sounds so unique and potentially weird, it could be brilliant). I’ve got a lot of films I’m trying to see this year, so we’ll check back with reviews, but the slate of films this year has a lot of potential for hidden gems. 

From Christie Porter, managing editor at Salt Lake magazine:

The writer, director and star of one of my favorite Sundance films in recent years, is returning to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival with an episodic entry. Cooper Raiff surprised the Festival in 2022 with Cha Cha Real Smooth, a painfully authentic romantic dramedy—starring Raiff and Dakota Johnson, with the incomparable Leslie Mann in a supporting role—which also won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award that year. 
This year, Raiff’s entry is Hal & Harper, a series starring Raiff as Hal and Lili Reinhart as Harper, two siblings who share inside jokes, past wounds and co-dependency. Mark Ruffalo plays their father as the siblings explore the “balance between children on the precipice of damage and adults mired in self-made messes.” Raiff has demonstrated his ability to weave wit, charm and humor into a piece without undercutting the film’s heavier themes or emotional resonance. I’m curious to see how he takes on a series. (The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will be screened in-person at the festival, and all eight episodes of the first season will show on Sundance’s online platform.)

Getting to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival 

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival will take place from January 23–February 2, 2025, in person at venues in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. Over half of the projects will be available online from January 30–February 2, 2025. 

Single Film Tickets for in-person and online screenings are available for purchase at festival.sundance.org/tickets. If the screenings are sold out for the film you would like to see, be sure to keep checking as more screenings could open up, and get on the eWaitlist for the film by clicking “join waitlist” next to the aforementioned screening. For more information about this year’s Sundance films and Beyond Film programming, there’s the Festival Program Guide. 

---

Need help navigating this year’s festival? Check out our top tips here and our list of where to eat while attending Sundance in Park City!

Get the latest on arts and entertainment in and around Utah. And while you’re here, subscribe and get six issues of Salt Lake magazine, your guide to the best of life in Utah.

The 2025 Sundance Film Festival begins this weekend and runs through Feb. 2nd. For locals, these two weeks are marked by a flurry of film buffs inundating our street with their expensive winter ware and industry speak. We overhear our fair share of “Wow this little ski town is so cute!” and “What do you mean I need my ID?” It’s like Salt Lake and Park City are discovered all over again. For most locals, the ones who’d rather our rad state stay a secret, Sundance is blacked out as a time to avoid the riff-raff of Main Street and instead explore the festival offerings in a more remote way. 

To accommodate our wish, Sundance is once again offering free Local Lens screenings. This year’s lineup includes four in-person screenings and one online screening—all free and available to Utah residents. To register, purchase a single film ticket through the Sundance Film Festival website and check out as normal. 

Four In-Person Films Free to Locals 

What: Omaha with a special screening of the short film The Long Valley
When: Wednesday, 01/29 at 6:15 p.m. 
Where: The Ray Theater, Park City 
Synopsis: After a family tragedy, siblings Ella and Charlie are unexpectedly woken up by their dad and taken on a journey across the country, experiencing a world they’ve never seen before. As their adventure unfolds, Ella begins to understand that things might not be what they seem.

What: Deaf President Now! 
When: Thursday, 01/30 at 4:30 p.m. 
Where: The Rose Wagner Theater, Salt Lake City
Synopsis: During eight tumultuous days in 1988 at the world’s only Deaf university, four students must find a way to lead an angry mob — and change the course of history.

What: Best of Fest
When: Sunday, 02/02 at 3 p.m. 
Where: The Ray Theater, Park City 
About: Sundance Institute’s Utah Community Program presents complimentary screenings of this year’s Festival favorites to Locals in Salt Lake and Summit Counties. In addition to serving as a thank you to our local community for hosting the Festival, these screenings allow many in the community to participate in our programming who may otherwise not have an opportunity.

What: Best of Fest
When: Sunday, 02/02 at 5:30 p.m. 
Where: The Rose Wagner Theater, Salt Lake City
About: Sundance Institute’s Utah Community Program presents complimentary screenings of this year’s Festival favorites to Locals in Salt Lake and Summit Counties. In addition to serving as a thank you to our local community for hosting the Festival, these screenings allow many in the community to participate in our programming who may otherwise not have an opportunity.

Online Sundance Film Screening Access 

If an at-home screening is more your style, Sundance is offering locals the choice of four films to screen at home: Sally, Speak, East of Wall, and Where the Wind Comes From. Sign up here to receive your promo code which can be used at checkout. 

---

Need help navigating this year’s festival? Check out our top tips here!

Unless you are tight with some influential key grip’s nephew, navigating the Sundance Film Festival can be difficult. Without those sweet, sweet insider hookups, you’ll likely be stuck in line outside the exclusive screenings and hot, popup clubs Sundance is famous for. By following these tips, even those of us outside the Hollywood power vacuum can enjoy the spoils of Park City’s Biggest Little Film Festival.

WHAT DO I EAT?

Let’s be blunt: Stay away from Main Street! Many restaurants in the center of the whirlwind are commandeered for private events or have waiting lines measured in eons. Many great nearby options won’t be inundated, like Twisted Fern’s chic natural cuisine in the Snow Creek Shopping Center or Sammy’s Bistro’s high-class comfort food in Prospector. Even easier is to pick up some Italian food at Bartolos in Kimball Junction or elevated Mexican fare at Billy Blanco’s in Pinebrook before you head to the center of town.

WHERE DO I DRINK?

Twenty-dollar cover charges at dive bars are borderline offensive, especially when you can waltz in for free the other 50 weeks a year. The Boneyard on S.R. 248 has the same idealized local/visitor melting pot vibe as its Main Street analog, No Name Saloon, and there’s a mirror image of O’Shucks Bar and Grill—schooners, peanuts and all—in Pinebrook. 

HOW DO I GET THERE?

Do not drive into the heart of Sundance. The roads are a madhouse. Parking is rare and expensive. Park City’s already robust bus system transforms into a well-oiled mass transit machine that leaves major metropolitan areas envious. Park at the new Ecker Hill Park & Ride, and catch High Valley Transit from Kimball Junction and enjoy the ride. The army of patient Sundance volunteers will help you get to where you’re going.

WHAT MOVIES DO I WATCH?

Unless you bought a ticket package long before reading this article, you’re going to have to use the Sundance Film Festival app to get on the waitlist for a screening. It can still be difficult to get into high-demand screenings, but the app is a must for anyone planning on catching a film at Sundance. Shoot for late-night screenings—you’d be shocked how many people might no-show after a few cocktails—or catch a film at the Festival’s excellent venues in Salt Lake City, like the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center or the Broadway Centre Cinema.

---

Looking to involve the kids in your Sundance experience? Here are some family-friendly screenings to attend in 2025.

As you gear up for the Sundance Film Festival, don’t forget to include the kids. This year’s fest includes a family matinee of director Isaiah Saxon’s feature debut, “The Legend of Ochi.”

The film is about a girl named Yuri (Helena Zengel) who is raised to fear the Ochi, a mysterious animal species. Despite this, she one day finds an injured baby Ochi and sets on a quest to return it to its home. Families can go in expecting adventure and magic in a tale for animal lovers. The film also stars Finn Wolfhard (“Stranger Things”), Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe.

Screenings

Jan. 26, 12 p.m.
Library Center Theatre, Park City

Jan. 27, 1:10 p.m.
Redstone Cinemas – 2, Park City

Feb. 1, 12 p.m.
Broadway Centre Cinemas – 3, SLC

Feb. 2, 12 p.m.
The Ray Theatre, Park City

Buy your tickets.

While “Ochi” is an excellent opportunity to introduce the kids to independent film, fighting the Sundance traffic with littles in the backseat through Parleys Canyon isn’t for everyone. Here are some of our favorite family-friendly films from Sundance’s past and how you can see them at home. 

“Whale Rider” (Sundance 2003)

Years after the intended future chief of a Maori village dies at birth, his twin sister, Pai, attempts to prove herself as the community’s rightful leader. However, the chief has always been a first-born son descended from the Whale Rider. Can Pai’s determination and resolve convince her village, and especially her grandfather, to break away from tradition?

Rent or Buy it on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Microsoft or Amazon. Stream it on Fubo, Hoopla or Kanopy.

“Ernest & Celestine” (Sundance 2014)

While she would prefer to make art, a mouse named Celestine is sent to collect teeth to prepare for her career in dentistry. When she meets a bear named Ernest, she convinces him not to eat her by helping him break into a candy shop. Thus begins Ernest and Celestine’s criminal career and unlikely friendship. Hand-drawn, funny and imaginative.

French and English versions are available. You can rent or buy the English version on Apple TV.

“Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang” (Sundance 2014)
(Spanish language)

Twin brothers Zip and Zap are sent to a summer school run by Falconetti, an evil headmaster who forbids all recreation and entertainment. To get back at Falconetti, they form the “Marble Gang” and begin causing mischief. Soon, they come across a map leading to the school’s hidden treasure. “Zip and Zap” is a fun adventure for the family.

Rent or buy it on Apple TV. While screened in Spanish, English subtitles are available. 

“Snowtime!” (Sundance 2016)

Two groups of kids in Quebec engage in an epic snowball war during their winter break from school. The big cast of characters experience crushes, friendships and betrayals as the battle grows increasingly sophisticated and fierce. While the film has a major tragedy that parents of sensitive kids should know about, the overall mood is charming and fun.

French and English versions are available. Rent or buy the English version on Apple TV, Fandango at Home or Microsoft. Stream it on Amazon Prime Video, Peacock or The Roku Channel.

---