The 40th edition of Sundance Film Festival kicked off on January 18th. The beloved cinematic event seemed to be at its full strength following years of pandemic-induced adjustments and cancellations. Last year, over 82,000 people attended the two-week affair and by all estimations that number will be much higher this year. Between high-profile celebrity guests, independent filmmaker meet-ups, fundraising galas, diversity panels, and of course the parties, Park City was practically vibrating with energy. Our film reviewers and nightlife-loving editors soaked up the spirited affairs, here’s our full recap: 

The Films 

Sundance curators ensured this year’s film lineup showcased a range of films, stories and artists from around the world. “While we don’t set out to program the Festival with a defined theme in mind, it became apparent this year that our slate’s biggest strength is how it showcases the vitality of independent storytelling,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “These titles are inventive and they beautifully represent the kind of groundbreaking work we’ve sought to amplify at Sundance throughout our history.” In his second year as Festival Director, Eugene Hernandez sought out to focus the 2024 festival on connection, specifically connecting to art and to others through art. “Sundance plays such a vital part in starting the year with a new class of filmmakers, and that first impression is so essential,” says Hernandez. So the question becomes, “How do we assure that each film and filmmaker and the teams that come to Utah as part of that experience have the best shot at introducing themselves and their work to our various audiences?” To accomplish that goal, Hernandez introduced a hybrid model that sanctioned all premieres be screened in-person. The new model imbued the first portion of the festival with an air of celebration, as cinephiles, filmmakers, industry leaders and celebrities showing up to christen the first screening of their project. 

As far as the films go, this year’s lineup included an impressive range of movies exploring topics like AI, familial relationships, biographical documentaries and much, much more. More on films we’re excited about, and in-depth reviews from our on-the-ground film buffs, here. 

Beyond the Screen 

Of course, half the fun of attending Sundance in-person is the chance to interact with industry professionals, network with independent filmmakers and hear from the next generation of cinematic innovators. Returning this year, Sundance’s Beyond Film lineup allowed festival goers an opportunity to listen in on panels and conversations with their favorite filmmakers. 

Audible’s Cinema Cafe

Throughout the weekend, Audible’s Cinema Cafe hosted industry icons and inspiring individuals who spoke on finding success in storytelling. On Friday, January 19th, guests Jodie Foster, Riley Keough, Pedro Pascal, Normani, Kieran Culkin, Jessie Eisenberg and Jay Ellis stopped by the Variety Interview studio. Highlights include Eisenberg and Culkin discussing playing cousins in their new film A Real Pain, and Pascal’s thoughts on immersing himself in the city of Oakland for his role in the film Freaky Tales. 

Saturday’s iteration of Cinema Cafe hosted Saorse Ronan, who spoke on the amount of improv that took place in the ner film The Outrun. Also making an appearance, Kerry Washington touched on her love of blending mediums and how finding ways to convey stories helps make audiences better content consumers. And the lovely June Squibb retold her approach to her vocal performance in her latest film Thelma. 

Audible also hosted two ‘Variety x Audible Cocktails and Conversations” panels which brought together award-winning individuals to discuss the importance of storytelling. On Friday, award-winning creator behind titles such as “Black-ish”, “Girls Trip” and #blackAF,” Kenya Barris spoke with Audible’s Chief Content Officer Rachel Ghiazza about creative opportunities in audio media. On working with Audible for her latest project DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz Podcast, Barris said “Audible wanted to do things that were far beyond anyone else [in audio]. Immersive, really sort of 360-degree sonic things that make you feel something different than a normal podcast. It didn’t feel flat, and it felt like, as a storyteller, the kind of thing I want to do.”  

Sunday’s panel, “Breaking Down Genres” invited “Rob Peace” director, writer and actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, “Parish” EP and star Giancarlo Esposito, “Winner” director, writer and producer Susanna Fogel, Audible Head of Creative Development, North America Kate Navin and author, poet, comedian & public speaker Alok Vaid-Menon spoke with Variety’s Angelique Jackson about their experiences defying expectations and challenging genre norms for greater expression and innovation. Speaking on how storytelling breaks down barriers, Esposito said: “We’ve come to a place now where we have the opportunity to really express ourselves as who we really are, and let go of all of the things that prevent us from showing each other our authentic selves.”

ACURA House of Energy

A presenting sponsor at this year’s festival, ACURA hosted four-days of engaged programming celebrating diverse and underrepresented voices. Hosted panel Gold House invited business leaders and creatives like Kyle Bowser, Christine Yi, Nina Yang Bongiovi and others to explore how multicultural filmmakers navigate the business side of filmmaking. ACURA also hosted the ASCAP Music Cafe, which featured live music and discussions with composer Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Bretty Story, Stephan Maing, and more. Live performances included Dandy Warhols, Brian Jonestown Massacre, and DIG!XX. 

Chase Sapphire 

By far the most happening spot to be at this year was the Chase Sapphire lounge, where a star-studded lineup of celebs attended cast parties and panels. Sightings included Pedro Pascal, Too $hort, Jack Champion and more from the cast of Freaky Tales. On Friday, Chase Sapphire presented the panel for The Outrun where writer Amy Liptrot, Director Nora Fingscheidt and actress Saoirse Ronan celebrated their upcoming film. And closing out the weekend, the Reserve After Hours party saw celebs like Dylan Mulvaney, Chris Meloni and Alicia Silverstone dancing far into the night. 

My Personal Highlights and Takeaways 

In my second year attending Sundance, I’ll pride myself on my slightly enhanced ability to navigate the barrage of pop-ups, shuttle lines and midnight screenings. Some of the events I attended felt more like crashing an exclusive work party, or getting a glimpse into a smoke-filled backroom, and others I was genuinely excited about the work being done by independent industry creatives. Mostly, I felt invigorated by this community of movers and shakers. Here’s my top tips and takeaways: 

• The shuttle will take a while. Yes, it’s still worth it. 
• You’re going to overhear lots of out-of-towner critique of Utah. Some of it is valid. 
• Get to your premiere EARLY. I mean like, an hour and a half early. 
• Talk with people! Almost everyone at Sundance has a story to share, so do you. 
• If you see people queuing in front of a shuttered door frame, there’s an exclusive party about to go down, get in line and see what comes of it. 
• Be courteous and appreciative of Park City service workers, they are the real stars of the show and can make or break your experience. 

The Celebrities 

Okay, okay. Here’s a bunch of celebs that visited the Beehive State this year. I know that’s what you’re really here for anyway. 

Chase Sapphire Lounge. Photo credit Joshua Lawton

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IMDB Portrait Studio. Photo credit Getty Images for IMBD

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Chase Sapphire Lounge and Panels. Photo credit Jack Dempsey

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ACURA. Photo credit George Pimentel, Michael Hurcomb, Marc Sagliocco, Stephen Lovekin and Sundance Org.

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The Sundance Film Festival continues through January 28! Check Sundance’s website for the full schedule of Beyond Film events and screenings.

Steven Soderbergh’s latest, Presence—his 36th feature, premiering at Sundance 35 years after sex, lies, and videotape, his first—opens with a handheld point-of-view shot, looking down from a second-story window onto a driveway. After a moment, the camera turns and moves rapidly, dizzyingly through the empty, darkened rooms of a 100-year-old home, upstairs and downstairs, returning, finally, to settle in a closet in the room where the journey began. On the one hand, this long opening shot provides a map of the film’s site, which will be restricted to the interior of the home, an intriguing formal constraint that is a further condition of the initial choice of camera perspective, one that will never change: the first-person POV shot. 

Soderbergh says he’s been adamant that such a condition would never work for narrative media (particularly for VR projects), insisting that the viewer will always require a reverse shot at some point, revealing the subject of the POV, the looker who the camera’s eye represents. The viewer will want an expression, an emotion in response to what’s seen. (Think of Jimmy Stewart’s reaction shots to his voyeuristic peeps at his neighbors in Rear Window.) But what’s already occurred to us, after the opening minutes of Presence, is that our feeling of disorientation, even as we’re becoming oriented to the house, is not ours: this feeling belongs to the camera, to the point of view, or character, it represents, that of the film’s titular presence. Its anxiety and confusion is palpable in the camera’s rapid panning and tracking, which is not jittery, so much as slithery, maybe slippery, a condition that sometimes made me worry for the cameraman—Soderbergh himself—as he goes flying up and down the old hardwood staircase. (He was wearing martial arts shoes for traction.)

In Presence, Soderbergh has made a rather novel ghost story. Novel not just for its technical constraints, but also in the sense that the ghost is not a ghost. It’s never referred to as anything but a presence. There are narrative reasons for this, a distinction that’s being made between a ghost, a thing that remains behind, a figure defined by the past, and a presence, an entity that inhabits, a thing of the present and maybe also of the future. While Soderbergh leans into several of the conventional capacities of a traditional ghost, not shying away from a few old-timey, actually unexpected, effects, the nature of the presence and particularly its identity contribute substantive mystery to the film, which is less a supernatural thriller than a family drama shaded by another definition of the title.

The presence in Presence, as it turns out, ends up cohabiting this old house with a deeply unsettled family, Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan playing parents to Ty (Eddy Maday) and Chloe (Callina Liang). Ty is his mother’s favorite, a vigorous and aggressive high school swimmer with big ambitions. Chloe, headstrong in her own way, is suffering from the shock and grief of recently losing a close friend, a strange death with extenuating circumstances. As the family takes a tour with their realtor, the presence immediately develops an interest in Chloe, prompting a hint of awareness from the girl that sets in motion themes of haunting, sensitivity and the nearness of death. 

But it’s not just Chloe’s tragic experience that’s disrupting the family’s life. Mom and Dad are opposite characters, entangled in some kind of shady business that might destroy them, and Ty is prone to violent tirades, threatening that he will not let what he perceives as his sister’s problems derail his dreams. The sources of these destructive tensions are not unknown to the family, but they seem incapable of speaking about them without running up against the obstacle of each other’s certainty that they cannot, or should not, be the one to compromise or attempt change. Of course, given the film’s constraint, we can know nothing about anything without the presence as a witness, hanging about, taking interest, paying attention, perhaps trying to intervene, perhaps hoping to better understand itself in relation to these four human presences. In this sense, as a proxy for the audience and as our sole conduit of information and drama, the invisible entity, a seeming absence, becomes a metaphor for presence itself, a figure that offers something of an alternative to the lack of presence—concern, trust, transparency, care—that the family members are prepared to offer one another. Can the presence, as presence, effect change?

Liu, Liang, and Maday’s performances are uniformly strong, but Sullivan really stands out, particularly in a heartfelt scene with Liang, essentially a monologue, articulating the depth and breadth of a father’s love. And one should also praise Soderbergh’s performance as a cinematographer. His choreography with and around the actors is both elegant and affecting.

It should be noted that, while we may wonder about the nature of the presence, there is also a truly disturbing monster in the film, and fair questions have been raised about the detail with which that figure’s atrocities are shown. Again, given the formal constraints of the film, witnessing seems simply to be playing by the rules. Then again, the film’s genuine moral sensibility, constructed and played out through the ambiguities and actions of the presence, also seems to require it, and us, to see in order to know. And once we know, rather than suspect, whether and how to act—character, in a sense—becomes clear. 

At any rate, Presence is an intriguing and challenging new experiment by a master filmmaker, making it well worth a watch.

The Looming examines ageism and mental health in a short, chilling horror tale.

The film is part of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2024 Midnight Short Film Program and directed by Masha Ko, who is also known for previous short films Bona to Vada and (W)hole.

Seventy-year-old Chester lives alone. One night, he hears noises. An investigation around the house takes place, and we get the sense something is, well, looming. Then more ferocious noises soon take their place, and it seems clear to Chester, and viewers, that something is after him. He isn’t taken seriously by others, and it’s unclear if Chester’s daughter, Melody, will be any help.

At least Chester has Luna, The Looming’s version of Amazon’s Alexa, by his side, validating his experiences and adding an element reminiscent of Black Mirror.

As someone who experienced memory loss due to an accident, I can think of few things scarier than dementia, losing one’s past and identity. In 15 minutes, Masha Ko has viewers questioning whether that is happening to Chester, or if it’s all real. Either way, it’s scary stuff.

Joseph Lopez, who plays Chester, does an excellent job making us fear for this hermit we get the sense is starved for human contact. His creepy home is complemented by even creepier practical effects, specifically when it comes to the monster played by a contortionist.

The Looming screens on Jan. 22, at 10 p.m. at The Ray, Park City. It will be online Jan. 25–28.

Ko’s explanation of the film offers further depth:

“My grandfather passed and I didn’t get to say goodbye,” she said in a filmmaker statement. “So, I made this film as a call for us to see—really see—the elderly among us. It’s a story that shines a light on the often ignored realities of our elders, who are too frequently relegated to the margins of our narratives, and our lives. I hope that in the reflection of Chester’s story, the viewers are reminded of their own families. Ultimately, The Looming is a call to action, a reminder to view our elders with empathy and inclusivity.

“The stark reality of my grandfather’s death influenced my genre approach: to present a narrative where reality itself is more chilling than any fictional monster.”

As a filmmaker, Ko wants to explore stories that are often overlooked. We will discuss The Looming and what Ko has planned for the future in an upcoming Q&A post.

Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden return to Sundance this year with a pretty delightful, action-packed romp through late-80s Oakland, Freaky Tales. The film takes its name from a rap by Oakland legend Too $hort, who serves as our narrator and also has a brief cameo. (Keep an eye out for Marshawn Lynch, Sleepy Floyd, Tim Armstong and that guy from The Money Pit.) Though Oakland’s rap scene does play a role here, the film’s four chapters intertwine storylines traveling through the diverse socio-cultural landscape of the city at the time, which, as one cast member noted after the premiere, has been severely disrupted in recent years by gentrification. To that point, Freaky Tales’ nostalgia doesn’t overly fetishize fashion or music or objects, though all of these contribute to a more or less authentic feel. Rather, the film is interested in a lost and obviously beloved community. It’s interested in the ways in which, particularly perhaps from Fleck’s perspective, a sector of young Oakland at that time shared a dogged resistance to forces that wanted to crush and humiliate it. 

The underdog is a central metaphor in Freaky Tales, and nothing characterizes this state-of-being better than the event that frames the whole film: Game Four of the Western Conference Semifinals, featuring the Golden State Warriors (remember, they used to play in Oakland?) and the Showtime Los Angeles Lakers. On May 10 that year, the Warriors were down 3-0 in the series, but, as we’re reminded early on in Freaky Tales, Golden State point guard Eric “Sleepy” Floyd scored 51 points in Game 4 to ruin a Lakers series sweep. Something was in the air that night, Too $hort tells us, signified by a weird green light that appears in a variety of forms throughout the film. 

Before we get to the full implications of this seemingly supernatural event, however, Fleck and Boden lead us through some preliminaries, including an epic battle for existence between the denizens of a punk club fighting a band of neo-Nazis, and two young women, the rap duo Danger Zone, braving their fears to take the stage and battle a local idol. These first two chapters are certainly entertaining, wild and gory, but they do feel a bit light, even predictable, as we begin to wonder when the love, friendship and heroics we’re seeing will meet up with some true challenges, giving the whole project more substance.

Chapter 3, the longest to this point and featuring an engaging Pedro Pascal, delivers both tragedy and even greater stakes as some of the Tarantino-like path-crossing we’ve seen earlier begins to add up. The grand finale pushes Sleepy Floyd’s heroism to unimaginable heights, confirming the film’s central premise that its most generous and community-oriented figures, those who work to lift others up without regard for profit, will always come out on top. At least in fantasy.  

More than an easy nostalgia trip, Freaky Tales is a pretty fun comic book, set in something like an alternative present, made, quite nicely, to look like the past. (The gore meter registers high, however, so be warned.) It doesn’t matter that many of the film’s moves are familiar. (There actually are some great surprises in the final chapter, and the use of animation throughout is both practical and clever.) Rather, Freaky Tales’ entertainment lies in its goofy and eager desire to expand on the joy of that one great night in the Coliseum, when the underdog knocked the bully cold, made the impossible possible. And even though the forces of darkness, with all their money and power, always seem to come back stronger to finish the job (and to take your team across the Bay), maybe that green glimmer of hope will be enough to encourage you to mount a resistance one more time.