If 2025 already feels like it’s been a lot, imagine trying to put on an event meant to bring together thousands of people to focus their attention on independent cinema for 11 days. Such is the challenge facing this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which begins on Thursday and runs through Feb 2.
With the presidential inauguration and political vibe shift of the new administration earlier this week and wildfires still a threat in Los Angeles, Sundance is here with its 42nd edition, asking filmmakers, the media, Hollywood industry players and audiences to decamp for Park City, Utah, to watch from a program of 88 feature films — a tall order. Yet it may be just the thing to bring troubled minds some sense of structure, solace and even relief.
“This year the festival lands on the calendar at a moment when I think we need it most,” says Eugene Hernandez, director of the festival. “I’ve been chatting a lot in recent days with filmmakers, industry, audiences and staff who were displaced or much worse in the past week. Folks who’ve lost so much. Everyone continues to tell me that they need this festival right now, to come together as a community and look ahead.”
A number of films in this year’s program have a timeliness that organizers couldn’t have predicted when they were selected. Writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s “Rebuilding” stars Josh O’Connor as a man starting over in the aftermath of a wildfire. Following some 50 years in prison, Native American activist Leonard Peltier, subject of co-directors Jesse Short Bull and David France’s documentary “Free Leonard Peltier,” saw his sentence commuted to home confinement in one of the final acts of outgoing President Biden.
Meanwhile, later this spring, the festival will announce its decision of a new host city — that is, whether it will remain in Utah with a combined Salt Lake City/Park City footprint or move entirely to either Boulder, Co., or Cincinnati for the 2027 edition.
Throughout it all, Sundance plans to remain very much a place for discovery, where new talent and fresh artistic voices can emerge.
This week, writer-director Mary Bronstein brings a film to the festival for the first time with “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” a vivid, anxiety-inducing portrait of a woman attempting to juggle the demands of a career and home life that includes caring for an ill child. The movie will likely garner comparisons to other recent works that reexamine motherhood such as Marielle Heller’s film “Nightbitch” and Miranda July’s latest novel “All Fours.” The film stars Rose Byrne, ASAP Rocky and Conan O’Brien (in his first full-fledged movie role) and will be released by A24 later this year.
Bronstein, whose only previous feature, the self-financed “Yeast,” premiered at the 2008 South by Southwest Film Festival, is excited to have her new work premiering at Sundance.
“It’s sort of the original place where films that are not studio films, films that exist outside the system, art films, were given a home,” said Bronstein. “And those places are shrinking and I feel Sundance still very much lives up to that. My movie and the movies I want to make in the future need that home.”
“If I Had Legs” took seven years to make, from its writing to the premiere. Adhering strictly to the point of view of Byrne’s beleaguered Linda, who may be entering some sort of psychosis as she is pushed to her limits by the demands of caring for her daughter, the film’s aggressive, at-times abrasive style is sure to create strong reactions from audiences.
“I am just so excited to stand in front of a theater full of people after they have watched the film and soak in the energy that they’ve taken from it and hear questions and thoughts,” says Bronstein.
“After the premiere it’s not mine anymore. I’ll be probably very nervous, but it’ll be a very happy nervous feeling. I’m excited about just feeling that energy.”
Among filmmakers returning to the festival this year are Bill Condon with “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” Ira Sachs with “Peter Hujar’s Day,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson with “Sly Lives! (a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius),” Cherien Dabis with “All That’s Left of You,” Justin Lin with “Last Days,” Amalia Ulman with “Magic Farm,” Matt Wolf’s “Pee-wee Herman as Himself” and Andrew Ahn with “The Wedding Banquet.”
Ahn’s film is a remake (it’s also being referred to as a “reimagining”) of the 1993 romantic comedy directed by Ang Lee. The screenplay is co-written by Ahn and James Schamus, who was also a co-writer on the original. Bleecker Street will release the film in the spring.
Ahn was first at Sundance with his debut feature “Spa Night” in 2016 and is grateful for the opportunity to again bring a feature to the festival.
“I would not have my career if it weren’t for Sundance,” says Ahn. “It’s where I got my agents and it really helped me make a career of this. I’m kind of amazed that I’ve been able to build a career making films about Asian American people. I couldn’t be happier with where I am at this stage of my life. It’s a festival that means a lot to me.”
Expanding from the original, the update centers on two gay couples, Angela and Lee (Kelly Marie Tran and Lily Gladstone) and Chris and Min (Bowen Yang and Han Gi-chan), who hatch a scheme to hopefully solve multiple problems: Angela will marry Min in a traditional Korean ceremony so she can get money for fertility treatments and he can get a green card and ease the pressures of his traditional parents. Joan Chen and Oscar-winner Yuh-Jung Youn also appear in the cast.
Ahn admits that, as far as he knows, Lee has not seen the new film yet, adding, “He is the audience that I am most scared of.”
James Sweeney’s “Twinless” is one of a number of projects, also including Katarina Zhu’s “Bunnylovr,” Grace Glowicki’s “Dead Lover,” Eva Victor’s “Sorry, Baby” and Cooper Raiff’s “Hal & Harper,” that feature writer-director-stars, a triple threat that’s been a Sundance staple going to back to Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s 1990 “Chameleon Street” and Kevin Smith’s “Clerks” from 1994.
Co-starring Dylan O’Brien, “Twinless” is about two lonely men who strike up a friendship in a grief support group for former twins. It’s Sweeney’s second feature film but first to play at Sundance (though he was in Park City a few years ago on a ski trip and stopped in to see some of the local venues, wondering if one day a film of his would play there).
“I try not to expect too much of anything because I feel like timing hasn’t been too kind to me historically,” Sweeney says, noting that his first film “Straight Up” went into theaters in February 2020, just before the pandemic hit, and production on “Twinless” was delayed due to the 2023 strikes in Hollywood.
“But I’m very excited and I’m really looking forward to watching the film with an audience and seeing how they react,” he adds. “It’s a comedy and I hope it gets a very visceral reaction.”
The 2017 festival saw a women’s rally unfold in protest of Donald Trump’s first inauguration as president and last year saw a pro-Palestinian protest on Park City’s Main Street. Another protest for Palestine has already been announced; whether moreactions occur this year remains to be seen. For festival organizers, such events simply become part of the overall fabric of the larger festival experience without pulling focus from the core of the event.
“Watching movies at the Sundance Film Festival — any film festival for that matter — is the heart of the experience,” says Hernandez. “But it’s everything else happening during that week that makes it a festival: the panels, the parties, the conversations at dinner, even pop-up events that are reactive to what’s happening in the world or coming from our program.
“Sundance is situated at the start of each new year, after the holidays as folks get back to business, so it’s always felt right that we’re able to bring people together in person,” Hernandez continues. “Those who watch some of the films or talks online from home get a taste of that, but the true magic of the festival is being in person together, even just for a few days.”
Films such as “A Different Man,” “A Real Pain,” “Dìdi,” “Union” “Sugarcane” and others that premiered at the festival in 2024 have remained in the awards conversation a full year later. For directors, the simple recognition of having the festival showcase their work can be reward enough.
“Having Sundance invite me, it’s really solidified in my mind that there is a place for me, there is a place for my voice, and there’s a place for my work,” said Bronstein. “And I’m just going to keep chugging forward.”
“I’ve been watching Sundance films and tracking careers of Sundance filmmakers since I was in film school,” Sweeney says. “And there’s going to be another filmmaker who will watch my film that is going to get into Sundance one day. I just feel like now I’m part of a lineage and it’s very validating. I think mostly what I’m excited about is to meet other filmmakers.”
With the imminent announcement of a new host city, the clock is ticking on an experience people have long known — even if what makes the festival truly unique goes well beyond the snowy confines of Park City.
“It does feel very special to go back to Sundance before it moves wherever it goes,” said Ahn. “At the same time, as I think we witnessed during the early phases of the pandemic, the spirit of Sundance doesn’t necessarily exist in a physical location, but is made up of the community. And so I really believe that wherever it goes, we’ll find that same feeling of magic and excitement and creative expression. It really doesn’t matter to me where it goes, as long as it’s a place where we can celebrate independent film.”
