I had skepticism going into this all-virtual Sundance Film Festival, but count me as wholly impressed by the way they pulled it off. This should be the way every other festival does it digitally this year. The streaming was smooth, the sense of community very present and the quality of the movies was, surprisingly, decent. Especially given the fact that most of the titles that screened this year were shot in 2019.
As film journalists were narrowing down their Sundance 2021 focus on just a handful of films (“Passing,” CODA,” “Mass,” “Summer of Soul,” “Judas and the Black Messiah”), a vast number of unseen gems were being relegated to the sidelines. That’s a real shame because, if you know a thing or two about Sundance, the sheer act of discovery is what this film festival is all about. Who cares about another Nicolas Cage action movie (“Prisoners of Ghostland”) when you can simmer in the discovery of Ronny Trocker’s German provocation “Human Factors”?
A total of 71 films were programmed at this year’s all-digital festival. I started watching the selected films weeks before the fest’s January 28th opening, which gave me the opportunity to catch, counting walkouts, a total of 66 of them. I know, I am quite militant in my movie-watching, but I ended up missing just 5 (“Fire in the Mountains,” “Amy Tan: Unintended,” “How it Ends,” “My Name is Pauli Murray,” and “Life in Day”). That also means I developed a good idea on what was being unfairly underseen and what was being overseen by critics.
The following are the ten pictures that impressed me the most and which I cannot wait for you to catch this year. I expect all of these to get a 2021 release date. I haven’t yet reviewed three of them, but will publish more articulated thoughts on each film in the coming week. We will be very busy the next month with an influx of 1980s top ten lists flooding my email inbox (there’s a major poll coming if you didn’t know).
With all that being said, in alphabetical order, these are the films that hit me the hardest at Sundance 2021:
CODA
Coming Home in the Dark
Human Factors
In the Same Breath
John and the Hole
Luzzu
Passing
Pleasure
President
Summer of Soul
Try Harder!
Best of Sundance 2015
Best of Sundance 2016
Best of Sundance 2017
Best of Sundance 2019
Best of Sundance 2018
Best of Sundance 2020
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.