I honestly can’t remember the last time the Sundance Film Festival had such a weak batch of films. Maybe sometime in the late 2000s when the festival had to rebrand and reorganize. Otherwise, this 2022 edition was lacking great films.
Take for example, the just-announced Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner, Nikyatu Jusu‘s “Nanny.” A mediocre film that shouldn’t have won anything.
At least the jury justly gave their directing prize to Jamie Dack, whose “Palm Trees and Power Lines” was the riskiest work of the ten films competing in competition. An unflinching look at a 17-year-old girl’s relationship with a sketchy man more than twice her age, it’s one of the hardest watches I’ve had to endure these last few years.
And yet, the best film I saw at Sundance 2022, Chloe Okuno‘s “Watcher,” went home empty-handed. This was a film filled with Polanski-esque atmosphere as a young American woman wanders around Romania with the feeling that she’s being stalked.
K.D. Dávila won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for his overwrought screenplay, “Emergency.”
At least Cooper Raiff’s “Cha Cha Cha Real Smooth,” a compulsively likeable romcom from a young 22-year-old filmmaker with immense potential, won the coveted Audience Award. Dakota Johnson gave her best performance as a young mother who falls for a wise college kid, play by Raiff.
Past Sundance award winners have included “CODA,” “Minari,” “Whiplash,” “Fruitvale,” “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” “Winter’s Bone,” and “Precious.”
Tomorrow I’ll be revealing the ten best movies I saw at Sundance 2022.