Five Sundance Films to Look Out For

Published: January 30, 2017

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The Sundance Film Festival works kind of like a distant star—by the time its light hits most of the world, it's over. But while there may have been plenty of distractions stealing the thunder from this year's Park City premieres, this is by no means the finale for most of these films. Sundance is often seen as the beginning of the road to the next year's Oscars. But as streaming services and their fat wallets become more of a driving force at the festival, the opportunity to actually see some of this stuff—even if you don't live in Los Angeles and New York—is very real.

I saw 15 films at this year's festival, just a fraction of the huge program. Several films I didn't get to see, but have heard great things about, including Macon Blair's directorial debut I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore and Eliza Hittman's Beach Rats. In my experience, 2017 was not as great a year for underdog discoveries and surprise hits from unknown directors. However, with that caveat aside, there were still a number of films that stood out to me at this year's festival. Here are the top five—and how you'll be able to see them.

Call Me By Your Name. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

Call Me By Your Name

Over and over, this is what I heard people say about Luca Guadagnino's fifth film: "It doesn't feel like a Sundance film." First of all, ouch. Second of all, it's not not a Sundance film—based on the celebrated novel by André Aciman, it's a sensitive, lyrically told gay coming-of-age story co-starring a Hollywood actor (Armie Hammer) doing some "edgy" stuff on-screen. But I suspect the sentiment comes from Guadagnino's idiosyncratic direction, which continues to feel surprising and abundantly fresh with each successive film.

The film takes place over one memorable summer for Elio (the revelatory Timothée Chalemet), the son of scholars living "somewhere in northern Italy" in the early 80s. In many ways, it follows the expected beats of a coming-out story, but always darts in an unexpected direction as it hits each one, finding new emotional notes that we rarely get to see. Elio is in many ways wise beyond his years, but his emotional inexperience is as important as his sexual inexperience; the visiting grad student that he becomes enamored with (Hammer) treats him as an intellectual equal. Their corner of the crumbling Italian countryside is buzzing and restless and seductive and yet somehow never drifts into cliché. The film brings back that first summer when everything felt like the most important thing in the world with deep intimacy, and its unforgettable final shot will stay with me for a while.

Where can you see it? Call Me By Your Name is being released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics sometime this year.

Mudbound. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

Mudbound

Director Dee Rees's big swing for the fences after her 2011 Sundance breakout Pariah has paid off in this prestige-y historical drama that's deceptively conventional everywhere but where it matters. It's a tale a two farming families trying to make it in the unforgiving Mississippi Delta before and after World War II, one black and one white. Rees makes us feel the weight of a thousand tiny injustices pile up over the years, and easily pivots between a systemic view of racism and a person-to-person one. The film is worth it alone for the friendship between Laura (Carey Mulligan) and Florence (Mary J. Blige), which is wildly privilege-imbalanced and ultimately supportive and loving.

Where can you see it? Netflix just bought Mudbound for $12.5 million, narrowly beating out the next film as the biggest sale of the festival. A release date has not yet been announced.

The Big Sick. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

The Big Sick

Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon's more-or-less faithful retelling of an early episode in their relationship has the logline of a sappy hugging-and-learning movie of the week. But it wins on the strength and clarity of its writers, stars, and director Michael Showalter. Kumail (Nanjiani) and Emily (Zoe Kazan) embark on a quintessential millennial relationship with one unaddressed complication: Kumail's family is Pakistani Muslim, and are dead set on setting him up with an arranged marriage. Then a sudden crisis brings Kumail unexpectedly closer to Emily's parents (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), and yes, everyone hugs and learns a lot.

The thing is, I've never seen a Sundance audience laugh they way they did at the premiere of The Big Sick. It's a deep, satisfying, and often dark humor, dismantling Emily's parent's latent prejudice one minute, and Kumail's Pakistani geekery the next. What takes it over the top, though, is that Gordon and Kazan have created a living, breathing, complicated romantic partner in Emily, a person whose absence is felt keenly. It has an Apatovian runtime (2 hours) and a somewhat shaggy third act, but its heart stays true to the very end.

Where can you see it? The Big Sick got picked up by Amazon and will have a theatrical release in conjunction with its streaming release. No release date here, either.

A Ghost Story. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

A Ghost Story

Wait a second, what is this doing here? Sure, I didn't ultimately fall for David Lowery's A Ghost Story, a decidedly kooky fable in art-house clothing, but I do appreciate its presence at this year's festival. At any rate, it's something to talk about. This is the one where Casey Affleck is a ghost in a sheet and Rooney Mara eats a whole pie, after all. Lowery is going for some grand statement on souls and the passage of time, but I'm not sure anyone could really say what that was, and what he's ultimately left with is a very clever little puzzle box of a movie that doesn't actually fit together. The incoherence of its finale isn't what bothered me, though. The film is at its best when it genuinely doesn't care about making you feel comfortable or smart. And the constant image of Affleck as the ghost is by turns disturbing, beautiful, and sweet; certainly a great centerpiece to an imperfect but daring film.

Where can I see it? The powerhouse indie distributor A24 will be releasing A Ghost Story theatrically, date TBD.

Roxanne Roxanne. Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival

Roxanne Roxanne

Writer-director Michael Larnell retells of the life of Roxanne Shanté Gooden, the original queen of battle rapping whose career took a nosedive after an exhilarating brush with fame, as a (mostly) feel-good music biopic, slickly produced with help of Pharrell Williams and Forest Whitaker. Larnell paces the film a little strangely and doesn't give us nearly enough battle rapping, but the real draw is star Chanté Adams, who easily embodies the charisma and ferociousness of the film's heroine, ethering everyone who dares underestimate her through a row of sparkly braces. There's not much subtlety here, but if you're looking to tide yourself over before the next half-season of The Get Down, it'll do just fine. (Also, The Get Down's Tremaine Brown, Jr. shows up in a very winky role, which potentially upsets the entire space-time continuum of contemporary adaptations of the early New York hip-hop scene.)

Where can I see it? Roxanne Roxanne was picked up by Neon, a new-ish distributor that also got festival favorites Ingrid Goes West and Beach Rats.

Follow Emily Yoshida on Twitter.

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