By Christina Petersen, Eckerd Sundance correspondent & film studies professor at Eckerd College
For over 15 years, Eckerd College has sent students and faculty to the Sundance Film Festival, the annual lodestar of independent film, in Park City, Utah. We usually report back on the best and brightest films that hope to make their way to a theater and streaming near you. This year, we’re doing things a little differently because Sundance is doing things a little differently. This fall Sundance announced a bespoke screening platform that allows viewers to experience the festival from home (there are select in-person events around the U.S. as well) for as low as $15 a film ticket. And so this year the Eckerd Sundance crew will be reporting back on all things virtual Sundance. You can find our work here at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay during the festival and student correspondents will be blogging the festival as well.
Usually a 10-day affair, this year Sundance will run for a week—Jan. 28-Feb. 3 – with more than 70 features and slates of feature, animated, and documentary shorts as well as the burgeoning “New Frontier” section. Each feature will play twice during the festival, once during a three-hour premiere window with a live Q&A with the filmmakers after the film and then two days later in an on-demand window. Sundance hasn’t released numbers on how many tickets were available for each film, but the early buzz was clear when ticket sales went live on Jan. 7.
Quick sellouts for both showings included opening night film “CODA,” which explores the experience of a hearing child of deaf parents, comedian Jerrod Carmichael’s first feature “On the Count of Three,” and actress Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut, “Passing,” an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novel that features serious star power with Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson playing women on opposite sides of the color line in early twentieth century America.
Hall and Carmichael are not the only on-camera talent making their debut behind the camera this year. Robin Wright’s first directorial effort, “Land”—which already has Oscar buzz and has also sold-out—will premiere at Sundance as part of a diverse slate in which nearly half of films were directed by women and a similar number were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as BIPOC.
As always, the Sundance program serves as a reflection of contemporary social issues and this year is no different. In addition to depictions of the diversity of human experience, several films focus on human beings’ charged relationship to the natural environment, including the California wildfire documentary “Bring Your Own Brigade,” a portrait of marine conservationist Valerie Taylor in “Playing with Sharks,” and the story of a Maltese fisherman’s vanishing livelihood in “Luzzu.”
This year also features several films that deal with previously unthinkable events. These range from docs like “In the Same Breath,” which focuses on the Chinese response to the COVID-19 outbreak, and “Homeroom,” which follows Oakland High School’s class of 2020 from college applications to pandemic learning, to apocalyptic thrillers and comedies like “The Pink Cloud,” “In the Earth,” and “How It Ends.”
Even the once-in-a-decade project “Life in a Day 2020,” which gathered footage from around the world shot on July 25, 2020, offers a singular glimpse into our changed world. For those interested in the effects of technological change, check out “R#J,” a retelling of “Romeo and Juliet” through cell phones, “Searchers,” a study of New Yorkers looking for that special someone through dating apps, and “Users,” which explores the consequences of digital child-rearing machines like screens and smartcribs on parent-child relationships.
“Users” will also be one of a select group of films to play in the Sundance “Cinema House,” a fully-immersive, virtual reality big-screen movie theater accessible to passholders with Oculus Quest or other VR headsets. Cinema House is just one of the festival’s efforts to create a virtual version of the in-person experience.
In lieu of trudging through the snow and crowds on Main Street, Sundance fans can experience the virtual Festival Village for free on the Sundance website where corporate sponsors and partners have created online drop-in spaces like the traditional Park City storefront pop-ups. There’s even an interactive social space called “Film Party,” where festival passholders can virtually gather together for premiere parties.
The Eckerd Sundance crew will be trying all of these experiences and more and reporting back. In the meantime, check out this list of the Eckerd student top six (because we couldn’t choose just five) most anticipated films of Sundance 2021:
- “Prisoners of the Ghostland” Nicholas Cage, Thomas Moseley, and Sofia Boutella star in a gonzo samurai post-apocalyptic western not recommended for the faint of heart.
- “The Blazing World” A horror fantasy film explores a young woman’s pain and trauma from losing her sister at a young age.
- “In the Earth” When a deadly virus reorders society, three uneasy allies enter a forest where nothing is what it seems.
- “Playing with Sharks” Diver and marine conservationist Valerie Taylor is the focus of this environmental documentary that includes footage of the ocean as it once was.
- “Eight for Silver” Set in the late-19th century, this new take on the werewolf film promises atmospheric horror and genuine terror.
- “On the Count of Three” Jerrod Carmichael directs and stars in this dark bromantic comedy about hopelessness, suicide, and friendship.
UPDATED: 01/25/20 10:25 a.m. Updated to place Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, not Clearwater.
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This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2021.