The Sundance Film Festival will hold its annual celebration from January 19 to January 29 this year. The 10-day festival will feature screenings of movies by well-known and independent directors, as well as several U.S. and international debuts. A Brief History of Time, The Monster & the Storm, Unrest, and Descendant are some previous films that have made their premieres at Sundance.
Documentaries are unique in that they tell the real stories of people and places, their interactions, and their emotions. Many of these films are independent productions that are devoted to presenting the significant and forward-thinking tales that Sundance is renowned for showcasing. Storytelling is a genre all its own that defines the documentary category and brings us something different. The films in the U.S. Documentary Competition program that will be shown this year are highlighted in the list below.
A Still Small Voice
In A Still Small Voice, a soon-to-be hospital minister begins a one-year fellowship in spiritual care to complete her studies, only to learn that in order to adequately provide for her patients, she must first examine herself. This documentary follows Mati's journey as she starts working at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and examines how the human psyche copes with unpredictability, trauma, and loss. Mati needs to learn how to strike a balance between her work and herself while dealing with the challenges caused by the coronavirus outbreak. A Still Small Voice gives an in-depth examination of how healthcare professionals provide for others in the face of presumably catastrophic circumstances.
AUM: The Cult at the End of the World
This is the story of one of the most powerful cults in the world, with a billion-dollar following that included members with expertise in physics, technology, and medicine, all led by a deranged leader who stockpiles nuclear weapons. The narrative might be the source of nightmares, much like scenarios from an alternative wasteland in a dystopian thriller.
The morning of March 20, 1995, a fatal nerve gas assault in the Tokyo subway threw the country and its people into turmoil, as described in AUM: The Cult at the End of the World. This film uses the accounts of those who experienced the terror firsthand to provide a thorough analysis of Aum Shinrikyo and the cult that committed the massacre. It draws on the book The Cult at the End of the World by renowned investigative journalist David E. Kaplan and Pulitzer Prize-winner Andrew Marshall. "Aum’s preparations for the end of the world makes for a fascinating, grim, near-unbelievable read,” according to Kirkus Reviews, which also dubbed the novel "a stranger-than-fiction page-turner," making the film a must-watch.
Bad Press
A renegade reporter seeks to uncover her government's wrongdoing in a historic battle that will have repercussions for all of Indian country when the Muscogee Nation abruptly starts suppressing its free press. As a reporter for Mvskoke Media in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, Angel Ellis is merely attempting to do her job in this documentary. She wants to provide her audience with insight into all the information pertinent to the Muscogee Creek Nation. Ellis and her colleagues are pitted against tribal leaders in their pursuit of truth and openness when the Free Press Act of 2015 is revoked in their region. Bad Press is a multifaceted and heartwarming film about standing up for what you believe in, no matter how perilous the journey is.
Beyond Utopia
Madeleine Gavin's film Beyond Utopia examines the extent humans will go to in order to achieve freedom. The film uses covert cameras to track a variety of people as they make their way out of one of the most terrible locations on Earth. Follow along as a woman makes a valiant effort to reconnect with her child, a family makes an effort to depart with all of their children, and a preacher makes an effort to escape a hostile environment. As these individuals set out on a perilous trip to flee a place they were raised thinking to be a paradise, the movie finally unveils a reality that most of us have never experienced. Beyond Utopia depicts what these individuals go through on their dangerous expedition, where the penalty for being discovered is death!
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project
This fascinating documentary explores the turbulent historical eras that poet Nikki Giovanni lived through, from the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. To demonstrate the lasting impact of one of America's greatest contemporary artists and social critics, the movie pushes the limits of biographical documentary filmmaking. Going to Mars tells the tale of the artist and her acts of resistance through concurrent cinematic narrative editing, graphically inventive adaptations of her poems, personal archive material, and Giovanni's own engaging modern cultural performances.
Going Varsity in Mariachi
Going Varsity in Mariachi is centered on Coach Abel Acua, who leads the Mariachi Oro squad, a competitive high school mariachi band, at Edinburg North High School in South Texas, about 20 miles from the border with Mexico. He finds his team devastated by the coronavirus epidemic, fighting with remote learning, and with few resources in one of the most economically impoverished areas of the country after winning the previous year’s competition. Coach Acua then has to manage the band's adolescent members as they balance a new school year, the band, and family obligations during a crucial season. Viewers will be able to see firsthand the joy, the sorrow, and the music as the squad competes for the championship.
Joonam
Joonam, which takes its name from a Farsi term of affection, is filled with heart and comedy in a way that only a movie about kinship could be. In order to understand more about her grandmother Behjat and mother Mitra's lives in Iran, filmmaker Sierra Urich sets off on a summer vacation with them. The three ladies start to relive the past in between car trips to the beach and campfire stories. Urich creates a rich, intimate film that compellingly demonstrates the perspectives of the Iranian diaspora and expresses to anyone directly impacted by the upheaval that comes with immigration by drawing on familial history and experiences, including her grandmother's interactions as a preteen bride and her mother's defiant teen years during the Iranian Revolution.
Little Richard: I Am Everything
Little Richard: I Am Everything is being developed by Rolling Stone in collaboration with Bungalow Media + Entertainment. In an effort to balance the whitewashed history of American pop, the documentary recounts the career of the renowned rock and roll hero Little Richard while delving into the Black LGBTQ+ roots of the music. "Burning bright with a voice that slayed and a pompadour that pridefully sashayed, he inspired me to color outside the lines, and give voice to all who are silenced for being too bold, too Black or too queer," director Lisa Cortes said in a comment to Deadline. The film will combine interviews with historical footage to take viewers on a trip where they may not only see the performer at his finest but also discover much more about the individual behind the show.
Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV
One of the most well-known Asian artists of the 20th century, Nam June Paik revolutionized the use of technology as a canvas for art and created the video synthesizer. Nam June Paik: Moon is the Oldest TV describes his story. The phrase "electronic super highway," which served as the title of one of his most well-known works and involved more than 300 TV sets, is ascribed to him as its originator and was the first broadband communication network. This documentary will follow Paik's life from his early years as he went across the world using interviews and images of David Bowie, Charlotte Moorman, Yoko Ono, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, and others. The film will also include his escape from his home in Korea to Japan, at the start of the Korean War, continuing to detail his movements to Germany and then to New York City, where he settled in 1964.
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Shere Hite shocked the world in the 1970s with her breakthrough studies on female sexuality and her finding that women may be sexually satisfied without the aid of males or even traditional sexual activity. The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality, her best-selling book, contains the most intimate experiences of thousands of anonymous survey participants. Her discoveries shocked the American elite and paved the way for the present dialogue on gender, sexuality, and physical autonomy. Her choice to renounce her American passport, leave the nation, and relocate to Europe, where she believed her ideals were more widely accepted, are described, here, in The Disappearance of Shere Hite.
The Stroll
The Stroll tells the narrative of transgender women of color who braved urbanization, homelessness, police, and violence to create a movement for transgender rights. The film focuses on New York City's Meatpacking District, where trans women sex workers lived, worked, fell in love, and passed away behind a posh, corporate-looking exterior. Trans women of color who were ostracized from mainstream employment went to "The Stroll" as a method of survival. Brought together by co-director Kristen Lovell, who worked alongside them for a decade, the women of the Stroll, past and present, tell their story in a way no one else could.
Victim/Suspect
The investigative film, Victim/Suspect, tracks CIR (The Center for Investigative Reporting) reporter Rae de Leon as she identifies an astonishing trend that exists across the country. A significant number of young women who report sexual assault to the police are highlighted in the movie. In contrast to what you might anticipate, the women themselves are accused of filing a false report, detained, and even imprisoned by law authorities. Just because these women stepped out and identified their abusers, several of them were sentenced to years in jail for crimes they did not commit. These women thought the system would protect them, but instead of receiving justice, they are being assaulted once more.