Sundance unveils 2023 line-up
Established and new filmmakers will take a bow at the hybrid 2023 Sundance Film Festival as festival organisers announced 99 features selected from a record number of submissions. There is new work from Holy Spider star Zar Amir Ebrahimi and Cynthia Erivo, We Are Lady Parts creator Nida Manzoor, Nicole Holofcener, Davis Guggenheim, Sophie Bathes and Brandon Cronenberg.
Anticipated World Cinema Dramatic Competition selections include UK duo Scrapper directed by Charlotte Regan and sold by Charades, and Girl by Adura Onashile. Both were supported through development and production by BBC Film along with Searchlight’s Rye Lane in Premieres.
Animalia is produced by Toufik Ayadi and Christophe Barral, who produced French Oscar submission Saint Omer, while Holy Spider star Zar Amir Ebrahimi plays the lead in Noora Niasari’s Shayda, produced by Cate Blanchett’s Dirty Films and represented for international sales by Hanway Films and UTA Independent Film Group for the US. That is one of a trio of films directed by women of Iranian descent alongside The Persian Version in U.S Dramatic Competition (Maryam Keshavarz) and Joonam in U.S. Documentary Competition (Sierra Urich).
Wild Bunch is selling Heroic produced by Mexican enfant terrible Michel Franco, and CAA Media Finance and Protagonist represent sales on Alice Englert’s New Zealand drama Bad Behaviour starring Jennifer Connelly, Ben Whishaw and Englert – one of a number of films in this year’s selection that address the parent-child relationship.
From Midnight comes Australian drama Run Rabbit Run starring Succession’s Sarah Snook from first time feature director Daina Reid, whose TV directing credits include The Handmaid’s Tale. Meanwhile Manzoor’s Polite Society is the action comedy from Focus Features, Working Title and Parkville Pictures. Neon holds North American rights to Brandon Cronenberg’s long-awaited Infinity Pool, and Shudder brings its original film birth/rebirth.
A24 has US distribution rights and is selling international rights to US Dramatic Competition selection All Dirt Roads Taste Of Salt, produced by Barry Jenkins, with whom the studio collaborated on best picture Oscar winner Moonlight. Meanwhile Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions holds international rights to another film in the section, Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version, which UTA Independent Film Group represents for the US. Focus has producer Lena Waithe’s A Thousand And One.
The US Documentary Competition titles that are already spoken for are Little Richard: I Am Everything at CNN Films for US broadcast and corporate sibling HBO Max for global streaming, and Victim/Suspect at Netflix.
The Premieres section of more ostensibly commercial films brings the latest from Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) – Apple Original Films’ documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie – as well as Nicole Holofcener’s (Enough Said, Friends With Money) You Hurt My Feelings starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, which A24 has for the US and FilmNation licenses internationally. It is one of two features in the section produced by Likely Story (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind) alongside Eileen, William Oldroyd’s film starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway (pictured).
The Amazon-MGM axis holds rights to several films in the section. Prime Video has Cassandro starring Gael Garcia Bernal as the “Liberace of Lucha Libre” and Judy Blume Forever, while MGM has Landscape With Invisible Hand starring Tiffany Haddish and directed by Cory Finley, whose Thoroughbreds premiered at 2017 Sundance. The director’s 2019 crime comedy Bad Education went to HBO and he also directed episodes on the Apple show We Crashed.
A number of films produced by and involving European powerhouses are in selection. Susanna Fogel’s Cat Person (Fra-USA) starring Emilia Jones is fully financed by Studiocanal, which will directly distribute in the UK, France, Germany, Australia and New Zealand and is selling worldwide.
Drift marks the first feature from Paradise City, the company co-founded by Memento International founder Emilie Georges and producer Naima Abed. Anthony Chen (2013 Cannes Camera d’Or winner Ilo Ilo) directs the refugee story set in Greece starring Cynthia Erivo and Alia Shawkat. UTA Independent Film Group and Memento International jointly represent sales.
Mk2 is selling The Pod Generation from Sophie Barthes (Cold Souls, Madame Bovary) and The Match Factory handles sales on World Cinema Dramatic Competition entry Sorcery, one of two films produced by the Larrain brothers’ Chilean powerhouse Fabula alongside World Cinema Documentary Competition entry The Eternal Memory.
Two features from Ukraine take their place in World Cinema Documentary Competition and examine the process of journalism and investigation. Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days In Mariupol, which PBS will broadcast in the US, follows a team of Ukrainian journalists trapped in the besieged city as the Russian invasion commences. Roman Liubyi’s Iron Butterflies charts the investigation into the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.
The festival will run January 19-29 2023 in person – for the first time back since 2020 before the pandemic brought in-person events to a screeching halt – in Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort.
A selection of films will be available online across the country from January 24–29. They include all Competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT), as well as work across other sections of the feature film program, Indie Episodic Program, and Shorts Program. The Shorts and Indie Episodic line-ups Festival will be announced on December 13.
The Pod Generation, screening in the Premieres section, is the winner of the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize, the annual award given to an artist with the most outstanding depiction of science and technology in a feature film. The 2023 Sundance Film Festival’s Salt Lake City Opening Night Gala Film is Blueback.
The Day One features are birth/rebirth, L’Immensità, It’s Only Life After All, Kim’s Video, Little Richard: I Am Everything, The Longest Goodbye, The Pod Generation, Radical, Shayda, Sometimes I Think About Dying, and Run Rabbit Run.
“The programme for this year’s festival reiterates the relevancy of trailblazing work serving as an irreplaceable source for original stories that resonate and fuel creativity and dialogue,” said Kim Yutani, Sundance Film Festival director of programming. “In so many ways this year’s slate reflects the voices of communities around the world who are speaking out with urgency and finally being heard. Across our programme, impactful storytelling by fearless artists continues to provide space for the community to come together to be entertained, challenged, and inspired.”
The full slate of 99 films announced on Wednesday, along with the previously announced From The Collection films Slam and The Doom Generation, comprise 101 feature-length films representing 23 countries. Culled from record 15,855 submissions, including a record 4,061 feature-length films, 32 films mark feature directing debuts.
Thirty-two (or 28%) of 115 feature film directors across 27 films are first-time feature filmmakers – 16 made fiction films and 16 made documentaries. Of the first-time feature directors 20 identified as women (13 documentaries, seven fiction films), rising to 23 including three filmmakers who identified as non-binary and go by she/her (resulting in a total of 14 documentary directors and nine fiction film directors).
Seventeen of the feature films and projects announced were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs.
All synopses below are provided by the festival. Films without an indicated country hail from the US. All films are world premieres unless indicated otherwise.
