Warming our hands on a hot cup of joe while waiting outside for the day’s first screening? Enjoying the view of the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains before we head into a highly anticipated new film? Traipsing up and down Main Street with its bustling stores and restaurants and event locations and running into filmmakers and actors along the way? Forget all that. The pandemic has once again put a dent in the much-loved Sundance experience.

The planned hybrid festival – in person as well as virtual – has been turned into virtual only, thanks to the ongoing pandemic. We will be watching movies on our laptops. Festival director Tabitha Jackson put a positive spin on it by saying that this way the program reaches “a more democratic and authentic representation of audiences.”

And it’s not to say that we cannot look forward to what looks to be an amazing selection in the usual categories of US and World Cinema Dramatic and Documentary competition, Premieres and Spotlight as well as the sections Next, Midnight (horror fare, mostly), Indie Episodic Program, Short Film, Special Screenings that are paired with a conversation with the filmmakers, Kids independent movies and Collection (classic works of independent cinema).

One documentary in particular worth mentioning in the Special Screenings section is the late addition of Phoenix Rising, an intimate portrait of actress Evan Rachel Wood as a domestic abuse survivor turned activist.

The other three films in this category span a wide variety of topics: Last Flight Home tells the story of a man facing death and deciding to embrace life. The Incredible True Adventure of Two Girls in Love is a rom-com about two lovers from very different social backgrounds. And The American Dream and Other Fairytales deals with the wide economic gap between rich and poor in this country.

Sundance, a diverse festival before that was even a term, will once again cover all topics: there is race history (the documentary Descendant about the first slave ship, the feature Alice, starring Keke Palmer in a time-warp story between the antebellum period and 1973, the drama 892 with John Boyega as a homeless veteran with a bomb), religious satire (Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul with Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown dealing with a church scandal, abortion (the documentary The Janes as well as the narrative feature Call Jane starring Kate Mara and Elizabeth Banks).

In music, Nothing Compares about Sinead O’Connor, Sirens about Lebanon’s first all-female metal band Slaves to Sirens and Jeen-Yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, social media trends (Tik, Tok, Boom) and many more.

There is yet another Princess Diana documentary.

Actors turned directors are nothing new at Sundance and this year are represented among others by Lena Dunham following up her debut Tiny Furniture in 2011 with Sharp Stick, a film about exploring female sexuality.

Jesse Eisenberg makes his directorial debut with When You Finish Saving the World starring Julianne Moore.

Sundance has never shied away from controversial subjects and this year is no different. Alex Gibney’s Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, and the series Leaving Neverland had their premiere’s here. This year it will be the four-part We Need to Talk about Cosby by Kamau Bell.

We may not get to put on our snow boots and attend after-parties in flannel shirts in cramped bars and taverns, but we sure will be watching.