2023 Sundance Film Festival

One of the many standout films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Adura Onashile’s feature debut Girl. The film follows the mother-daughter unit Grace and Ama as they try to adapt to life in Scotland after escaping unspeakable violence in their native Republic of the Congo.

Marija Kavtaradze’s new movie Slow recently held its world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where the magical mountain honored the Lithuanian native with the best directing price in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition category. Slow, Kavtaradze’s second feature after Summer Survivors, tells a uniquely intriguing love story between a modern dancer named Elena (Greta Grinevičiūtė), who falls in love with a sign language interpreter Dovydas (Kęstutis Cicėnas), who identifies himself as an asexual.

Following international acclaim for high octane thriller shows such as Fauda, Tehran and Prisoners of War, the last adapted stateside as Homeland, the Israeli television landscape now boasts a new comedy series, romantic while somewhat on the raunchy side, which has opened to rave reviews. Fresh from its North American premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where it appeared as part of its Indie Episodic Program, Chanshi follows the defiant yet charming titular character as she breaks away from her traditional observant Jewish community in Brooklyn in order to fulfill her most intimate fantasies in the Holy Land in a series whose premise tackles religion and sexuality in an unconventional and provocative manner.

Not rain, sleet or snow could stop our intrepid HFPA members, Yong Chavez and Miriam Spritzer, from attending the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah last week and hitting all the buzzed-about screenings. We quiz the journalists about the vibe, the packed cinemas and great Q&A, and, of course, what they thought of the movies that everyone else was talking about, including: Eileen (Anne Hathaway), Theatre Camp, Magazine Dreams (Jonathan Majors), Past Lives, Shortcomings and You Hurt My Feelings (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).

Sundance is all about pre-planning and making difficult choices as there are so many screenings happening at the same time, often across town from each other. But I’m a sucker for any story about woman musicians, so I made sure to prioritize seeing two films in particular: It’s Only Life After All and Flora and Son.

The documentary Invisible Beauty tells the story of Bethann Hardison, a fashion revolutionary who has been on the front lines of racial justice in her industry for over five decades. Through her life journey as a pioneering Black model, modeling agent and activist, the film explores race, beauty, and representation.

Here are the 2023 Sundance Film Festival winners, as provided by the Sundance Institute:   GRAND JURY PRIZESThe U. S.

Tom Cruise is famous enough for running in films that it’s sparked memes, YouTube supercuts, and a good-natured embrace from the actor himself on social media. Until one watches Still: A Michael J.

“In Short We Trust”: might seem provocative to some, but for Alessandro Loprieno, founder and CEO of the first worldwide distribution platform dedicated solely to shorts, there is nothing truer… and interest from the Sundance Film Festival, with its known attention to the short form, whether it be fiction or not, proves it.   WeShort, the company founded only two years ago in the Southern region of Puglia, Italy, is now an official partner of the Sundance Institute.

This Sundance Film Festival was my first time Sundancing (as the cooler regulars definitely DO NOT call it) and I had a few realizations and knee-jerk reactions to the experience. First and foremost, it’s cold — like really, really cold in Park City, and it never seemed to stop snowing.