Sundance 2018

In 1987, the alternative band REM released the song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It. ” That title could well encapsulate cinema’s enduring fascination with our own demise.

You might think that given his long and varied career, Golden Globe winner Nicolas Cage would be a festival veteran from the early days of Sundance. But when we sat down with the actor at the Mustang Restaurant to talk about Mandy, a violent revenge film playing here in the Midnight section, we learned the surprising news that he is, in fact, a newcomer to the country’s foremost film festival.

Andrew Heckler’s directorial debut, Burden, was twenty years in the making but, as the writer-director said, it seems more relevant now than it was in the nineties, when the actual story of Klansman repudiating a life of hate took place in South Carolina. It's not by the film’s linear though compact structure or straightforward photography by Jeremy Rouse that provokes interest,  but the fact that racism is examined through the eyes of a Ku Klux Klansman, who finds himself in a classic dilemma, torn between the woman he falls in love with and the community that raised him.

“There are two kinds of pity,” said Babis Makridis the Greek director returning to Sundance for the second time. “The pity we feel towards someone else that makes us feel like we are good people, and the pity we receive, which also makes us feel good.

In 2012 British filmmaker Bart Layton presented his documentary The Imposter at Sundance. It ended up winning a BAFTA Award for Outstanding Debut later that year.

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Gus Van Sant, director of Golden Globe winning films Good Will Hunting (screenplay for Matt Damon and Ben Affleck) and To Die For (best actress for Nicole Kidman) and Milk.

Festival goers packed the Sundance TV lounge on Main Street as the HFPA hosted the Women Breaking Barriers panel in association with Sundance Institute and Sundance TV Saturday. HFPA journalist Elisabeth Sereda moderated the discussion and opened the proceedings announcing a $50.

A couple of thousand noisy protesters braved the snow falling in Park City, Utah for the "Respect Rally", this year’s edition of the Women’s march, marking the 1st anniversary of the Trump presidency and last year’s march at Sundance. This year’s theme was registering voters and mobilizing turnout for the November mid-term elections.

Sundance 2018 opened with fair skies and perfect weather - the perfect ambiance for a new crop of diverse, edgy and interesting films.