A wrap-up of Sundance Film Festival 2025
The line-up this year was heavy with stories of stifled desire, of anger against subjugation, and of resilience in the face of illness, grief and loneliness.
Leave it to the worst of the chronically online dopamine fiends to ruin a good thing. Pirates gate-crashed Sundance 2025 (held from 23 January to 2 February) in the latter half of the film festival. Two competition titles had to be pulled from the festival streaming portal after clips began to surface on TikTok and Instagram. For the fifth straight year, Sundance offered an online platform for credentialed press around the world to stream a selection of independent films from the comfort of their homes. The Utah festival went online in 2021 due to the pandemic. Post-pandemic, every edition so far has retained the virtual component as a supplement to the in-person festivities. Besides press, the streaming portal was also open to anyone in the US with a good data plan or a WiFi connection. Be it a film lover in Baltimore or a far-flung journo in Bangalore, either could watch competition titles on a laptop or TV. Now, the organisers find themselves in a bit of a pickle: to keep or lose at-home screenings. Piracy may have jeopardised the future of an online Sundance.
Covering Sundance remotely may have flattened the annual shindig of indie films in the pristine ski resort town of Park City into a continuum of the work-from-home experience. There is no waiting in lines in sub-zero temperatures. No interfacing with fellow attendees. No sight of snow-capped mountains and frozen aspens. Just a hardcore marathon of films. But for those who can’t afford to make the trip every year, an online Sundance presents the only opportunity to engage with the work of emerging filmmakers before it is polluted by the vagaries of discourse and distribution. How the next edition will shape up is as yet unclear.
The line-up this year was heavy with stories of stifled desire, of anger against subjugation, and of resilience in the face of illness, grief and loneliness. Sundance remains a mecca for first-time filmmakers looking for greater exposure or a boost to make the studio leap. If there was one debut that united critics in a chorus of huzzahs, it was Sorry, Baby. Eva Victor pulls triple duty as writer, director and star in a breakout feature about a literature grad-turned-academic coming to terms with her sexual assault. The elasticity of cinematic time allows for a bold excavation of trauma’s ripple effects: how a gross violation of trust leaves Agnes struggling to move forward. Chapters jump backward and forward to map the disruptive imprint it leaves on her. It takes the support of best friend Lydia (Naomi Ackie) and caring for a kitten for Agnes to find the strength and hope to start a journey towards healing. Victor’s film surprises us with its wry candour. The harrowing subject matter doesn’t stop her from sneaking in moments of laughter. It is a film written with such depth, sensitivity and intelligence it supplied the rare excitement of a fresh cinematic voice emerging fully formed.
Queer desire wrestles to be free of its cage in Rohan Parashuram Kanawade’s debut Marathi feature Sabar Bonda(Cactus Pears). Homecoming takes a recognisable form when 30-something Mumbaikar Anand (Bhushaan Manoj) returns to his ancestral village for a 10-day mourning period after the death of his father. The mourning is frequently interrupted by family members besieging him with intrusive questions about why he isn’t married yet. The only respite comes when he is out with childhood friend and fellow bachelor Balya (Suraaj Suman). Sparks fly as the two reconnect away from prying eyes. This delicate meditation on loss opens up over its runtime into an affecting study into acceptance. Kanawade renders a bond charged by the secretive, the unspoken, the bottled up with an extraordinary tactility. Desire is distilled through touch, be it when Balya runs his fingers through Anand’s curly hair or the two hold hands. Manoj and Suman build an atmosphere of tenderness so achingly believable, while still aware of the rigid norms that prevent the “khaas mitra” from pursuing a relationship openly.
Train Dreams is the kind of earthly, intimate, pensive drama that feels so out of step with most offerings today it feels like discovering an artefact. Director Clint Bentley renders Denis Johnson’s novella into a beautifully composed elegy in a soulful minor key. The film locates the unglorified role of an itinerant day labourer in the epic tale of America’s 20th century transformation. Robert Granier (Joel Edgerton) goes from working as a railroad builder to a logger to a freight hauler. In between, he falls in love, starts a family, and loses his family and home to a wildfire. Bentley accounts the personal losses suffered in service of building modern America, pitting civilisation against untameable nature. Violence here is casual, sometimes racial. A Chinese co-worker is dragged and thrown off a bridge. Not being able to do anything about it haunts Granier. Guilt and grief manifest as ghosts. Edgerton gives acute expression to Granier’s sorrow, allowing the entire topography of his face to absorb the pain of a lonely soul bruised by the matter-of-fact cruelty of the world yet still captivated by the natural beauty it holds. The film owes much of its power to his staggering lead performance, a model of restraint and near-silence.
Another festival high point was Alireza Khatami’s The Things You Kill. The Turkish feature finds university professor Ali (Ekin Koç) in a free fall after the suspicious death of his ailing mother coupled with the discovery of his infertility. Convinced his abusive father (Ercan Kesal) had something to do with her death, Ali seeks the help of his gardener (Erkan Kolçak Köstendil) to enact his retribution. Once the mystery takes on the contours of a surreal psychodrama, a clever interrogation into wounded masculinity erupts to the fore. Men would rather channel their resentment, their pain, their feelings of emasculation into unhealthy outlets like vengeance quests than go to therapy and break the intergenerational chain of violence.
Not for the first time at Sundance, the documentary category felt stronger than the dramatic. Sara Khaki and Mohammadreza Eyni’s Cutting Through Rocks is a rousing profile of Sara Shahverdi, a 37-year-old, strong-willed midwife-turned-motor-cycle riding nonconformist who became the first councilwoman in her remote Iranian village after a landslide victory. Sara uses her elected position to empower the women of her village: lobbying wives and husbands to share ownership of their homes, inspiring young girls to stay in school, teaching them to ride bikes and end child marriages. But the more she attempts to make a difference, the more resistance and humiliation she faces from the male council members and the state bureaucracy. Sara’s campaign is a testament to her courage, the pushback to it an indictment of the Iranian regime’s punishing grip.
On June 2, 2023, a two-year neighbourhood feud culminated in a violent confrontation when Susan Lorincz, a 58-year-old white woman, shot Ajike Owens, a 35-year-old single Black mother of four, through a locked door in Ocala, Florida. Geeta Gandbhir’s The Perfect Neighbour presents a searing look at the disagreements, the threats and the police interventions leading up to the tragedy. The film opens on the night of the shooting as 911 calls dispatch first responders to the scene. Gandbhir telegraphs her intent by letting us know a woman has been shot. But she keeps the details indistinct to help us understand how tensions could have escalated to such a point. Sifting through police body cam footage, she stitches together a portrait of a community disrupted by a fermenting conflict. Month after month, Lorincz calls the cops on the kids playing in the field near her rental, describing them as a nuisance. The disputes start off minor. Living amongst mostly Black families, this middle-aged white woman grows more paranoid, more unreasonable, more hostile. The consequent fatality stokes an urgent scrutiny of police inaction, Florida’s “stand your ground laws” and a justice system that allows for such loopholes. The interrogation room CCTV footage following Lorincz’s arrest reveals how white fear can be weaponised to evade accountability. Lorincz was a resentful white woman who convinced herself a bunch of Black children playing close to her home somehow made her afraid for her life. But reports of the racial slurs she screamed, the threats she made, the roller skate she threw at one of the children, all suggest a case of white anger being confused for white fear.
BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions was the standout title in the Next section, a sidebar for more off-kilter visions. Scholar WEB Du Bois’s dream project to collate an encyclopaedia encompassing the African diaspora powers Kahlil Joseph’s experimental joint. Archival footage, memes, interviews with the poet Wole Soyinka, conversations with scholars Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten, a dramatization of Du Bois’s last days, the work of Ghanaian investigative journalist Anas, scenes from Garrett Bradley’s Time, the record store scene in Godard’s Vivre sa vie repurposed with a Wu-Tang Clan request – all find a place in this freewheeling collage of Black history. The aim here isn’t to capture the totality of lived experience. No film can. Joseph’s omnivorous approach is meant to help viewers engage with a variegated and mobile culture. To that end, he brings us on board an Afrofuturist cruise liner that shuttles between continents and generations, while sailing a slipstream of Black art, history, memory and legacy. BLKNWS is a dynamic piece, anarchic even, but the kind of bold work you only discover at a festival like Sundance.
Prahlad Srihari is a film and pop culture writer. He lives in Bangalore.