Sundance 2023

For many indie filmmakers, the return of the Sundance film festival, marks the highlight of their cinematic year. With its championing of the best in independent filmmaking, the festival’s selections often shine a light on cinematic gems, which are overlooked by other festivals. This year’s edition is no exception as the festival returns with a dazzling array of features, documentaries and shorts. Many, but not all, of the films premiering in this year’s festival are available to journalists online who are unable to attend in person. Of those, which were available however, below are my personal favourites.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there have been several films, which have documented that country’s assault on its peaceful neighbour. None though are as powerful as Ukrainian filmmaker and journalist Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol. Filmed with the help of fellow journalists, Evgeniy Maloletka and Vasilisa Stepanenko, during the first twenty days of Russia’s assault on the city this documentary clearly shows the insanity of Putin’s war. At the onset of Russia’s invasion of Mariupol, the three journalists took a collective decision not to evacuate from the city along with many other citizens but to remain behind to document the mounting atrocities. They thought that they could provide a reliable record of what happened, a record, which was important for the international community to have in order to combat Russian propaganda. The footage they captured is harrowing and clearly shows attacks on civilian areas, something which at the time, was repeatedly denied by the Russian press. Specifically, it was their footage, which showed the bombing of the city’s maternity hospital, and their interviews in its aftermath are hard to watch since you see the devastating effect that specific attack had. With both patients and babies lost to the bombing, we also see the cumulative psychological effect the assault was having on the city’s medical staff. Of all the documentaries, I have seen so far, this single film is the strongest indictment of Russia, and clearly refutes its stated aims. 20 Days in Mariupol illustrates that this war was never about Russia’s professed desire to protect its borders; it was always a war about fulfilling the personal ambitions of one man, Vladimir Putin; a leader whose sole aim is to acquire Ukraine’s natural resources and recreate the Soviet empire. He hopes in the process to destroy the will of the Ukrainian people. Despite the huge cost Ukrainians have so far paid, these aims remain a year on, still unfulfilled.

Pretty Baby: Brook Shields covers much of the same territory as last year’s The Most Beautiful Boy in the World. A film which looked, at the devastating effect fame can have on child actors. In that film’s case, the child actor was Björn Andrésen who co-starred with Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s Death in Venice, he never found his way back to a normal life and today cuts a truly tragic figure. But here Brook Shields emerges, in this documentary as very much a survivor. Despite being born to an alcoholic mother whose desire for her daughter’s fame overrode any protective maternal instincts she may have had. A mother who pushed Shields to appear at a staggeringly young age in films and commercials, which presented her as a sexualised presence. Shields today is a Princeton graduate and emerges here as a powerful advocate for women’s rights, particularly those who have suffered from postpartum depression; an issue, which bizarrely briefly caught the attention of Tom Cruise. After the birth of Shield’s first daughter, she publicly admitted to experiencing severe postpartum depression and only found her way through it once she sought medical help. That help included taking anti-depressants. Cruise though called her use of antidepressants, with no medical experience to draw upon, somehow irresponsible. Cruise’s extraordinarily comments at the time, went a long way to highlighting the general misogyny Shields was often up against throughout much of her working life. Fortunately, by this point she had found her voice and in response to Cruise’s comments wrote a devastating Op Ed in the New York Times, suggesting that perhaps Cruise should stick to fighting aliens. He apologized a year later. Pretty Baby: Brook Shields is a powerful testament to one woman’s survival.

Saim Sadiq’s Joyland is an extraordinary feature, set in the Pakistani capital of Lahore and can boost of having Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai as its executive producer. The film is a beautiful and unexpected portrait of its central character, Haider’s, search for his sexual identity. Haider lives a quiet uneventful life in a multigenerational middle-class household. Content to look after his brother’s children and fulfilling his housekeeping duties while his more outgoing, professional wife supports them. It’s a situation the couple are content with, but Haider’s father is not and he orders him to find a job. Haider does so, but the only one he can find is as a dancer to a rising transgender singing star. It’s not long before Haider develops an enormous crush on his new boss but his strong feelings for her only serve to highlight what is missing in his own home. Haider though is not the only one who is unhappy in this household, his wife too starts to feel increasingly trapped in the house’s claustrophobic environment. Joyland is in many ways an ironic title, since the film is anything but joyful, it highlights how a socially conservative environment can go a long way to destroying people’s lives.

^{Teyana Taylor and Aaron Kingsley appear in a still from A Thousand and One by A.V. Rockwell, an official selection of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Focus Features}

As the woman fights to create a home for the child, we see the backdrop to her life, the unrelenting gentrification which took place in New York in the nineties and early two thousand’s. A gentrification, which pushed those who lived in the city on low incomes even further to its fringes, away from safe neighbourhoods, good schools and habitable homes, onto the outskirts of city. This film could so easily have been relegated to the category of message of the week but what emerges here is an extraordinarily portrait of a mother’s love for the child she is caring for. A love, which survives despite all the odds stacked against her.

Little Richard: I am Everything is a joyful tribute to one of the world’s most extraordinary musicians. Lisa Cortes’s wonderful documentary goes a long way to setting the record straight in terms of rock music history. Little Richard is seen by many as the true king of rock and roll. Mick Jagger who is interviewed here is quite clear in pointing out that it was Little Richard who perhaps influenced his own career the most and the huge legacy he left behind. Little Richard wrote several of rock music’s classics, giving performances which were extraordinary, all while being openly gay at a time when homosexuality was illegal, and Jim Crow segregation laws in the south were still very much in force. Little Richard didn’t simply open the doors which were bolted shut against him, he knocked them down and in doing so he introduced rock music to an entire generation. Because Little Richard’s music was so infectious, it helped to integrate the clubs he played in since the teenagers loved it so much, they eventually refused to come on separate nights and were often found dancing together. The film is a real celebration of an extraordinary artist.

With the events taking place on the streets of Iran, two films in the festival highlight the changing roles of Iranian women. Shadya is a moving portrait of an Iranian expat, courageously walking out on an abusive relationship in Australia with her daughter and by doing so, hoping to forge a new life. Not an easy task, since many in the Iranian expat community there disapprove of her actions or any woman daring to leave their husband, even a violent one. Zar Amir Ebrahimiaii’s central character has to try to carve out a new life all the while fearing that her violent former spouse might kidnap their daughter and take her forcibly back to Iran. Shadya is a brave autobiographical account of one woman refusing to be shamed into remaining in an abusive relationship, a woman who hopes that ‘by her breaking free’ she can forge a new life for both herself and her daughter.

The Persian Version, also presents an expat Iranian family, this one living in New York. The tone is radically different though as this family’s issues are not those of male dominance but rather the distant relationship between an Uber ambitious mother and her lesbian filmmaking daughter. The daughter just knows there is a family secret, which has been hidden from her, and once she becomes pregnant after an accidental one-night stand, she becomes determined to find out exactly what that secret is. Both these films place complex and multifaceted Iranian women, at their centre and interestingly, both were made by Iranian female directors drawing on their own life experiences.

Twice Colonised is another outstanding film, a documentary which looks at the work of renowned Greenlandic Inuit lawyer and activist Aaju Peter. The film highlights her fight to defend the human rights of Indigenous peoples of the Arctic and her struggle to protect the ancestral lands of her native community. Aaju Peter works to bring her country’s colonizers in both Canada and Denmark to justice. Throughout we see her unflagging spirit despite the unexpected loss of her son to suicide. His death mirroring the predicament of so many young indigenous people.

And my special mentions would be The Stroll an absorbing documentary which looks at the meatpacking district in New York where transgendered female sex workers worked in the eighties and nineties. This documentary tells their stories and perhaps what’s so refreshing about it, is that its co- director Kristen Lovell worked alongside many of those who she interviews here, making this feel less like an observational documentary and much more like a conversation with friends.

My other special mentions would be Will You Look at Me, a beautiful short in which Queer Chinese filmmaker Shuli Huang has a long overdue conversation with his homophobic mother. What begins as a painful confrontation transforms into something else, a beautiful portrait of acceptance.

And finally, the adorable and very funny, short Troy, directed by theatre turned film director Mike Donahue. Troy tells the story of a couple who have the misfortune of living next door to a neighbour who has frequent noisy sex, so noisy in fact that it becomes the soundtrack of their lives. The film highlights their desperate struggle to somehow maintain both their sanity and their own relationship in the wake of it. A beautifully observed film, which many who live in ever more crowded apartment blocks can relate to.