We packed in every film we could in the final hours of Sundance 2021 with a variety of award winners in the mix. Here are the hits and misses.
Hits:
Sabaya is a pure wow of a documentary with unbelievable imbedded footage from the harrowing rescues of kidnapped Yazidi girls from the hands of the Daesh terrorists, who abused and sold them as sex slaves. Brave, poignant, riveting, Hogir Hirori’s film is a powerhouse, more than deserving of the World Cinema Documentary Award for directing.
Luzzu: Winner of a Special Jury Award for acting. Filmed and set in Malta, which has not had an entry at Sundance previously, director Alex Camilleri’s debut project tells the story of Jesmark, a fisherman and new father, as he tries to earn a living in a market controlled by EU regulations. Giving up the open sea, his passion, is a sacrifice – and the film aches with longing for a no longer viable way of life.
The World to Come: From the festival’s Spotlight selections, this well-acted drama of thwarted lesbian love is moving, aesthetically deliberate, and absorbing. Set in the frontier era, the rugged setting and sense of loss is punctuated by bursts of too-short pleasure. Mona Fastvold’s short-story-based film is quietly tragic and extremely well acted, but does not break any new ground.
Cusp: Some things never change? Women are still prey to a patriarchal society, this one in modern day Texas. Winner of the special jury award for emerging filmmaker, this intimate documentary follows a summer in the lives of teens Autumn, Brittney, and Aaloni and their families. The directors, Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt, offer an absorbing and deeply intimate view of the girls as they navigate fraught family lives and the older boys they date and party with, as well as a history of abuse. Their fast food eating and beer drinking social life is quite a contrast with the young women in Sabaya, and yet there are some parallels.
Documentary top prize winner Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a joyous compilation packed with terrific music, presenting primarily archival material about the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, forgotten amid the Woodstock hype from the same year, and very likely due to systemic racism. The festival was not just a musical event, it was truly a celebration of black culture, and a galvanizing social event. Current-time interviews and political commentary contribute to a balanced, smart film.
Misses:
On the Count of Three, award recipient for screenwriting, just didn’t work for me. The story of two suicidal friends veered through a roller coaster of a day; the beginning of which was far more compelling than its conclusion. Darkly comic, director Jerrod Carmichael’s film has its moments, but ultimately went nowhere.
Already sold to Magnolia, the uniquely animated Cryptozoo gives us a fanatical animal world and some awesome creatures, but not much else. Random violence from the beginning was off-putting. Dash Shaw’s film was four years in the making, and certainly lovely to look at, but similar to the old saying about black olives, probably just not to everyone’s taste – at least not to mine.
And that’s a wrap for Sundance 2021, virtual edition, where pandemic life, racial inequality, and a color palette of pink (The Pink Cloud, Strawberry Mansions, Blazing World, and Eight for Silver all exhibited memorable moments awash in this shade) stood out thematically.
- Genie Davis; photos provided by Sundance Institute