Can it really be the festival’s final year in Park City, Utah? Braced as we are for nostalgia at every world premiere in the Eccles or every late night spent at the Library with a cup of chili, Sundance should supply plenty of newness. Below, find our picks for 10 movies to prioritize. We’ve either seen these already or have it on good authority that your time won’t be wasted.
‘The Best Summer’
You know the Instagram meme where people say they don’t want a new year; they’ll take a gently used 1995 instead, accompanied by a photo of them in high school, stovepipe jeans and all? That hit of nostalgia is what I hope “The Best Summer” from director Tamra Davis (“Billy Madison” “Crossroads,” “Half Baked”) will deliver. The documentary promises never-before-seen concert footage, backstage banter and interviews on tour from the Summersault festival in Australia in 1995. At the time, Davis was recently wed to Mike D of the Beastie Boys, among the artists on the bill. It also features some of the biggest alternative rock artists of the era, including Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, the Amps and Bikini Kill. Even more poignant, the footage was discovered as Davis evacuated her Malibu home in the Palisades fire last January. — Vanessa Franko
‘The Disciple’
Wu-Tang Clan is one of the most influential rap groups ever. The collective also recorded one of the most exclusive albums ever, 2015’s “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin.” Recorded in secret, the lone copy of the 31-track double album sold for millions at auction — to “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. In “The Disciple,” Oscar-winning director Joanna Natasegara (“The White Helmets”) dives into the story of Cilvaringz, the Dutch-Moroccan producer and rapper who has a decades-long history with the Wu-Tang Clan and ultimately conceptualized and produced the mysterious album. The story itself is compelling but the possibility of hearing a snippet of the secretive music is even more so. — V.F.
‘Hanging by a Wire’
This sounds like a perfect piece of programming for a ski town that becomes a film festival for a week — sort of like if Cannes were ever to book a movie called “The Killer Croissant.” (Anyone heading to Deer Valley for a drink afterward should take the lift up the mountainside.) The documentary itself, about a real-life Himalayan cable-car mishap in northern Pakistan that left eight people dangling for hours, sounds like my kind of thriller, bolstered by re-enactments with some of the actual participants (why would you ever agree to that?), drone footage, catty infighting and heroic rescue attempts. Fun fact: There’s a TV movie from 1979 starring Patty Duke that has this same scenario and a very similar title. But because an award-winning documentarian is making this one (director Mohammed Ali Naqvi), you can expect the terror to be upped significantly. — Joshua Rothkopf
‘The History of Concrete’
Nine years ago, the documentarian John Wilson came to Sundance to shoot a six-minute short called “Escape From Park City,” satirizing a film festival he didn’t think would ever let him in. That snippet of anthropological absurdism mutated into the brain-melting TV show “How to With John Wilson,” and now, the Emmy-nominated prankster-humanist has a feature playing on opening night. “The History of Concrete” is about the history of concrete — he’s not kidding about that — but as ever, his expedition whizzes the audience from one unexpected pit stop to another. A pilgrimage to the oldest concrete road in America detours to meeting a descendant of the undertaker who embalmed Chef Boyardee. Wilson’s free-wheeling curiosity will leave you noticing things like the patterns in discarded sidewalk chewing gum. The audience must connect the dots, but I think he’s mourning our country’s crumbled civic and cultural infrastructure while encouraging artists to be the weeds that sprout from the cracks. — Amy Nicholson
‘The Incomer’
Domhnall Gleeson made his name in films like “Ex Machina” and “The Revenant” and as snippy General Hux in the “Star Wars” movies. Suddenly, he’s pivoting to laughs, and he’s pretty great as the toilet-tissue-salesman-turned-newspaper-editor in “The Paper” a spinoff of the beloved sitcom “The Office.” Louis Paxton’s “The Incomer” casts Gleeson as a Scottish government official assigned to bring mainland culture — i.e., guacamole and web-surfing — to two isolated, suspicious islanders, a pair of siblings played by Grant O’Rourke and Gayle Rankin (“House of the Dragon”). Imagine a 21st century take on Margaret Mead befriending Samoans, only with cozy knit sweaters and a dash of animation. Buzz has it that this British comedy is as strange, lovely, droll and surprising as last year’s Sundance premiere “The Ballad of Wallis Island,” a movie I’ve been raving about ever since. — A.N.
‘I Want Your Sex’
For Sundance’s final gathering in Park City, it’s fitting that there should be a new movie from a filmmaker that embodies the rebellious, rule-breaking spirit of the festival as few have. Gregg Araki, who has been pushing boundaries for nearly 40 years, returns with his new “I Want Your Sex,” which is sure to get people talking with its mashup of comedy and the erotic thriller. (Araki’s devastating 2004 drama “Mysterious Skin” is also getting a retrospective screening at the festival.) A provocative artist (Olivia Wilde) begins a kinky affair with her younger assistant (Cooper Hoffman) as their uneven power dynamic has dangerous consequences for them both. With Araki’s trademark mix of sex and satire and a knowingly pop-attuned sensibility — Charli XCX has a small role — the film brings a blast of danger and recklessness, showing that maturity doesn’t need to mean playing it safe. — Mark Olsen
‘Josephine’
An 8-year-old girl witnesses a violent crime in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, setting off a powerful, unpredictable chain of events. As the girl (a riveting Mason Reeves) begins to process what she saw and what it all could mean, she begins acting out in haunting, unexpected ways, her parents (Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum) struggling with how best to help her through it. Inspired by an incident from writer-director Beth de Araújo’s childhood, the project predates her debut feature, the 2022 single-take thriller “Soft & Quiet,” but has only now been completed. Attuned to the nuts-and-bolt details of the legal system surrounding children, the film is emotionally sensitive and psychologically insightful to the fallout of dealing with something well beyond one’s experience, understanding or maturity. — M.O.
‘Once Upon a Time in Harlem’
Both a discovery and a reemergence, “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” is like a time machine moving in multiple directions at once. In 1972, filmmaker William Greaves reconvened a group of artists and luminaries from the Harlem Renaissance including musicians, playwrights, poets and scholars at Duke Ellington’s townhouse for an afternoon of reminiscing and rumination. Greaves was unable to complete the film before his death in 2014 and it was Greaves’ son David, a cameraman on the day, who eventually returned to the footage to see it to fruition. The result is at once a tribute to a fleeting moment and a consideration of a more enduring legacy, at times painful, elsewhere joyous. At a moment when cultural histories are being rewritten or erased, stepping back some 50 years to revisit events even decades earlier creates a genuine bridge across time. — M.O.
‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’
No one wants to resuscitate crime in Manhattan but you can’t blame John Turturro’s petty thief if he’s nostalgic for an era when wallets still held cash. How’s he going to steal some rich schmuck’s Bitcoin? He doesn’t even own a cellphone. “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York’s” retro cinematography and funky soul score nod to ’70s New York, yet what most seems to motivate writer-director Noah Segan is seeing if the old ways of doing things still have legs — be they watch-stealing or filmmaking. Turturro is exactly the right actor to play an aging hustler in a cast rounded out by Steve Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito. (Their own history with him dates back to “Miller’s Crossing” and “Do the Right Thing.”) So it’s a major compliment to rising talent Will Price that he’s guilty of some scene-stealing as a snotty young gangster scion who wants the mob to explore its “non-fungible options.” — A.N.
‘Undertone’
For me, Sundance will always be a place of major horror discoveries: “The Babadook,” “The Witch,” “Hereditary,” the recent “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” (of course it’s a horror movie, don’t fool yourself). This Canadian export written and directed by Ian Tuason already debuted at last summer’s Fantasia International Film Festival and is preceded by strong word of mouth — the best kind, from people who tell me they don’t want to watch it at midnight and then go back to chilly condos. Like the most lingering genre work, it’s predominantly reliant (I hear) on sound design, as a podcaster with a paranormal bent (Nina Kiri) gets a little too close to the flame. Mysterious recordings play a part. Nothing will keep me away from this one, even if that condo is a bit chilly at 3 in the morning. — J.R.
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