Today the non-profit Sundance Institute announced the 82 films, eight episodic titles, and a New Frontier interactive experience selected for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival will take place January 18–28, 2024, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online nationwide from January 25–28, 2024. This year marks the 40th edition of the Festival, bringing together audiences in Utah and beyond to celebrate Sundance’s rich history of supporting engaging new stories and groundbreaking independent artists.
Fair Play, Nanny, CODA, Passing, Minari, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, The Farewell, Clemency, Eighth Grade, and Sorry to Bother You have been some of the acclaimed titles that have premiered at Sundance in previous years, certifying the festival’s keen eye for fostering unique talent that often earns a universal response.
“From the first edition in 1985, Sundance Film Festival has aimed to provide a space to gather, celebrate, and engage with risk-taking artists that are committed to bringing their independent visions to audiences — the Festival remains true to that goal to this day,” said Robert Redford, Sundance Institute Founder and President. “It continues to evolve, but its legacy of showcasing bold work that starts necessary conversations continues with the 2024 program.”
“The Institute takes great pride in the role the Festival plays in advancing our mission to support artists creating audacious work,” said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO. “This year is especially significant as we look back on our history of showcasing stories that surprise and delight, spark empathy and reflection, and honour our shared humanity. We’re all thrilled for this opportunity to celebrate the power of storytelling as we gather in January to introduce captivating works from acclaimed filmmakers and discover more new voices.”
“Sundance’s passion and power shines through its programming. Curation is Sundance’s secret sauce and we’re energized by the range of films, stories, and artists we’ve watched and selected from around the world,” said Eugene Hernandez, Director, Sundance Film Festival and Public Programming. “This Festival has had a vital history of first impressions: introductions to new talent, new friends, new worlds — our commitment to our artists and our audiences is fundamental to our work. Our programming team, lead by Kim Yutani, has curated 11 days of exciting new voices and stories for the many audiences we serve whether they’re joining us in Utah or experiencing the Festival offerings from afar. Sundance 2024 will be a special year for discovery and community.”
“While we don’t set out to program the Festival with a defined theme in mind, it became apparent this year that our slate’s biggest strength is how it showcases the vitality of independent storytelling,” said Yutani, Sundance Film Festival Director of Programming. “Our program is tightly curated and covers a broad cross section of form, perspective, and genre that we’re looking forward to sharing with audiences. These titles are inventive and they beautifully represent the kind of groundbreaking work we’ve sought to amplify at Sundance throughout our history.”
The full slate of works announced today includes 82 feature-length films representing 24 countries. The 2024 program is composed of 40 of 101 (40%) feature film directors who are first-time feature filmmakers, and 11 of the feature films and projects announced today were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs.
Some of the films premiering this year in the U.S. Dramatic Competition field include A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg‘s sophomore feature as a writer/director (following his debut at last year’s festival with When You Finish Saving the World) about mismatched cousins (Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who reunite for a tour through Poland to honour their beloved grandmother; Good One, an intimate feature about a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills and the 17-year-old at the centre contending with the competing egos of her father and his oldest friend; and Ponyboi, a bombastic, edgy, and campy roller-coaster ride of a film that flips the script on the LGBTQIA+ return home tale and the classic Jersey mobster saga.
The Premiere collection will feature such bold titles as the Pedro Pascal-starring Freaky Tales, a mind-blowing mixtape and joyful ode to the ’80s that imaginatively fuses styles and cinematic influences with giddy abandon, yielding a pastiche of pulp, pop, comic books, anthology horror, Old Testament wrath, and kung fu by way of a bloody crescendo that leaves no appendage unsevered; the Christopher Reeve documentary Super/Man, which reveals how the actor went from unknown actor to iconic movie star as the ultimate screen superhero; and Steven Soderbergh‘s Presence, a simple-premised thriller about a family that moves into a suburban house and becomes convinced they’re not alone that reifies the director’s status as an icon of American independent film.
Families get their own focus this year alongside the returning Midnight and Documentary Competitions, with 10 Lives and Out of My Mind. The animated 10 Lives, featuring an all-star voice cast of Zayn Malik, Bill Nighy and Sophie Okonedo, is perfect all-ages viewing as it follows a pampered cat who loses his ninth life and is sent on a transformative journey when fate intervenes, whilst Out of My Mind will warm your heart and jerk your tears as it presents a sincere experience of teenage girlhood through the lenses of disability and belonging.
The Midnight section, which celebrates the more thrilling entrants of cinema, has everything from slashers and political comedies to ghost stories, with Australia earning a spot with the terrifying The Moogai, which comes from the producers of The Babadook and 2023’s Sundance success Talk To Me; Adapted from Jon Bell‘s award-winning short, The Moogai draws from Indigenous lore for a thematically rich supernatural tale that quickly establishes the lurking menace of a child-stealing spirit. Genre favourites Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead) and Melissa Barrera (Scream VI) maintain their hold on the macabre with, respectively, Krazy House and Your Monster. Krazy House, the hotly anticipated English-language debut from Dutch directing duo Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil (New Kids), no one is spared when Russian workers in a suburban house turn out to be wanted criminals, leaving the father figure to man up and save his ’90s sitcom family, whilst Your Monster sees filmmaker Caroline Lindy inviting us into the wondrous and dazzling world of her debut feature, a genre-defying monster mash that’s equal parts twisted and romantic with a dash of musical whimsy.
The Documentary Competition (U.S.) section will shed light on the ideas shaping culture today, telling the true stories of events and public figures, like Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (FRIDA), Bronx rapper Kemba (As We Speak), and four young girls as they get ready for a father-daughter dance with their incarcerated fathers (Daughters), with the World Cinema Documentary Competition bringing 10 important narratives from around the globe to the forefront, from stories centred on climate change to activists challenging the status quo.
For more information on the full program, head to the official Sundance site. In-person and online ticket packages and passes are currently on sale; individual ticket sales begin January 11. The 40th edition of the Festival will take place January 18–28, 2024, in person in Park City and Salt Lake City, with a selection of titles available online nationwide from January 25–28, 2024.
