Category Archives: Recommendations

The winners of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival were announced on Friday. A list of the feature awards follows:

US Documentary Competition Awards:

World Cinema Documentary Competition Awards:

US Dramatic Competition Awards:

World Cinema Dramatic Competition Awards:

NEXT Awards:

Festival Favorite:

THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK
Set in San Francisco in the 1970s, THE TIMES OF HARVEY MILK tells of the extraordinary rise to power of a long-haired, gay camera store owner from the Castro District who became one of the city’s most colorful and influential elected officials, as well as one of the decade’s most prominent leaders of the LGBTQ+ rights movement — that is, until he was shot and killed at City Hall by former police officer and fellow supervisor Dan White. Harvey Milk’s journey to that fateful day is recounted brilliantly through the course of the film.

Director/Producer:
Rob Epstein

Producer:
Richard Schmiechen

Festival Section:
40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events

More Info:
This Oscar-winning doc screened at the 1985 Sundance Film Festival, where it won Special Jury Prize (Documentary). As part of this year’s special 40th Edition Celebration, it returns to the Festival in a recently digitally restored version.

Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

DIG! XX
DIG! XX tracks the tumultuous rise of two talented musicians, Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols, and dissects their star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry. Through their loves and obsessions, gigs and recordings, arrests and death threats, uppers and downers, and ultimately to their chance at a piece of the profit-driven music business, they stage a self-proclaimed revolution in the music industry.

Director/Producer:
Ondi Timoner

Producer:
David Timoner

Festival Section:
40th Edition Celebration Screenings and Events

More Info:
DIG! XX screens in a newly re-edited and expanded form, 20 years after winning the Grand Jury Prize in the US Documentary Competition.

Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

ENO
Visionary musician and artist Brian Eno — known for producing David Bowie, U2, Talking Heads, among many others; pioneering the genre of ambient music; and releasing over 40 solo and collaboration albums — reveals his creative processes in this groundbreaking generative documentary: a film that’s different every time it’s shown.

Director/Producer:
Gary Hustwit

Producer:
Jessica Edwards

Festival Section:
New Frontier

More Info:
Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

BEING (THE DIGITAL GRIOT)
In this innovative participatory experience, Being, an artificial intelligence digital griot, asks the audience to engage in unifying and challenging discussions. It features a soundscape and movement informed by a dataset from Black communities, theorists, poets, and activists, including bell hooks, Paulo Freire, Dazié Grego-Sykes, and Cornel West.

Lead Artist:
Rashaad Newsome

Producer:
Johnny Symons

Festival Section:
New Frontier

More Info:
Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

WAR GAME
A bipartisan group of US defense, intelligence, and elected policymakers spanning five presidential administrations participate in an unscripted role-play exercise in which they confront a political coup backed by rogue members of the US military, in the wake of a contested presidential election.

Director/Producer:
Jesse Moss

Director:
Tony Gerber

Producers:
Todd Lubin, Jack Turner, Mark DiCristofaro, Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker

Festival Section:
Special Screenings

More Info:
This is the second of two films from Moss in this year’s Festival, following GIRLS STATE; his previous Sundance films were BOYS STATE and THE OVERNIGHTERS. Gerber is also an alumni with the doc feature THE NOTORIOUS MR BOUT, as well as the fiction feature SIDE STREETS and fiction short SMALL TASTE OF HEAVEN.

Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

THE GREATEST NIGHT IN POP
In 1985, 46 music icons, including Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Cyndi Lauper, Diana Ross, and Stevie Wonder, came together for the most star-studded recording session in history. This is the untold story of the legendary global pop song “We Are the World” — which very nearly didn’t happen.

Director:
Bao Nguyen

Producers:
Julia Nottingham, Lionel Richie, Bruce Eskowitz, Larry Klein, Harriet Sternberg, George Hencken

Festival Section:
Special Screenings

More Info:
Nguyen was previously at Sundance with BE WATER.

Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES
On a handmade set re-creating her Casablanca neighborhood, a young Moroccan filmmaker enlists family and friends to help unearth the troubling lies built into her childhood.

Director/Producer:
Asmae El Moudir

Festival Section:
Spotlight

More Info:
Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

THE SYNANON FIX
Exploring the rise and fall of the Synanon organization — through the eyes of the members who lived it — from its early days as a groundbreaking drug rehabilitation program to its later descent into what many consider a cult.

Director/Producer:
Rory Kennedy

Executive Producers:
Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, Tina Nguyen

Producers:
Mark Bailey, Alexandra Korba, Keven Mcalester

Festival Section:
Episodic

More Info:
Kennedy has brought six of her previous documentary features to the Festival, including AMERICAN HOLLOW, DOWNFALL: THE CASE AGAINST BOEING, and the Oscar-nominated LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM, as well as her doc short THE FENCE.

Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.

LOLLA: THE STORY OF LOLLAPALOOZA
In the summer of ’91, the Lollapalooza music festival was born. What started as a farewell tour for the band Jane’s Addiction rose from the underground to launch a cultural movement and change music forever.

Director/Producer:
Michael John Warren

Producers:
James Lee Hernandez, Brian Lazarte, Brian Levy, Mat Whittington, Daniel Gibbs, Bruce Gillmer, Amanda Culkowski, Perry Farrell, Charlie Walker, Charles Attal, Berkeley Reinhold

Festival Section:
Episodic

More Info:
Check out the Sundance website for more details, including screening info, by clicking on the film title above.