With a packed schedule of 90 feature-length films from around the world, the 41st annual Sundance Film Festival gets underway in Park City, Utah, on Thursday. During the festival, which runs through February 2, each movie will also be shown at least once in neighboring Salt Lake City.
With 15 dramatic and documentary films on its dynamic and generally positive schedule, Sundance, which has long been at the forefront of breaking the best and most daring in LGBTQ filmmaking, will deliver the goods once more.
According to Sundance programmer Ash Hoyle, the list is very joyous. The tone this year is overwhelmingly positive and celebratory, but sometimes the gay community is so adept at examining and recording our own histories and hardships, and that’s undoubtedly at play with many of these as well.
Bowen Yang co-stars with Lily Gladstone in a recreation of the 1993 homosexual hit The Wedding Banquet, while Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna feature in an opulent musical adaptation of the 1985 queer classic Kiss of the Spider Woman.
A number of returning Sundance filmmakers and LGBTQ crowd favorites, including as Elegance Bratton (Move Ya Body: The Birth of House), Zackary Drucker (Heightened Scrutiny), and Ira Sachs (Peter Hujar’s Day), will also present their most recent films.
Several of the year’s most renowned LGBTQ films were screened at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, including Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow, which was nominated for nine Dorian Awards by the Society of LGBTQ+ Entertainment Critics, or GALECA.
Kim Yutani, director of programming at Sundance, said, “I think this shows how audiences are craving something different and films that are breaking the mold and filmmakers like Jane who are willing to take risks in their work.”
Thankfully, over half of this year’s LGBTQ films will also be accessible for ticketed online viewing beginning on January 30 for those who are unable to attend the festival.
The LGBTQ features that will debut this year are as follows:
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Jimpa
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Sophie Hyde’s most recent film will kick off the festival on Day One, Yutani stated. She has a lot of films at the festival, including Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, but this one feels the most intimate because it examines relationships across generations and features an Olivia Colman character who is a filmmaker. One of the primary performers is Aud Mason-Hyde, Sophie’s own child, which gives the drama an additional level of intimacy. It’s a highly entertaining movie that takes place in Amsterdam and features John Lithgow in a way that you have never seen him before.
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Heightened Scrutiny
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According to Hoyle, Sam Feder’s upcoming movie, which centers on Chase Strangio, the ACLU attorney who filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court last year, is very intriguing. It’s just one of several urgent, forward-thinking films in this year’s festival. I’m particularly appreciative of Sam’s input toward the program and the opportunity to meet him at this year’s U.S.
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Twinless
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People will be quite thrilled about this one, which is undoubtedly already kind of buzzing about. According to Hoyle, the movie is about two young men who become unlikely friends after meeting in a twin bereavement group. This video explores messy dark queerness from a really intriguing perspective. Talk about bold. It’s sexy, amusing, and one of the several films in this year’s U.S. Dramatic Competition that was written, directed, and starred in by James Sweeney alone. (found online)
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The Wedding Banquet
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“It has all the proper components, such as the entertaining, well-known cast [which includes Yang and Gladstone] and the directing of Andrew Ahn, who co-wrote the script with James Schamus, the author of the original Wedding Banquet and who made the well-liked Spa Night and Fire Island, of course. Instead of being a straight-forward remake, it tells its own story using the Ang Lee movie as a springboard.
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Kiss of the Spider Woman
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Director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Gods and Monsters) reimagines Kiss of the Spider Woman as a movie musical, starring Lopez and Luna. The film was already a 1985 LGBT film classic and a 1993 Tony-winning musical. The performances in this movie are excellent, and it exudes classic Hollywood grandeur. We are overjoyed that this will also be one of the festival’s most talked-about titles.
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Move Ya Body: The Birth of House
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“This documentary by Elegance Bratton examines the origins of house music in Chicago, as well as the queer Black community that gave rise to the scene,” Hoyle stated. The characters in this movie are fantastic; they were the ones that set the setting and truly impacted the audience. It also sheds light on how the city’s racial and gender political histories influenced the development of house music and the communities that have adopted it, earning recognition and financial gain in the process.
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Enigma
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In this documentary, Zackary Drucker, who co-directed 2023’s “The Stroll,” delves into the lives of two iconic transgender women: French singer Amanda Lear and English model April Ashley. Hoyle described the film as a “fascinating story and a rich look at trans history,” saying, “This is a really fun title that looks at two divergent lives and how they explore and foil one another in terms of how a person navigates queer community.”
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Sauna
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This story element “feels so nuanced to a degree that it’s really not anything I’ve seen before,” according to Hoyle. It looks at the affinity spaces for gay men and how trans men fit in and out of them. Although it’s a beautiful love story, it doesn’t sugarcoat the aspects of love and infatuation that are most akin to rivalry and jealousy. In light of the growing discourse surrounding diversity and belonging, this movie is incredibly complex. What does that mean exactly? How does that appear? Where is it truly difficult, and where is that simple?
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Peter Hujar s Day
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According to Yutani, one of the directors who has participated in Sundance the most, if not the most, is Ira Sachs [Keep the Lights On, Passages]. We were drawn to this piece since it differs greatly from his previous pieces. Ira’s ability to push himself and work in a variety of ways is, in my opinion, one of his most fascinating qualities. Ben Whishaw does a superb job delivering what is essentially a monologue in this version of an interview with artist Peter Hujar. This is just a special film that transports you to a different time, a different place, a specific place, and it s just made with such a delicate touch.
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Come See Me in the Good Light
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This movie is a gut punch, according to Hoyle. It’s a stunning depiction of Colorado’s poet laureate, Andrea Gibson, who is a true artist and is dealing with a very challenging cancer diagnosis alongside their lover. It paints a lovely picture of their bond and their kind of empathetic, cerebral approach to dying. Naturally, it is also entwined with their poetry, which is incredibly powerful. This is an event that should not be missed, but it should also not be attended without a full Kleenex packet.
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Sally
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This documentary about the life of astronaut Sally Ride “really has everything, Hoyle said. It s got a queer love story, it has an analysis of the implications, and it s a great way to track the way that being out has changed in the public eye over the years since Sally Ride s career. It s also a really incisive look at the culture at NASA, both around queer staff and female staff, in a way that s just really, really eye-opening. We have here such a triumphant look at our own space program but especially at this time, when we re seeing gender politics play out in that space so loudly.
‘Sabar Bonda’ (‘Cactus Pears’)
This is a semi-autobiographical film about a young man who goes back to his hometown in India and is struggling to be true to his own identity with his family,” Yutani said. “The kind of pastoral gay story that it s telling is a really special one. It s probably one of the more explicit gay films I ve seen out of India, too.
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This documentary feature “focuses on a doctor in Milan, Dr. Bini, and we have a very intimate look at how he communicates with his patients, quite a few of whom are dealing with their gender identity,” Yutani said. “If this film offers anything, it s offering optimism and what medical treatment for all people could be. And it is truly extraordinary to see this doctor at work.
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Plainclothes
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This is a period piece about the 90s, a fun look back into very recent history about a plainclothes police officer who s entrapping gay men in mall bathrooms and then ends up having an exploration of his own sexuality through the role play that he s engaging in, Hoyle said. One of the things we responded to about this film is just how exquisitely it s made. We were so excited to see a first-time filmmaker executing technically at the level that Carmen [Emmi] is in a first feature. It s just beautifully made, really precise and really interesting narrative terrain.
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Rains Over Babel
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This feature film from Colombia is centered on a group of misfits who hang out a dive bar that doubles as purgatory, according to the film’s description on Sundance’s website. Yutani described it as a “very attractive film with kind of this weird goth punk feel to it” and said it “completely builds its own landscape that is just totally unique.