I'm Going to Sundance 2025 and This Is What I'm Seeing
The Coachella of film nerds commences this week and these are my picks.
On the morning of January 14th, the Sundance lineup dropped, and I was ready. Knuckles cracked, list in hand, I dove in. This was my first time navigating the chaos, but I approached it like a pro—like this is Coachella. I’ve done that plenty of times, so this should be easy. Compulsive refreshing of the page was the name of the game. But then, disaster struck: the website crashed.
Panic set in as I hit refresh, again and again, my excitement quickly morphing into dread. When the site finally loaded, my heart sank. Almost every single movie on my carefully curated schedule was SOLD OUT.
All that planning and anticipation…wasted?
But then, as if by divine intervention, the page reloaded. This time, most of my precious films were magically available again. I asked no questions—I clicked and booked them like my life depended on it. Okay, maybe I’m being dramatic. But when you’re passionate about film and theatre, you know that every ticket at Sundance has the power to transform film forever.
Here’s what I managed to snag.
The Ugly Stepsister (Premiere)
In a fairy-tale kingdom where beauty is a brutal business, Elvira battles to compete with her incredibly beautiful stepsister, and she will go to any length to catch the prince’s eye.
Meet the director: Emilie Blichfeldt is renowned for her bold and provocative short films. Her Norwegian Film School graduation project from 2018, Sara’s Intimate Confessions, was selected for festivals such as the 2018 Locarno International Film Festival and the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The Ugly Stepsister marks Blichfeldt’s feature directorial debut.
By Design
A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.
Meet the director: Amanda Kramer was named a 2019 “Director Who Will Define the Next Decade” by IndieWire. Her feature Please Baby Please won the 2022 Outfest Grand Jury Prize and opened the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Kramer’s documentary So Unreal premiered at the 2023 Fantastic Fest and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Omaha
After a family tragedy, siblings Ella and Charlie are unexpectedly woken up by their dad and taken on a journey across the country, experiencing a world they’ve never seen before. As their adventure unfolds, Ella begins to understand that things might not be what they seem.
Meet the director: Raised alongside five brothers in rural Washington, Cole Webley spent his childhood watching movies and attending wrestling tournaments. None of his three daughters or son wrestle, but they share his love for movies. After film school, seven short films, and a hundred-plus commercials later, Omaha is Webley’s feature directorial debut.
Atropia
When an aspiring actress in a military role-playing facility falls in love with a soldier cast as an insurgent, their unsimulated emotions threaten to derail the performance.
Meet the director: Hailey Gates is a filmmaker and journalist based in New York. She received her BFA from NYU in experimental theater. Her award-winning short film Shako Mako premiered at the 2019 Venice Film Festival. As an actress, Gates has appeared in Twin Peaks: The Return, Uncut Gems, and Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers.
Bubble & Squeak
Accused of smuggling cabbages into a nation where cabbages are banned, Declan and Delores must confront the fragility of their new marriage while on the run for their lives.
Meet the Director: Evan Twohy was raised on Hitchcock and opera on the edge of a forest outside Berkeley, California. From an early age, he found himself drawn to absurdist theater and began writing plays in New York City prior to making his first feature, Bubble & Squeak.
Predators
To Catch a Predator was a popular television show designed to hunt down child predators and lure them to a film set, where they would be interviewed and eventually arrested. An exploration of the scintillating rise and staggering fall of the show and the world it helped create.
Meet the director: David Osit is a director, an editor, and a composer. His film Mayor (2020) won a Peabody Award and an Emmy Award and was a NYT Critic’s Pick. Osit also directed Thank You for Playing (2015), which was nominated for three Emmy Awards, winning for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary.
Now, onto the short film & documentary programs:
Death Education
In China, a high school teacher has introduced a death education class for young students. On the traditional Tomb Sweeping Day, they bury unnamed ashes at a public cemetery where they contemplate and contextualize the meaning of death.
Meet the director: Ethan Wu is a filmmaker from Changsha, China. A graduate of Emerson College, he is currently pursuing an MFA at Stanford University. His work has been featured in outlets including Phoenix New Media, Tencent, NetEase, and Riot Games, as well as in art house venues like the Anthology Film Archives.
Hold Me Close
A chronicle of the power and complexity of the relationship between Corinne and Tiana, two Queer Black womxn who experience cycles of life’s joys and pains together in the home they share.
Meet the directors:
LaTajh Simmons-Weaver is a producer and director in both the narrative and documentary spaces and is an Oakland, California native. In their work, they are dedicated to reclaiming and telling the overlooked stories of Black and Queer intersectionality and exploring ways these communities learn to cope with everyday injustices.
Aurora Brachman (2020 Sundance Ignite x Adobe Fellowship) is an Emmy Award-winning documentary director, producer, and cinematographer. Her films use poetic storytelling to witness intimate relationships within Black, brown, and Queer communities. Aurora is committed to ethical and collaborative filmmaking and holds an MFA in Documentary Film from Stanford University.
Tiger
A portrait of award-winning, internationally acclaimed Indigenous artist and elder Dana Tiger, her family, and the resurgence of the iconic Tiger T-shirt company.
Meet the director: Loren Waters is an award-winning Cherokee and Kiowa filmmaker whose creative work spans several disciplines, including directing, producing, and casting. Her work centers on environmental knowledge, culture revitalization, and Indigenous futurity through storytelling.
Entre le Feu et le Clair de Lune
An Ivorian father and his daughter set out to continue the book he never finished about a war he experienced as a child. With children in his village today, three generations create timelines, dreams, and memories.
Meet the director: Dominic Yarabe is an award-winning filmmaker, interdisciplinary artist and 2024 MacDowell fellow. Her work has screened at several venues including the Sundance Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and True/False Film Festival. Yarabe received her MFA in documentary film from Stanford University and MA in visual culture from Brown University.
View From the Floor
A singer confronts inspiration porn, exploitation, and impostor syndrome in pursuit of a life on the stage without legs.
Meet the directors:
Megan Griffiths is a writer-director working in film and television. She has directed 8 features and 17 episodes of TV and is a member of the director’s branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She resides in Seattle, Washington, with her husband and cat.
As a musician, director, and writer, Mindie Lind has received accolades in Seattle and beyond. She’s currently contributing her unvarnished takes on the crip experience to outlets such as Vice and The Stranger, adding much-needed nuance to stories around disability.
Deadlock
Stuck in their Algiers neighborhood, Sifou and Mahrez gaze at the sea while thinking of their brothers who left for new lives. As uncertainty lingers on the horizon, they wonder if they can break the deadlock.
Meet the directors:
Lucien Beucher is a French director. In 2018 he co-founded Bleu Désert, a trio of music video directors. With Deadlock, he takes a step into documentary filmmaking. In the future, he aims to explore longer formats, such as feature narrative and documentary, blending the boundaries between the two.
Mahdi Boucif is an Algerian documentary photographer. His art is raw and approach spontaneous, almost instinctive. He strives to show vulnerability where it’s least expected. With Deadlock, Boucif makes his directorial debut. The short film follows in the footsteps of his photographic work and sets the scene for future projects.
Reality of Hope
Virtual reality creator Hiyu is facing kidney failure. His online friend Photographotter travels from New York City to Stockholm to be a live donor to Hiyu.
Meet the director: Joe Hunting is a filmmaker born in the U.K., based in California, and known for We Met in Virtual Reality (2022 Sundance Film Festival). His shorts include the award-winning A Wider Screen (2019) and the series Virtually Speaking (2020). His VR filmmaking has appeared in Filmmaker Magazine, TIME, and WIRED.
The Things We Keep
Forced into a caretaker position, Kate comes home to pack up her estranged mother’s house. While struggling to clear her mother’s hoarded possessions, Kate discovers the insidious nature of her mother’s illness lying behind the house’s walls.
Meet the director: Joanna Fernandez is a genre writer and director with a BFA from NYU and an MFA from USC, where she earned the Jeffrey Jones Award and Fox Fellowship. Her film Seraphim won the Jury Award at the 2023 Austin Film Festival, showcasing her focus on myth, morality, monsters, and scapegoats.
Bunnyhood
Innocent Bobby discovers whether her mom would ever lie to her when she is surprised by a last-minute trip to the hospital.
Meet the director: Mansi Maheshwari is a writer, director, and animator based in London and India. Her filmmaking is a genre-defying crazy journey. Her mad but poignant graduation film Bunnyhood premiered and won Third Prize in the La Cinef selection at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting
In the Depression-ravaged countryside of 1930s America, adolescent girls are expected to fulfill a long-standing rite in which they hunt and slay a mythical beast of their mother’s choosing.
Meet the director: Alex Thompson specializes in fantastical narratives that infuse his love of myths, fairy tales, philosophical themes, aberrant psychology, strange monsters, and even stranger people. He hopes, against all odds, that he will have left the world a slightly better place through his cinema after he is gone.
Swollen
After plastic surgery, two besties debate the need to call the local police amid a botched burglary for fear of being seen swollen, bandaged, and bloody.
Meet the director: Roxy Sophie Sorkin is an American writer, director, and actress. She is best known for her women-led comedies and her breakout short Vodka that premiered at the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival. Sorkin has an unrelenting knowledge of RuPaul’s life and cried vigorously when she first saw Lady Bird.
Jesus 2
In a future where no one can die and no one wants to live anymore, two space pirate brothers must destroy an evil messiah to break the curse of immortality and deliver humanity to its final resting place.
Meet the director: Jesse Moynihan (background artist on Dash Shaw’s Cryptozoo, 2021 Sundance Film Festival) is a cartoonist in Los Angeles, best known for writing and storyboarding for the Cartoon Network show Adventure Time and as art director on The Midnight Gospel for Netflix. Fantagraphics will publish his fourth graphic novel in 2026.
Platanero
Ti-Frè and Gran-Frè, two brothers of Haitian origin living in a Dominican Republic shantytown, struggle daily to survive. On a full moon night, desperation pushes them to steal from a plantation where a mysterious beast prowls among the banana trees.
Meet the director: Juan Frank Hernandez is a writer-director who grew up in the Dominican Republic and now lives in Quebec. He has refined his cinematic signature through his self-produced short films. He loves storytelling by mixing genres and creating characters who must face their fears, whether they be imaginary or real.
Hippopotami
In the suburbs of a northern Chinese city undergoing urbanization, a quirky girl who wants to see animals in the zoo is taken for a ride that will forever change her perspective on life.
Meet the director: Jianjie (JJ) Lin was studying biology when the world of cinema led him astray. He received an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Film Program. His debut feature, Brief History of a Family, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition and played the 2024 Berlinale.
Are You Scared To Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail?
While recovering from top surgery, Mad struggles with wanting their partner’s attention and accepting help from their mother.
Meet the director: Bec Pecaut is a nonbinary filmmaker living between Los Angeles and Toronto, Ontario. Their short Are You Scared to Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail? (2024) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Film. Pecaut’s work focuses on queer coming-of-age.
Such Good Friends
After ending a toxic friendship, a people pleaser finds herself falling into old patterns with her former best friend’s family.
Meet the director: Bri Klaproth is a writer, director, and producer. Her producing credits include Vimeo Staff Pick for Herly and the viral short The Cowboy and the Samurai. Her debut feature, Big Fun, which she co-wrote and produced, won Best Comedy Film at the 2023 Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival.
The Long Valley
Documenting the people and landscapes of the Salinas Valley, one of the most productive agricultural regions in California.
Meet the directors:
Robert Machoian has been taking photographs his whole life and making award-winning films for over a decade. In his career as a writer-director and cinematographer, Robert has had multiple films premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, and Tribeca Film Festival.
Rodrigo Ojeda-Beck is an award-winning filmmaker whose work spans across the narrative and documentary spectrum. His films have screened at the Sundance Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, and CPH:DOX. He currently teaches film at California State University, Sacramento.
AN ALMOST SUCCESSFUL DATING APP LOVE STORY
Determined to meet him dead or alive, a curious young woman attends the funeral of a man she matched with on a dating app.
Meet the director: Winter Coleman is a filmmaker and photographer currently based in Los Angeles. Her work focuses on healing, suffering, identity, and the small indignities that ultimately shape who we become.
Suo Jiang
A locksmith gifted with the ability to open any lock is unwilling to return home. He pursues a hostess who has no intention of keeping him company. Facing a profound sense of emptiness, he turns himself toward another path.
Meet the director: Taiwan-based, Chien-Yu Lin is a director and screenwriter. Before studying at the London Film School in 2016, she worked as a fashion designer and dedicated herself to experimental media production. Her debut short film, The Sound of Falling, won an award in the 2019 Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival.
We’re Not Done Yet
Alex visits his newly single mother, Bettina, for a weekend at her getaway beach house. But when he is confronted with her newfound independence, Alex is forced to face his own controlling nature.
Meet the directors:
Sofia Camargo is a Colombian filmmaker with an MFA in film from NYU. She directed Al Lado del Río (2020 Cartagena Film Festival, 2020 NALIP Jury Award, and Vimeo Staff Pick) and Nostos (2024 Cartagena Film Festival). Her cinematography won the 2023 Vienna Shorts Jury Prize for Best Cinematography.
Joseph Longo is a writer-director-producer-actor with an MFA in film from NYU. He produced A Perfect Day for Caribou (2022 Locarno Film Festival) and the short film The Pass (2022 Cannes Film Festival, 2022 Toronto International Film Festival). He’s writing his debut feature, Lost at the Beach of Sunken Ships.
See you at Sundance!
~Cinema Scribe
Cant wait, I got tickets for digital showings
Can't wait for Omaha in theatres