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Dressed all in black, Lilas Mayassi and Shery Bechara stand outside a restaurant while staring down at Mayassi’s phone, smiles painting their faces. The bandmates giggle to each other as Mayassi shows Bechara pictures of a woman she met at a nightclub the previous evening.

Playing in the Premieres section of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Sharp Stick,” produced during lockdown, was conceived by Lena Dunham and the film’s director of photography, Ashley Connor, starting from the base elements that were already available to them — namely a set of actors and locations. But while many quarantine-made films have appeared to embrace a “will this do?” aesthetic, implicitly relying on the audience’s sympathy and compassionate understanding to fill gaps and forgive compromises in production value, Dunham has instead created a work of art that comfortably fits within and plays with the limitations imposed by the pandemic.

A blistering psychological thriller and enigmatic horror film that already has Sundance audiences divided thanks to its provocative, polarizing premise, filmmaker Andrew Semans’ “Resurrection” is emotionally searing, wildly unhinged and maybe even a little batshit crazy. However, as anchored by its two fiercely committed and convincing lead performances (Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth), a menacingly disquieting tone, and a frightening ambiguity about a disintegrating mental state, “Resurrection” is a deeply distressing and compelling drama that will shock and shake you to your core.

His name was Brandon and to almost everyone at Glasgow’s Bearsden Academy, he seemed a bit odd. This new pupil was much taller than the other students, said he was from Canada and, well, his face looked…strange.

American tourists spooked out by what they see on their visit to a European country will always be a valid premise for a film. The same goes for movies concerned with voyeurism, whether our protagonist is the one watching or the one being watched — though they usually are both, as is the case in Chloe Okuno’s “Watcher.” Playing in the U.S.

The family at the center of Finnish director Hanna Bergholm’s unnerving, instantly memorable horror flick “Hatching,” on first blush, are their own kind of perfect. This quartet of influencers, who sell their idyllic homelife to their legion of followers, are led by a ruthlessly ambitious mother (Sophia Heikkilä), while her husband (Jani Volanen), an amiable oaf, chooses to ignore her worst tendencies.

There is, at the moment, no shortage of information in the culture about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. In just the past few months, the performers behind “I Love Lucy” have been the subjects of both a (very good) season of TCM’s “The Plot Thickens” podcast and a (very bad) Aaron Sorkin movie, “Being the Ricardos.” Now you can add to that mix “Lucy and Desi,” a new feature-length bio-documentary from actor/director Amy Poehler, which is hitting Amazon Prime in March, presumably as something of a companion piece to “Ricardos” (which the streamer/studio also financed).

Sometimes you commit to a decision because it’s the one in your head, the one on the page, and it’s the north star you are aiming for. In filmmaker Riley Stearns‘ latest Sundance picture, the darkly comedic, intentionally strange, and off-kilter doppelgänger film, “Dual,” the intention is to be askew, left of center, and bizarrely funny.

The complexities of female sexuality are still frustratingly misrepresented in mainstream cinema. In one corner, we have the eruptive rise of a certain type of one-dimensional badass feminism, featuring often straight, go-getting women who can win a fistfight, have it their way and enjoy great, consequence-free sex.

The crux of Nina Menkes’s documentary feature “Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power” is that nearly all movies have been made using a specific visual language that teaches society to disempower, disenfranchise, and even abuse women. You may think that on-screen sexism is a thing of the past, or that it can’t possibly affect our society, in which women can now run companies and win Best Director Oscars.

Virgino and Sisa live what most people would consider a very simple life. They raise and care for Lamas in the Bolivian highlands keeping the traditions of their Quechua people alive.

Seemingly a rejection of monocausal history in that it twists the firehose nozzle all the way open to spray from any and every direction, “Riotsville, U.S.A.” is no less problematic from where it sits on the other side of that theoretical chasm. Grabbing at anything that conforms to the half-cooked epiphanies the documentary has from moment to moment, the path of the film’s discussion weaves through about a dozen provocative ideas without betraying much of an attempt to critically analyze any one of them.

Even the title of W. Kamau Bell’s “We Need to Talk About Cosby” is loaded – because when we talk about Bill Cosby, we’re not just talking about Bill Cosby.

Society teaches you to be polite. If someone offers you an oatmeal cookie, for example, you’re probably going to say, “Thank you,” and take it, even if you really dislike those chalky, unsatisfying discs.

I always see the nannies when I take my kids to the park. They’re hard to miss, over there on the park benches with the strollers and bags of snacks, gossiping and swapping war stories and strategies and shouting out admonishments to the cherubs they’re there to supervise.

One part autobiographical exorcism, two parts social warning, and a double-serving of real-world body horror, “Happening” combines just a handful of elements into a potent force. A bracing lead performance paired with patient yet informative directing accomplishes what few versions of this story could: it allows the story to tell itself without any heavy-handed monologuing or obsequious showboating.

Centuries-old grandiose red brick, white-trimmed buildings fill the frame at the start of Mariama Diallo’s striking debut feature film “Master.” Ivy-clad collegiate walls are a staple in the horror genre; the grounds are confined, and there’s something inherently creepy about old buildings. But here, Diallo uses this setting not just for aesthetic frights but because it is these very venerated walls from which the terror at the center of her story finds its origin.

Centuries-old grandiose red brick, white-trimmed buildings fill the frame at the start of Mariama Diallo’s striking debut feature film “Master.” Ivy-clad collegiate walls are a staple in the horror genre; the grounds are confined, and there’s something inherently creepy about old buildings. But here, Diallo uses this setting not just for aesthetic frights but because it is these very venerated walls from which the terror at the center of her story finds its origin.

“Mom, do you think I can be political?” asks teenage YouTube musician Ziggy Katz (a wide-eyed Finn Wolfhard) to his uptight mom Evelyn (the consistently stellar Julianne Moore). There’s no shortcut to sounding smart, she replies, you have to do the work.

Consider these scenarios: A woman who is unable to get an abortion even though she has a life-threatening condition because of her pregnancy. Women banding together to run underground abortion clinics because the procedure is illegal in their city or state.

Beginning on the eve of music manager Doris Muñoz’s 26th birthday, Isabel Castro’s lyrical documentary, “Mija,” uses Muñoz’s story — both her status as a manager of Latinx artists and as the only American-born member of her undocumented family — to explore the complicated dynamics that plague undocumented families. Adopting a fly-on-the-wall approach that prioritizes Muñoz’s subjectivity — sometimes to a fault — “Mija” is nevertheless a personal and sincere portrait of Muñoz’s struggles, and her ability to adapt in the face of changing social and professional upheavals.

On July 7, 2017, former Marine Brian Brown-Easley, dressed in a grey hoodie, brandishing a bruised cheek underneath his glasses, walked into an Atlanta area Wells Fargo bank claiming to possess a bomb. Politely he allowed the majority of the bank’s customers and employees to leave, except for two.

“Jeen-Yuhs” premieres at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.The mercurial rapper, 44, took to Instagram Friday morning, boldly declaring: “I’m going to say this kindly for the last time. I must get final edit and approval on this doc before it releases on Netflix.”Appearing to allege he’s been locked out of the creative process, West continued: “Open the edit room immediately so I can be in charge of my own image.

Yellow wildflowers in the dusty brown dirt, multi-colored rolling hills, and a green-blue lake set the stage for writer-director Max Walker-Silverman’s debut feature film “A Love Song.” A rumination on love found and lost, it’s also a hymn to the beauty and wonder of Walker-Silverman’s native Colorado. Cinematographer Alfonso Herrera Salcedo shoots the film with the hazy, yet hyper-defined colors of an old picture postcard.

We should have seen this coming. After “Promising Young Woman” made a splash at Sundance two years ago, the festival was bound to feature more films (cl)aiming to undermine expectations and play with films tropes to craft a fiercely feminist take-down of the patriarchy.

“Curiosity is stronger than fear,” utters Katia Krafft, via an actress giving voice to her writing, underscoring images of unimaginably scorching lava exploding around her. With her endearingly reckless husband Maurice Krafft, they form the one-of-kind couple that blazes through the arresting documentary “Fire of Love” from director Sara Dosa.

Carey Williams’ 2018 Sundance award-winning short, “Emergency,” opens on a simple premise: A trio of underrepresented college roommates discover a white girl unconscious on their living room floor. Afraid to call the police for fear of potential violence, they suggest options to find help without losing their lives.

“Mom, do you think I can be political?” asks teenage YouTube musician Ziggy Katz (a wide-eyed Finn Wolfhard) to his uptight mom Evelyn (the consistently stellar Julianne Moore). There’s no shortcut to sounding smart, she replies, you have to do the work.

Somehow, Sundance 2020 — the last in-person iteration of the fest, pre-pandemic — feels like it was both a million years ago and just the other day. If COVID has taught us anything outside revealing the darkest side of humanity, it’s that time is definitely a construct.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival may have pivoted to a virtual festival because of Omicron Rising (which feels like the title of a movie or a new Pink Floyd record), but it is moving full-steam ahead regardless. Today, the festival added two new late-edition titles to the line-up.

The 2022 Sundance Film Festival may have pivoted to a virtual festival because of Omicron Rising (which feels like the title of a movie or a new Pink Floyd record), but it is moving full-steam ahead regardless. Today, the festival added two new late-edition titles to the line-up.

2022 is already starting to feel like 2021, which felt a lot like 2020. As if we’re stuck in a neverending loop of awful, it appears the COVID pandemic is already making film festivals scramble thanks to the Omicron variant that is spreading like wildfire around the world.

The #MeToo movement has made it increasingly difficult to talk about separating the art from the artist. Can you do it? Is it worth trying? And are there varying degrees of misconduct that make it easier for you to support one disgraced artist from another? This is part of the discussion presented in the new Showtime docuseries, “We Need to Talk About Cosby.” READ MORE: The Best Documentaries Of 2021 Created by stand-up comedian W.

The unveiling of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival line-up was decidedly unique. For the first time in recent memory, acquisition films are dominating the proceedings.

As we approach the end of 2021, it’s time to look ahead at what’s to come in 2022. More specifically, we can begin to look ahead at the film festivals of the new year.

opened to acclaim in January at the Sundance Film Festival, plays out in that claustrophobic room, where the four parents sit around a small table and begin to talk, awkwardly at first, about the incident — before cycling through hatred, sympathy and cautious understanding. Ultimately, each character experiences a personal epiphany in trying to make sense of a senseless tragedy.“I think what happens [with Linda], honestly, as a parent .