Sundance Animated Fantasy ‘Cryptozoo’ Sells to Magnolia (EXCLUSIVE)

Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment WriterIn one of the first big deals of the upcoming SXSW Film Festival, emerging genre sales company Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired the global sales rights for the animated fantasy “The Spine of Night.”Directed by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, the film is set to have its world premiere in the SXSW Midnighters section of the festival, which runs virtually from March 16–20.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief“Boonie Bears: The Wild Life,” the latest feature-length instalment in a long-running Chinese film and TV franchise, is set to open in Japan and Australia.

A sun-flared and bong-addled tumble into a teenage Texan summer rife with bombshells and boyfriend problems, “Cusp,” from debut directors Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt is one of those fractal-style documentaries, in which any given sliver contains all the colors and contours of the whole.

Fran Kranz’s “Mass” is likely one of the most emotionally pulverizing films ever made about America’s gun-violence epidemic – but across its 110-minute runtime, not a single shot is fired.

It’s remarkably rare that anyone makes a hand-drawn animated feature for adults, let alone one as strikingly surreal and seriously minded as Dash Shaw’s “Cryptozoo.” READ MORE: 25 Most Anticipated 2021 Sundance Film Festival Premieres This Sundance premiere – honored with the fest’s Innovator Award in its NEXT section for “pure, bold works distinguished by an innovative, forward-thinking approach to storytelling” – takes place in an alt-history 1960s secretly populated by “cryptids,” including

Geena Davis has signed on to executive produce the kids animated series I Am for Kickstart Entertainment. Kickstart is the animation and live-action producer behind Netflix's Starbeamand Amazon’s superhero programThe Boys, directed by Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen of Point Grey Pictures.

S.O.S distress calls, fantasy escape from trauma, and forever wars that need to be fought all swirl together in “Mayday,” a dreamy and surreal new feminist fairy tale and revenge film that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this week. The feature-length filmmaking debut of writer/director Karen Cinorre, “Mayday” centers on Ana, a young woman who is mysteriously transported to an otherworldly and dangerous island.

13-year-old Sammy Ko (Miya Cech) is a problem child. Prone to skipping class, smoking cigarettes, and mouthing off to her teachers, she’s the opposite of the meek model student Hollywood typically imagines when writing young Asian-American characters.

Literally opening, as the title implies, with “The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet,” Argentinian director Ana Katz’s melancholic rumination on the life of Sebastian (Daniel Katz, the filmmaker’s brother), a languishing writer turned migrant worker, is a visually stunning, but oftentimes opaque experiment. Filmed in lush black and white, with animated interludes used to portray the more devastating aspects of Sebastian’s life, Katz’s film unfurls as a series of vignettes.

Abuse leaves scars unseen but permanent in director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.’s debut “Wild Indian,” a character study wrapped in larger observations on the generational effects of violence and religious guilt. In it, two men marked by a single crime lead distinctively dysfunctional lives.

In the aftermath of unprecedented change, it’s anyone’s guess where the planet will be by the conclusion of the 2020s. As the globe shifts into the second year of the oncoming decade, questions regarding the future of the species have arisen, specifically concerning the ever-increasing relationship between humanity and technology.

With her frayed blonde hair and moody coal-black eye makeup, rock band singer Marian (Alessandra Messa) doesn’t immediately appear to resemble her identical twin sister. Practically a Stepford wife with her demure manner and neat brown bob, Vivian (Ani Messa) lives with her loser husband (Jake Hoffman) in the same house the sisters grew up in.

Hauling two packages home under both arms, Leonor’s (Amalia Ulman) mother María (Ale Ulman) bursts through the door of their small apartment, proclaiming she will never return Amazon purchases for her again. Her daughter isn’t home.

To call a portrait documentary an “affectionate tribute” to its lesser-known subject, is usually redundant. That’s the whole point of adoring acknowledgment docs of this ilk— “shining a brighter spotlight” on [insert criminally undervalued subject here].

You are being watched. In the era of facial recognition, targeted advertising, and social media, the threat of an omnipresent eye on the average human has passed.

Something like a documentary “Inception” with a story inside of a tale that is itself part of a narrative, “Misha and the Wolves” boasts several layers, all of them fascinating. Concerned with notions of legacy, trauma, memory, and deceit, the documentary by director Sam Hobkinson juggles multiple stories, people, and time periods with seeming ease, weaving a fascinating, multi-faceted tale in a tight 85 minutes.

“Prime Time,” initially, opens with a beguiling premise. It’s New Year’s Eve in Poland, and the world is mere hours from the year 2000, a new millennium.

Rodney Ascher’s computer-haunted documentary “A Glitch in the Matrix” is not the most insightful recent examination of boredom-born foggy Internet delusions. That honor likely goes to Arthur Jones’ antic “Feels Good Man.” Still, Ascher’s appropriately discombobulating stew of queasiness, comedy, and terror seems well-cued to the subject matter, even while missing a certain editorial sharpness that might have brought some of its notions into greater clarity.

After a renowned career of nearly four decades in both film and TV, actor Robin Wright makes a confident feature directorial debut with “Land,” screening this year as part of Sundance Film Festival’s Premieres line-up.

Sean Ellis’ “Eight for Silver” is one of those movies that starts off so well, that shows such promise, that its slow unraveling feels less like a disappointment than a betrayal. It’s a Gothic horror picture that seems to set itself up as ambitious and intelligent, only to succumb to the most tiresome tropes and lazy shortcuts of the genre’s lesser efforts.