With over 60 films viewed at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, it’s time to wrap up the first major cinema event of the year. We already got the official jury and audience winners here, and now it’s time to highlight our favorites.
One will find our favorites (in alphabetical order), followed by the rest of our reviews. Check out everything below and stay tuned to our site, and specifically Twitter, for acquisition and release date news on the below films in the coming months.
The 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank)
Playwright Radha Blank’s spirited directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Version in an often hilarious and heartfelt autobiographical tale of reinvention. Surrounded in a shoebox apartment of memories of her past including 30 Under 30 Awards, Blank plays herself, a playwright who is faced with two options for her new play Harlem Ave: a local family theater or a flashier off-Broadway venue with a hole in their schedule.
One will find our favorites (in alphabetical order), followed by the rest of our reviews. Check out everything below and stay tuned to our site, and specifically Twitter, for acquisition and release date news on the below films in the coming months.
The 40-Year-Old Version (Radha Blank)
Playwright Radha Blank’s spirited directorial debut The 40-Year-Old Version in an often hilarious and heartfelt autobiographical tale of reinvention. Surrounded in a shoebox apartment of memories of her past including 30 Under 30 Awards, Blank plays herself, a playwright who is faced with two options for her new play Harlem Ave: a local family theater or a flashier off-Broadway venue with a hole in their schedule.
- 2/3/2020
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
Another Sundance logs itself into the collective memory banks — another week-plus of debuting features and disappointing follow-ups, fortunes made and filmmaking reputations established, long screening lines and literally breathless Q&As (that altitude!) comes to a close. It was a really strong year for documentaries ranging from just-the-facts-ma’am journalism to ecstatic-truth experiments, as well as stories about women fighting against the slings and arrows of various rigged systems. (Ditto a great showing for females behind the camera, with a reported 44% of the features directed by women.) And while the...
- 2/1/2020
- by David Fear
- Rollingstone.com
This year’s Sundance Film Festival broke a number of records, from diversity in its programming to sales, but none of these statistics address the fundamental question behind all the noise: Were the movies any good? As it turns out, the festival more than delivered: Culled from 15,000 submissions, the 2020 edition offered up a range of timely, boundary-pushing documentary storytelling, promising new voices, and satisfying new heights from established filmmakers. Here are the best of the best.
“Boys State”
Co-directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s revealing documentary has the potential to be this year’s “American Factory,” in the sense that the filmmakers gained incredible access to capture an intimate story in real time — one that provides the perfect metaphor for this moment in our socio-political history. Boys State is a yearly event put on by the American Legion, where 17-year-olds are split into two political parties and put through...
“Boys State”
Co-directors Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine’s revealing documentary has the potential to be this year’s “American Factory,” in the sense that the filmmakers gained incredible access to capture an intimate story in real time — one that provides the perfect metaphor for this moment in our socio-political history. Boys State is a yearly event put on by the American Legion, where 17-year-olds are split into two political parties and put through...
- 2/1/2020
- by Eric Kohn, Kate Erbland, David Ehrlich, Chris O'Falt and Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
For the last several years, the very first film I’ve seen in Park City has been among the festival’s best, launching my Sundance with a bang. The lucky title this year is Dick Johnson is Dead, a documentary—whatever that label means in this case—directed and photographed by Dick’s daughter, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson), whose cinematic imagination couldn’t be more alive and kicking. The imminent death, or what’s worse, the gradual ravaging by Alzheimer’s, of an aging parent is a personal and emotional minefield few are ever equipped to traverse, no less understand, when the time comes. Alzheimer’s is also a […]...
- 1/31/2020
- by David Leitner
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
For the last several years, the very first film I’ve seen in Park City has been among the festival’s best, launching my Sundance with a bang. The lucky title this year is Dick Johnson is Dead, a documentary—whatever that label means in this case—directed and photographed by Dick’s daughter, cinematographer Kirsten Johnson (Cameraperson), whose cinematic imagination couldn’t be more alive and kicking. The imminent death, or what’s worse, the gradual ravaging by Alzheimer’s, of an aging parent is a personal and emotional minefield few are ever equipped to traverse, no less understand, when the time comes. Alzheimer’s is also a […]...
- 1/31/2020
- by David Leitner
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
There’s only one universal truth shared amongst all humans: one day, we will die. For some, this cold, uncomforting reality can lead to paralyzing anxiety as we think of who and what we’ll leave behind. For others, it’s a call to action to live every day with receptive empathy towards others and a curiosity to explore what the world has to offer. As already proven in her masterful directorial debut Cameraperson, Kirsten Johnson clearly falls into the latter category. With her brilliant follow-up Dick Johnson Is Dead, leave it to the director to create an exploration of death that is fun, bittersweet, and bursting with colorful imagination. In her portrait of her (spoiler warning!) still-alive father, she carries the same self-reflexive wit and vision as her prior film but takes it in a whole other direction.
Her dad, Dick Johnson, is a Seattle-based psychiatrist who is finally hanging up his hat,...
Her dad, Dick Johnson, is a Seattle-based psychiatrist who is finally hanging up his hat,...
- 1/29/2020
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
“Will you just look at this room?” Long before IndieWire Editor-in-Chief Dana Harris-Bridson managed to wrangle a packed assortment of some of Sundance’s many female filmmakers from a bustling cocktail hour to a three-course meal one floor above, the guests were something to behold. “Miss Americana” filmmaker Lana Wilson easily chatted with “Shirley” director Josephine Decker, who soon sought out “Promising Young Woman” filmmaker Emerald Fennell to congratulate her on her Saturday night premiere. Across the room, Zeina Durra (“Luxor”) and Kitty Green (“The Assistant”) formed a talkative circle with Garrett Bradley (“Time”) and Eliza Hittman (“Never Rarely Sometimes Always”).
At IndieWire’s annual Female Filmmakers Dinner on Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival, presented by Canada Goose, all the honored guests were eager to chat with each other about their latest work (and what’s to come). The event celebrated directors debuting new films at the festival,...
At IndieWire’s annual Female Filmmakers Dinner on Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival, presented by Canada Goose, all the honored guests were eager to chat with each other about their latest work (and what’s to come). The event celebrated directors debuting new films at the festival,...
- 1/27/2020
- by Kate Erbland
- Indiewire
Sundance is a microcosm of change across the film industry; it’s also a barometer for broader concerns. The stories told across Park City at the start of each year may not have been programmed with trends in mind, but they often signal the acceleration of aesthetic or cultural developments. This year’s festival has brought much interest in the market for documentary storytelling, as questions about the barriers between reality and fiction have never felt so charged.
Some of the more timely documentaries at the festival delve into dueling media narratives and ease with which powerful institutions can bury the truth. “The Dissident” explores the role of social media in Saudi Arabia’s propaganda war that culminated with Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination, while “On the Record” explores the turmoil faced by Russell Simmons’ sexual assault victims when they decided to speak out.
Both movies use conventional filmmaking to provoke...
Some of the more timely documentaries at the festival delve into dueling media narratives and ease with which powerful institutions can bury the truth. “The Dissident” explores the role of social media in Saudi Arabia’s propaganda war that culminated with Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination, while “On the Record” explores the turmoil faced by Russell Simmons’ sexual assault victims when they decided to speak out.
Both movies use conventional filmmaking to provoke...
- 1/27/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
Death isn’t wasted on the dead, exactly, but much that follows in its black-veiled wake is: A heartfelt eulogy, after all, is often composed of warm words we should have shared with the deceased before they turned cold. Eighties soft-rock band Mike and the Mechanics had a #1 hit with this very observation, of course: “I wish I could have told him in the living years,” they crooned, mourning unspoken father-child affections over waves of glossy synths. Kirsten Johnson’s wonderful new documentary “Dick Johnson is Dead” takes the same sentiment and gets one step ahead of it, with less sentimental sturm und drang. A profoundly heartfelt cinematic eulogy to the filmmaker’s living father Richard, made with his good-humored collaboration as he slowly slips into the limbo of Alzheimer’s, it also doubles as a witty, thoughtful rumination on death itself, the ways we prepare for it (or don...
- 1/26/2020
- by Guy Lodge
- Variety Film + TV
The title of “Dick Johnson Is Dead” doesn’t lie, but it’s not exactly truthful, either. Dick Johnson dies many times in his daughter Kirsten’s poignant and personal documentary, starting with the opening credits. And yet he’s very much alive the whole time, playacting in an elaborate form of cinematic therapy with his filmmaker offspring as she wrestles with the anxiety of losing him.
That concept could easily devolve into a navel-gazing exercise, but Kirsten Johnson — the veteran nonfiction cinematographer who directed 2016’s wondrous collage film “Cameraperson” — enacts . Oscillating from intimate father-daughter exchanges to surreal meta-fictional tangents, the movie lives within its riveting paradox, reflecting the queasy uncertainty surrounding its subject’s fate.
It helps that Dick makes quite the centerpiece. “I’ve always wanted to be in the movies!” he cries in the opening moments, toying around with Kirsten’s two young children, before tumbling over...
That concept could easily devolve into a navel-gazing exercise, but Kirsten Johnson — the veteran nonfiction cinematographer who directed 2016’s wondrous collage film “Cameraperson” — enacts . Oscillating from intimate father-daughter exchanges to surreal meta-fictional tangents, the movie lives within its riveting paradox, reflecting the queasy uncertainty surrounding its subject’s fate.
It helps that Dick makes quite the centerpiece. “I’ve always wanted to be in the movies!” he cries in the opening moments, toying around with Kirsten’s two young children, before tumbling over...
- 1/26/2020
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
The feature film lineup at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival has been unveiled, featuring 118 films. Among the highly-anticipated premieres we have Josephine Decker’s Shirley, Miranda July’s Kajillionaire, Eliza Hittman’s Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Janicza Bravo’s Zola, Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson Is Dead, Brandon Cronenberg’s Possessor, Julie Taymor’s The Glorias, Dee Rees’ The Last Thing He Wanted, Sean Durkin’s The Nest, Michael Almereyda’s Tesla, Benh Zeitlin’s Wendy, and more.
Check out the list below and return for our coverage from January 23-February 2, 2020.
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Farewell, Honey Boy, Clemency, Eighth Grade, Sorry to Bother You and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. 47% of the directors in this year’s U.
Check out the list below and return for our coverage from January 23-February 2, 2020.
U.S. Dramatic Competition
Presenting the world premieres of 16 narrative feature films, the Dramatic Competition offers Festivalgoers a first look at groundbreaking new voices in American independent film. Films that have premiered in this category in recent years include The Farewell, Honey Boy, Clemency, Eighth Grade, Sorry to Bother You and The Miseducation of Cameron Post. 47% of the directors in this year’s U.
- 12/4/2019
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
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