Sundance

EDEN, Dir. Mia Hansen-Løve

Spotlight

The exhilarating fourth feature from Mia Hansen-Løve (Father of My Children, Goodbye First Love), Eden is a 20-year journey through the electronic dance music scene following a DJ whose love for the turntables stay strong even after the craze has ended. Based on the experiences of Hansen-Løve's brother (and co-writer) Sven, the film follows Paul (Félix de Givry), a teenager in the underground scene of early-nineties Paris. Rave parties dominate that culture, but he's drawn to the more soulful rhythms of Chicago's garage house. He forms a DJ collective named Cheers (in a parallel storyline, two of his friends form Daft Punk, who float throughout the movie), and together he and his friends plunge  into the ephemeral nightlife of sex, drugs, and endless music. Featuring memorable appearances from Greta Gerwig and Brady Corbet (and shot by cinematographer Denis Lenoir), Hansen-Løve's film is a shimmering swirl of color, light and baselines - an intoxicating cocktail of euphoria and melancholy as alive as any nightclub. Also played at the Toronto, New York and AFI Film Festivals, the movie opens in theaters in late Spring. A Broad Green Pictures release. 131m.

*NOTE: Mia Hansen-Løve will be on the World Narrative Feature Competition Jury 
 

P&I - Friday, Jan. 23, 10:00am, Holiday Village 4

Friday, Jan. 23, 6:00pm, Tower Theatre (SLC)

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2:15pm, MARC

Wednesday, Jan. 28, 5:30pm, Egyptian Theatre

Attending: Director Mia Hansen-Løve (Jan. 24-Feb. 1), and actor Félix de Givry (Jan. 25-29)

ENTERTAINMENT, Dir. Rick Alverson - World Premiere

NEXT

Park City may not be ready for it, but writer/director Rick Alverson (The Comedy) returns with this nightmarish account of a traveling comedian lost on the brink. A broken, aging comedian tours the California desert, lost in a cycle of third-rate venues, novelty tourist attractions, and vain attempts to reach his estranged daughter. By day, he slogs through the barren landscape, inadvertently alienating every acquaintance. At night, he seeks solace in the animation of his onstage persona. Fueled by the promise of a lucrative Hollywood engagement, he trudges through a series of increasingly surreal and volatile encounters. In Alverson's hallucinatory fugue, Gregg Turkington stars as The Comedian, caught in a struggle between being the center of attention and the object of alienation, occasionally challenged by an unexpected cast of characters played by Tye Sheridan, John C. Reilly, Michael Cera, and Amy Seimetz. Acquisition title: Cinetic. 98m.

Saturday, Jan. 24, 2:30pm, Library

P&I - Sunday, Jan. 25, 2:30pm, Holiday Village 4

Monday, Jan. 26, 9:00pm, Yarrow

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 6:45pm, Broadway Centre Cinema 3 (SLC)

Friday, Jan. 30, 2:30pm, Prospector Square Theatre

Attending: Director Rick Alverson and actors Gregg Turkington and Tye Sheridan

THE FORBIDDEN ROOM, Dir. Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson - World Premiere

New Frontier

If Canadian wunderkind Guy Maddin (MY WINNIPEG, THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD) is Winnipeg's own living film legend, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is his ultimate epic phantasmagoria. Honoring classic cinema while electrocuting it with energy, this Russian nesting doll of a film begins (after a prologue on how to take a bath) with the crew of a doomed submarine chewing flapjacks in a desperate attempt to breathe the oxygen within. Suddenly, impossibly, a lost woodsman wanders into their company and tells his tale of escaping from a fearsome clan of cave dwellers. From here, Maddin and co-director Evan Johnson take us high into the air, around the world, and into dreamscapes, spinning tales of amnesia, captivity, deception and murder, skeleton women and vampire bananas. Playing like some glorious meeting between Italo Calvino, Sergei Eisenstein and a perverted six year-old child, THE FORBIDDEN ROOM is Maddin's grand ode to lost cinema. Created with the help of master poet John Ashberry, the film features Mathieu Amalric, Udo Kier, Charlotte Rampling, Gerladine Chaplin, Roy Dupuis, Clara Furey, Louis Negin, Maria de Medeiros, Jacques Nolot, Adèle Haenel, Amira Casar & Elina Löwensohn as a cavalcade of misfits, thieves and lovers, all joined in the joyful delirium of the kaleidoscopic viewing experience. Acquisition title: Mongrel Media. 128m.

Monday, Jan. 26, 2:30pm, Library

Wednesday, Jan. 28, 9:45pm, Broadway Centre Cinema 3 (SLC)

Thursday, Jan. 29, 8:15pm, Prospector Square Theatre

Saturday, Jan. 31, 6:15pm, Holiday Village Cinema 2

NOTE: AS THERE ARE NO PRESS SCREENINGS FOR THIS TITLE, WE WILL PROVIDE TICKETS FOR THE PUBLIC SCREENINGS

Attending: Directors Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson (Jan. 24-28), and actor Karine Vanasse (Jan. 25-27)

THE NIGHTMARE, Dir. Rodney Ascher - World Premiere

Park City at Midnight

What if someone told you that every night when you went to sleep you were not alone? That you were surrounded by dark forces watching you - and that you could wake up paralyzed, completely helpless, with these beings standing next to you? Welcome to the spine-tingling horror/documentary hybrid THE NIGHTMARE from Rodney Ascher, who last rocked Sundance with his portrait of Kubrick-obsessed fandom, ROOM 237. In this film, he uses atmospheric cinematic recreations to get the audience into the heads of everyday people in the most vulnerable situation imaginable: suffering from "sleep paralysis," a terrifying condition in which sufferers regain consciousness but are unable to move or act - and where they find themselves visited by menacing shadow people. The subjects all hail from different backgrounds, but share eerily similar visions of malevolent, near-human beings that grow increasingly aggressive the longer the sleep paralysis goes unchecked.  Afraid to discuss these surprisingly common and extremely realistic visions in waking life, many attribute it to supernatural powers - is this where we first get the legends of the Succubus, Demonic possession? Vampires? Ascher, who has also experienced the condition, brings the intensity of this experience to the screen while maintaining a unique empathy and respect for his subjects, in a unique experience that overlaps the lines between reality and the imagination.  Acquisition title: Preferred Content and Content International. 94m.

Monday, Jan. 26,11:45pm, Library 

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 6:30pm, Redstone Cinema 1

P&I - Wednesday, Jan. 28, 9;30am, Holiday Village 3

Wednesday, Jan. 28, 9:00pm, Tower Theatre (SLC)

Thursday, Jan. 29, 2:30pm, MARC

Friday, Jan. 30, 9:00pm, Broadway Centre Cinema (SLC)

Attending: Director Rodney Ascher

THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER, Dir. Chad Gracia - World Premiere

World Cinema Documentary Competition

Fedor Alexandrovich is a radioactive man. He was four years old in 1986, when he was exposed to the toxic effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown and forced to leave his home. Now 33, an artist in Ukraine, with radioactive strontium in his bones and a singular obsession with the earth-changing catastrophe - why did it actually happen? Was there more to the story than the Soviet government let on? And, most importantly, what did this all have to do with the giant, mysterious steel pyramid now rotting away 2 miles from the disaster site?  A hulking Cold War weapon known as the Duga and nicknamed "the Russian Woodpecker" for the strange, constant clicking radio frequencies that it emits. In Chad Gracia's documentary/conspiracy thriller (from the produers of PUSSY RIOT and THE SQUARE), Alexandrovich returns to the ghost towns in the radioactive Exclusion Zone to try to find answers - and to decide whether to risk his life by revealing them, amid growing clouds of Ukraine's emerging revolution and war. Acquisition title: Cinetic. 82m.

Saturday, Jan. 24, 11:30am, Prospector Square

P&I - Sunday, Jan. 25, 6:00pm, Holiday Village 2

Monday, Jan. 26, 12:30pm, Temple Theatre

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 9:00pm, Tower Theatre (SLC)

Thursday, Jan. 29, 9:00pm, Egyptian Theatre

Friday, Jan. 30, 7:00pm, Holiday Village Cinema 4

Attending: Director Chad Gracia and subjects Fedor Alexandrovich and Artem Ryzhykov (Jan. 22-February 1)

TIG, Dir. Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York - World Premiere

Documentary Premieres

"Good evening, I have cancer," comedian Tig Notaro famously announced in 2012 during a set at a comedy club in Los Angeles. "Everyone having a good time? I have cancer." In just 30 minutes, Notaro used her grave prognosis to create  revealed her grave prognosis with a disarming mixture of humor and vulnerability. Almost overnight, the set became a media sensation, helped by The set became a media sensation and critical smash overnight and, as Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York's new documentary reveals, helped push the beloved comedian past a series of devastating setbacks. Having just recovered from a life-threatening infection and still in mourning over her mother's sudden passing, Notaro's subsequent discovery of bilateral breast cancer left her no choice but to turn profound pain into an ongoing punch line, both on and off the stage. The result is an alternately poignant and playful window into a comedian's process turning her worst fears and anxieties into pure comic gold. Acquisition title: Cinetic. 90m.

*NOTE: TIG NOTARO WILL HOST THE CLOSING NIGHT AWARDS CEREMONY.

Monday, Jan. 26, 5:30pm, MARC

P&I - Tuesday, Jan. 27, 11:30am, Holiday Village 4

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 7:00pm, Redstone 2

Wednesday, Jan. 28, 9:00pm, Yarrow

Thursday, Jan. 29, 3:45pm, Broadway Centre Cinema 3 (SLC)

Sunday, Feb. 1, 11:00am, Yarrow

Attending: Directors Kristina Goolsby and Ashley York, and subject Tig Notaro 

WESTERN, Dir. Bill and Turner Ross - World Premiere

US Documentary Competition

With a singular cinematic perspective, directors Bill and Turner Ross (TCHOUPITOULAS, 45365) are known for capturing dreamy vérité images to create rich portraits of life in American landscapes. They open their latest tale before the storm hits: the people of Eagle Pass, Texas and Piedras Negras, Mexico are joined together to celebrate their harmonious past with a festival that all but throws open the international border. Welcoming the revelers are Chad Foster, the beloved mayor of Eagle Pass, and Martin Wall, a fifth-generation cattleman. As if lifted from a John Ford epic, these characters are all brio and conviction and, at first, unable to see the looming specter of change and its rippling consequences.  Soon though, conflict in the form of emerging cartel violence and strident border patrolling will become impossible to ignore. Confronted with inexorable forces of change, these archetypal heroes face the dawn of a new reality. Produced out of New Orleans by the team behind BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, the aptly titled WESTERN is a beautifully observed modern take on a classic cinematic tradition, and a timely examination of life on the American frontier today-all the more potent because it is true. Acquisition title: Submarine. 92m.

Sunday, Jan. 25, 12:00pm, Temple

P&I - Sunday, Jan. 25, 7:00pm, Holiday Village 4

Monday, Jan. 26, 9:00pm, Sundance Resort

Tuesday, Jan. 27, 9:00am, Yarrow

Thursday, Jan. 29, 5:30pm, MARC

Friday, Jan. 30, 3:00pm, SLC Library (SLC)

Saturday, Jan. 31, 10:00am, Holiday Village 4

Attending: Bill and Turner Ross and subject Martin Wall

PRESS DAYS - Sunday, Jan. 25 and Monday, Jan. 26

THE WOLFPACK, Dir. Rick Crystal Moselle- World Premiere

US Documentary Competition

The six Angulo brothers have spent their entire lives locked away from society in an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Nicknamed "the Wolfpack," they're all exceedingly bright, are homeschooled, have no acquaintances outside their family and have practically never left their home.   All they know of the outside world is gleaned from the films they watch obsessively and recreate meticulously, using elaborate homemade props and costumes. For years this has served as a productive creative outlet and a way to stave off loneliness - but after one of the brothers escapes the apartment (wearing a Michael Meyers mask for protection), the power dynamics in the house are transformed, and all the boys begin to dream of exploring. Armed with unprecedented access into the subjects' world and vast archive of home movies, first-time director Crystal Moselle crafts a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary family, capturing the thrill of the Wolfpack's discoveries without skirting the darker questions of abuse and confinement that weigh upon all of them. THE WOLFPACK charts a fascinating coming of age story and becomes a true example of the power of movies to transform and save lives. Acquisition title: Submarine. 84m.

Sunday, Jan. 25, 9:00pm, Temple Theatre

P&I - Monday, Jan. 26, 1:00pm

Monday, Jan. 26, 11:30pm, Prospector Square

Wednesday, Jan. 28, 3:45pm, Broadway Centre Cinema 3 (SLC)

Thursday, Jan. 29, 11:30am, Library

Friday, Jan. 30, 7:00pm, Redstone 2

Attending: Director Crystal Moselle and subjects the Angulo brothers

PRESS DAYS - Sunday, Jan. 25 and Monday, Jan. 26