Oscars 2025: Awards contenders from the 2024 Sundance Film Festival

Matthew Jacobs
·7 min read
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Back at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Celine Song’s debut feature, “Past Lives,” premiered to rave reviews and early speculation about its awards chances. That turned out to be prescient. One year later, “Past Lives” is a 2024 Oscars Best Picture nominee, while Song is a nominee for Best Original Screenplay. So with the 2024 Sundance Film Festival at its end, what better time than now to speculate about what next year’s “Past Lives” will be? Whether anything on 2024’s Sundance roster can scale those heights is up for debate, but plenty of promising titles could compete for acting and screenplay prizes. The documentary lineup was robust this year, which makes sense: Six of the last 10 Best Documentary Feature Film winners got their start at Sundance. 

Below is a sample of Sundance highlights that could be award contenders this time next year. 

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Narrative features

“Between the Temples”: It’s hard to fathom, but Carol Kane hasn’t received an Oscar nomination since her career-minting role in 1975’s wonderful “Hester Street.” Although “Between the Temples” is more of an out-and-out comedy, it, too, delves into Jewish immersion. Jason Schwartzman plays a sad-sack cantor who agrees to prepare his former elementary school music teacher (Kane) for an adult bat mitzvah. At the same time, his busybody mothers (Dolly de Leon and Caroline Aaron) set him up with their rabbi’s daughter (Madeline Weinstein).

“Didi”: A blend of “Eighth Grade” and “Minding the Gap,” two awards-season favorites from 2018, “Didi” is an observant coming-of-age comedy with equal parts charm and heart. It’s director Sean Wang‘s first feature, but he’s already an Oscar nominee this year for his documentary short “Nai Nai & Wài Pō.” The film makes a star out of Izaac Wang, previously seen in “Clifford the Big Red Dog” and the Disney+ series “The Santa Clauses.” The younger Wang plays a middle schooler in the MySpace-happy world of 2008 struggling to develop his sense of self. “Didi” left Sundance with a jury prize and an audience award. 

“Exhibiting Forgiveness”: Painter Titus Kaphar‘s directorial debut is built on the strength of its performances. André Holland plays an artist preparing to mount a new exhibit when his abusive father (John Earl Jelks) re-enters his life. Holland’s mother (an exemplary Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) urges him to look past his dad’s wrongs, but absolution is no easy burden.

“Good One”: This is the kind of movie that’s practically made for the Independent Spirit Awards. India Donaldson‘s directorial debut was one of Sundance’s surprise hits, at once brisk, sensitive, and lightly harrowing. Lily Collias (“Palm Trees and Power Lines”) plays a college-bound teenager enduring a sometimes tense camping trip with her divorced father (James Le Gros) and his avuncular best friend (Danny McCarthy, recently seen on HBO’s “Somebody Somewhere”). 

“The Outrun”: Saoirse Ronan has had a quiet couple of years, but she’ll soon appear in Steve McQueen‘s World War II movie “Blitz” (coming out this year via Apple) and this adaptation of Amy Liptrot‘s popular memoir. Here, she’s a recovering alcoholic with a volatile streak. It would be her fifth Oscar nomination. 

“A Real Pain”: Sundance’s Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award is a mixed bag when it comes to predicting its winners’ future success, but the prize’s Oscar-nominated recipients include “Memento,” “The Squid and the Whale,” and “Winter’s Bone.” Perhaps this dramedy starring, directed by, and written by Jesse Eisenberg can join the roster. He and Kieran Culkin play cousins trekking to Poland to explore family history up close after their grandmother dies. Eisenberg plays the duo’s more reserved half, which gives Culkin the meatier part. He’s dynamite as a moody live wire who can’t figure out where to direct his resentments. As the actor’s post-“Succession” career kicks off, this could be his next big moment. Multiple studios bid on the film at the festival, with Searchlight Pictures paying a reported $10 million for the rights.

“Thelma”: It’s probably too zippy to make much of an awards dent, but June Squibb is bound to win plaudits for her fun portrayal of a 93-year-old who sets out to avenge telephone scammers after they fleece $10,000 from her. The movie belongs to Squibb, though it’s sort of a two-hander with ever-charming “White Lotus” breakout Fred Hechinger, who plays her devoted grandson.

Documentaries

“Daughters”: Perhaps the most powerful title on the Sundance lineup was Angela Patton and Natalie Rae‘s film about a father-daughter dance held inside a Washington, D.C., prison. Refreshingly disinterested in the crimes that sent the men to jail, “Daughters” is a captivating testament to human connection, showing how relationships develop when people are physically torn apart. The movie reveals upsetting truths about American incineration practices, but it’s no fiery exposé. Instead, Patton and Rae follow the dads and their girls as they prepare to unite for the event, including all the complicated emotions it evokes.

“Ibelin”: Keep the Kleenex handy for “The Painter and the Thief” director Benjamin Ree‘s latest, which won one of Sundance’s world-cinema prizes. “Ibelin” is a touching snapshot of a Norwegian gamer whose parents assumed his degenerative muscular disease had isolated him from the world. When he died at 25, he left behind his internet password, unlocking a trove of friends who adored their son. This was Sundance’s first on-the-ground acquisition, with Netflix planning to release the film later this year. 

“Look Into My Eyes”: The love-it-or-leave-it spirituality of psychics gets an intimate treatment in Lana Wilson‘s follow-up to “Miss Americana” and “Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.” Wilson follows a handful of New York City mediums as they perform readings and explain where their mystical callings originated. Whether anything they say is real is largely beside the point — It’s touching to see strangers connect so deeply. 

“Power”: Netflix had already picked up Yance Ford‘s documentary essay about contemporary policing in the United States before Sundance began. Ford, previously Oscar-nominated for co-directing 2017’s “Strong Island,” examines how American authority became so centered on law enforcement and what that means for people of color in particular. 

“Skywalkers: A Love Story”: Since the Oscars loved the daredevil humanism of “Free Solo” a few years ago, maybe they’ll also fall for the skyscraper-climbing couple at the center of “Skywalkers,” which Netflix snatched up the film at end of the festival. 

“Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story”: The Oscars’ documentary branch hasn’t tended to favor celebrity profiles, as evidenced when shortlisted movies about Michael J. Fox and Jon Batiste missed 2024’s final ballot. But this moving film about original “Superman” actor Christopher Reeve seems destined to go up, up, and away given Warner Bros. Discovery paid upwards of $14 million to acquire it. Co-directors Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui previously earned two BAFTA nominations for 2018’s “McQueen.” 

“Union”: In vérité style, co-directors Stephen Maing and Brett Story capture current and former Amazon employees’ ambitious effort to initiate the mega-company’s first union. The constant pushback they face despite Amazon’s vast riches and subpar working conditions makes the film a profoundly upsetting chroof about American labor. 

“Will & Harper”: This triumphant crowd-pleaser was one of Sundance’s buzziest premieres. It’s a story about the friendship between Will Ferrell and former “Saturday Night Live” writer Harper Steele. After Steele tells Ferrell she’s transgender, the two of them take a cross-country road trip together to discuss her transition. Josh Greenbaum (“Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar”) directs the fly-on-the-wall film with a warm, open heart that seems guaranteed to make it a huge hit with viewers.

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