Soderbergh, 'Freaky Tales' and a Kristen Stewart double bill headline Sundance 2024

For the record:
1:40 p.m. Dec. 6, 2023: Actor Jay Will was misidentified as Jay Ellis in a photo caption in a previous version of this story.

As last year's treasures — among them "Past Lives," "Passages," "Birth/Rebirth," "Mami Wata," "Eileen," "A Thousand and One" and "Kokomo City" — continue to garner awards attention, the Sundance Film Festival, established in 1984, hits a new milestone this year: the big 4-0. Organizers are planning to celebrate accordingly with a lineup of 82 U.S. and international films and eight episodic titles that balance big names and star power with the indie discoveries the festival prides itself on.

Unveiled today, 2024's edition will run Jan. 18-28 in Park City, Utah, and debut new projects from directors Steven Soderbergh, Debra Granik and Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, as well as celeb documentaries on figures ranging from Brian Eno and WNBA star Sue Bird to Superman himself, Christopher Reeve.

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Then again, maybe 2024 will be the year of the moths — as in the Eastern Himalayan insect stars of Anirban Dutta and Anupama Srinivasan’s World Cinema documentary competition title, “Nocturnes.”

This year's films indicate "a renewal of a boldness and adventurousness and risk-taking in terms of form, story and approach, yet are films that are really entertaining and will resonate emotionally, whether that be laughing or crying or both," said newly appointed festival director and head of public programming Eugene Hernandez, who stepped into the role last fall, replacing Tabitha Jackson.

It's been two years since the pandemic forced Sundance to go virtual in both 2021 and 2022, before 2023's edition brought back in-person moviegoing. For 2024, programmers say they received their largest pool of film submissions to date: a record 17,435 entries from 153 countries or territories.

"I think it signals an enthusiasm," says Hernandez. "When you're a festival like ours, which is a festival of international discovery, to be able to celebrate our 40th edition with such a robust response from the creative community is very exciting."

Plenty of razzle-dazzle arrives in front of and behind the camera this year, as big names lend star power, producing might and directing talent to several films.

Chiwetel Ejiofor, whose feature directorial debut, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," premiered at Sundance in 2019, is back behind the camera with "Rob Peace," the true story of a Newark, N.J., man who attended Yale while living a double life dealing marijuana. It will screen in the Premieres section alongside the 1980s Oakland-set "Freaky Tales," starring Pedro Pascal and Jay Ellis and directed by Boden and Fleck; Nora Fingscheidt's Scotland-based "The Outrun," starring Saoirse Ronan; and Josh Margolin's "Thelma," starring June Squibb and Richard Roundtree, about a 93-year-old out for justice against the phone scammer pretending to be her grandson.

Soderbergh, whose 1989 Sundance-winner "sex, lies, and videotape" helped define American independent film of the era, returns with "Presence," starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and Julia Fox in the tale of a family who moves into a suburban home only to suspect they're not alone. Oscar nominee and fellow Sundance alum Yance Ford ("Strong Island") is back with Premieres section documentary "Power," examining the scope and history of policing in America. And Richard Linklater will bring both his Netflix-acquired "Hitman" and the anthology doc series "God Save Texas," world-premiering in the Episodic section.

Kristen Stewart fans have two films to bookmark: She stars opposite Katy O'Brian in the Midnight selection "Love Lies Bleeding," from director Rose Glass ("Saint Maud"), in which a gym manager's romance with a bodybuilder leads to violence, and also stars opposite Steven Yeun in Sam and Andrew Zuchero's "Love Me," described as the "story of a satellite and a buoy" who meet online and fall in love.

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The latter is among the films in the festival's signature U.S. dramatic competition program, alongside Nathan Silver's "Between the Temples," starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane; Sean Wang's "Dìdi (弟弟)" with Izaac Wang and Joan Chen; Esteban Arango's "Ponyboi," written by and starring River Gallo; Laura Chinn's "Suncoast," starring Woody Harrelson and Laura Linney; and more.

Meanwhile, Dolly De Leon ("Ghostlight," "Between the Temples"), Jena Malone ("Little Death," "Love Lies Bleeding") and Justice Smith ("The American Society of Magical Negroes," "I Saw the TV Glow") are among those actors pulling double duty in not one but two films, while Jesse Eisenberg directs himself and Kieran Culkin in the Emma Stone-produced "A Real Pain" and stars in David Zellner's "Sasquatch Sunset" with Riley Keough and Nathan Zellner.

Fans of Jane Schoenbrun's "We're All Going to the World's Fair" are in for new delights as the filmmaker's reality-bending A24 horror "I Saw the TV Glow," starring Fred Durst and Danielle Deadwyler, premieres in Midnight. Also joining the genre-focused section that gave us another A24 hit, "Talk to Me," last year: Steffen Haars and Flip van der Kuil's "Krazy House," featuring Nick Frost and Alicia Silverstone; Caroline Lindy's "Your Monster" starring recently dropped "Scream" star Melissa Barrera; and Jon Bell's Australian import "The Moogai," about a young Aboriginal mother convinced an evil spirit is after her baby.

In the adventurous, sometimes unclassifiable NEXT section, David Schwimmer stars in the Darren Aronofsky-produced "Little Death," from writer-director Jack Begert; Jazmin Renée Jones' doc "Seeking Mavis Beacon" searches for a lost icon of the ’80s; and Michael Fassbender appears in the Belfast-set "Kneecap," directed by Rich Peppiatt.

Screening in the U.S. documentary competition are Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev's Ukraine-set "Porcelain War"; Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie's "Sugarcane," about the investigation into abuse and missing children at an Indian residential school; Stephen Maing and Brett Story's Amazon workers labor doc "Union"; and J.M. Harper's "As We Speak," profiling the Bronx rap artist Kemba.

The Premieres section, home to the fest's highest-profile titles, also will feature an intriguing array of documentaries, from Chris Smith's musical profile "DEVO" to "Girls State," the follow-up to Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss' riveting 2020 "Boys State." Nonfiction veteran Dawn Porter profiles the late, great Luther Vandross in the Jamie Foxx-produced "Luther: Never Too Much," and Josh Greenbaum follows comedy star Will Ferrell as he embarks on a road trip with a longtime friend who has come out as trans in "Will & Harper."

Over in the World Cinema dramatic competition, audiences will find the reunion of "The Worst Person in the World" duo Renate Reinsve and Anders Danielsen Lie in "Handling the Undead," by Thea Hvistendahl. (In Premieres, Reinsve also appears in Aaron Schimberg's "A Different Man," her first English-language performance.) The section, as with the U.S. dramatic and doc competitions, introduces a new class of first-time filmmakers including Jianjie Lin's "Brief History of a Family"; Shuchi Talati's "Girls Will Be Girls"; Raha Amirfazli's "In the Land of Brothers"; and Amrou Al-Kadhi's "Layla."

Said director of programming Kim Yutani, "Striking that balance between veterans who keep challenging themselves and brand-new filmmakers who are just breaking new ground shows the never-ending quest for boldness and creativity, and that is really the beauty of this year's program."

The growing Episodic section brings notable fiction and nonfiction series to Sundance, including director Dana Adam Shapiro's "Better Angels: The Gospel According to Tammy Faye," which boasts Elton John and David Furnish among its executive producers and an interview with "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" Oscar winner Jessica Chastain. Granik will debut episodes from "Conbody vs. Everybody," about former incarceree Coss Marte's prison-inspired gyms; and Michael John Warren's "LOLLA: The Story of Lollapalooza" chronicles the birth of the iconic ’90s music festival.

One of this year's emerging themes is AI, an omnipresent topic that found its way into both fiction and nonfiction programs as well as the New Frontiers section, where "Eno," Gary Hustwit's generative documentary on Brian Eno, promises to be "different every time it's shown."

"Such a huge part of what we do as the festival is bring conversations to larger audiences," said Yutani. "When we're looking at films like 'Love Machina,' which is almost a classic love story set within this documentary, how AI plays such an important part in this love story is really fascinating. And then you see a film like 'Eternal You' in our world documentary competition, that also digs in deep into AI."

Adding pomp to the festivities, an opening-night gala will award the previously announced inaugural Trailblazer Award to "Oppenheimer" helmer Christopher Nolan, who once upon a time won the Waldo Salt screenwriting trophy (with brother Jonathan) for his 2000 independent thriller "Memento." Also at the event, "Past Lives" director Celine Song and "The Eternal Memory" filmmaker Maite Alberdi, both 2023 alumni attracting award season notice this year, will receive the festival's Vanguard Awards.

"The opportunity to celebrate 40 editions of the festival allows you to look back at the incredible rich history of this festival and the careers that it has launched," said Joana Vicente, Sundance Institute CEO.

This year's edition will again embrace those watching remotely from home. After the success of virtual screenings in 2021 and 2022 and last year's hybrid edition, select titles will be made available online during the second week of the 2024 festival. That means on-the-ground Sundancers will still get first crack at stoking the all-important buzz around film premieres, but the hybrid format will ensure that films are accessible to the wider at-home audience of fans, press and industry people not traveling to snowy Utah.

"We love that the digital has really created accessibility, and that we have audiences across the U.S. and press and industry internationally being able to participate," said Vicente. "But also we wanted to prioritize the in-person that first week, that people need to come to Sundance and experience the premieres of the films and being there for the conversations that start at Sundance."

Diversity and inclusion, as well as the Institute's talent-fostering programs, remain priorities. According to Sundance, 2024's films hail from 24 countries and 40% are from first-time feature filmmakers. Eleven of the projects went through the Sundance Institute's development programs.

Citing self-reported data, organizers say that 46% of this year's feature films were directed by female-identifying filmmakers, 5% were directed by nonbinary filmmakers and 45% by filmmakers of color. Also, 23% of features were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as LGBTQ+, 7% were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as transgender and 6% were directed by one or more filmmakers who identify as a person with a disability.

And given that past Sundance festivals have served as the backdrop for political action and activism, festival leaders are mindful of creating an atmosphere of free expression as the 2024 edition unfolds amid tense world events.

"At the same time, we want it to be safe and respectful and inclusive," said Vicente. "We want to make sure that people see the space that we create as one of creative expression, possibility and positivity. We will do what we can to make sure that people can do what they want to do and express themselves in a very safe way."

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.