Must Watch Documentaries at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival

Every year in snowy Park City, Utah, the industry gathers for the first major film festival of the year, which kicks off another 365 days of stunning storytelling.

If you ask any early career filmmaker which festival they dream of screening in, they're likely to reply quickly and confidently with one word: Sundance.

Having been the launchpad for many prolific filmmakers such as the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Chloé Zhao, Todd Solondz, Ava DuVernay, and Richard Linklater, Sundance has earned its reputation for being a storyteller’s dream.

While its fictional offerings are often the draw, Sundance always showcases a wealth of compelling documentary films that become a selection of the best non-fiction pieces of the year. Many go on to be nominated at the Oscars the year after their Sundance debut, just as Fire of Love, Navalny, and All that Breathes have done in recent years.

Ranging from slice-of-life stories to necessary calls to action on issues affecting communities around the globe, the non-fiction categories at the festival always promise quality stories. This year's line-up is no different.

The 2024 festival offers 45 non-fiction stories for audiences to choose from, but here's a closer look at seven to keep your eye on.

Agent of Happiness

This intriguing study of whether or not you can measure happiness follows the agents whose job it is to travel door to door to meet people and measure their contentment.

The lead subject, Amber, is 40 years old, living with his mother and dreaming of a life filled with love and happiness for himself. Through Amber, we meet citizens of Bhutan who all walk different paths. The film uniquely critiques the idea of happiness, offering the sentiment that even if we all lived a similar existence, our levels of happiness would still vary.

It's a quiet, meditative film from Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó, who describe it as "a bittersweet tale that takes place in an environment which is still enigmatic and untouched, disguised from the eyes of a wider world.” They continue: “We believe that it is also important to produce stories with uplifting, heart-warming potential in difficult times. This is one of our responsibilities as artists."

Agent of Happiness is screening in person on January 19, 20, 25 and 26 – an online release is available from January 25 to 28.

As We Speak

J.M. Harper gets his first feature as director, which follows rap artist Kemba, who explores the growing weaponization of rap lyrics in the United States criminal justice system and abroad. It's a vibrant film full of life, using interesting techniques that make it feel like a hybrid of fact and fiction.

Harper is in conversation with many ideas throughout the film, which speaks to how he sees himself as a filmmaker: "Films could transport me across time and space, suspend my reality and generate empathy toward profoundly different people,” he says. “To make films meant taking apart and rebuilding life from its very fabric." Harper takes apart the idea of what a documentary should be and pieces it back together in this "story about artists and rulebreakers".

As We Speak is screening in person on January 22, 23, 24 and 26 - it’ll be available online from January 25 to 28.

Daughters

Daughters is a stunning piece from filmmakers Natalie Rae and Angela Patton, who dedicated eight years of their lives to telling this story. Following four young girls as they come of age with fathers who are incarcerated, we watch as their lives are impacted by the system, seeing their relationships evolve and change as the years go by.

Aubrey, Santana, Raziah, and Ja'Ana are such compelling protagonists, and it is so easy to invest in their lives. The less said about Daughters, the better. It deserves to be experienced wholly, without expectation, as it forms you into a more compassionate, empathetic person.

Daughters is screening in person on January 22, 23, 25 and 26 – it’s available online from January 25 to 28.

Frida

Directed and edited by Carla Gutiérrez (RBG, Julia) and produced by Imagine Documentaries and TIME Studios in association with Storyville Films, Frida is an intimate look at the life of Frida Kahlo.

Covering more than four decades of the artist's life, Frida is formed of exclusive materials never shown to the general public. The film aims to give audiences a look into the mind of the prolific artist through her own words. "We had this opportunity to go much deeper and present the complicated, messy person she was outside the image or symbol she'd become," Gutiérrez says.

Through the extensive archive the filmmakers have amassed, they have formed a comprehensive portrait that is intimate in visuals and story and gives agency to its subject.

Frida is screening in person on January 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24 and 25 – you can watch it online from January 25 to 28.

God Save Texas: Hometown Prison

Richard Linklater returns to the festival that kickstarted his career with this personal story about the city he grew up in. His homecoming is a study of how place is embedded into the American consciousness as he navigates through Huntsville, Texas, a city at the heart of an expansive prison industrial complex.

It's a beautiful place with charming quirks, stained by its legacy of having the most active death row in the United States. Linklater puts himself in the story by connecting with people who grew up knowing and interrogating the system that has played on his mind since he was a young boy. It's a highly comprehensive study on the legacy of the death penalty in Texas while also serving as a time capsule of the current climate of North America. God Save Texas: Hometown Prison is the first of a trilogy directed by three distinct filmmakers.

God Save Texas: Hometown Prison is screening in person on January 23, 27 and 28.

Seeking Mavis Beacon

Jazmine Jones and Olivia McKayla Ross set out on a search for the most recognizable woman in technology: Mavis Beacon. The face of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, Renee L'esperance, has become an enigma since she was paid a fee of $500 for the use of her image. In 26 years, no one has reported sightings of her, and now Jones and Ross are determined to uncover the truth behind an unsung hero in Black history.

"This film is not only an offering for Mavis Beacon and the women who lent their likeness to her character, but an expression of gratitude to all of the unseen bodies who make our technology possible," Jones says.

Both a coming-of-age story and a tale of friendship, Jones and Ross create a beautifully crafted contemporary exploration of our relationship to digital landscapes and "the right to be forgotten".

"Let the record show we were young and reckless and dared to dream of our own world when the rest of the world was locked down," Jazmine Jones says.

Seeking Mavis Beacon is screening in person on January 20, 21, 23 and 26 – it’s available online from January 25 to 28.

Union

Union is a unique look at the fight to unionize and the challenges of taking on one of the world's largest companies. Stephen Maing and Brett Story follow a group of current and former Amazon employees in Staten Island as they form the Amazon Labor Union (ALU).

Beginning in the Spring of 2021, Maing and Story journeyed with the workers through their trials and tribulations, offering insight into the highs and lows of activism and the system that works against them. It's a labor of love, both jubilant and critical in its approach.

Union is screening in person on January 21, 22, 23 and 25 – available online from January 25 to 28.

For tickets and further information on this year's non-fiction program click here.