The 2022 Sundance Film Festival, taking place online and in person from January 20-30, boasts a slate that includes 19 science or technology-related works. Our selection is below, with descriptions quoted from the Festival’s program. Among these works is the winner of the 2022 Sloan Feature Film Prize, AFTER YANG, which had its world premiere at Cannes 2021. Stay tuned for coverage of the Festival.
SPOTLIGHT
AFTER YANG. Written and directed by Kogonada. Starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Justin H. Min. “In the near future, a father and daughter try to save the life of Yang, their beloved robotic family member.”
AFTER YANG
PREMIERES
CALL JANE. Directed by Phyllis Nagy. Written by Hayley Schore and Roshan Sethi. Starring Elizabeth Banks, Sigourney Weaver, Chris Messina, and Kate Mara. “Chicago, 1968: after having a life-saving secret abortion, a suburban housewife seeks to give women access to healthy and safe abortions through an underground collective of women known as ‘Jane.’”
TO THE END. Directed by Rachel Lears. “Stopping the climate crisis is a question of political courage, and the clock is ticking. Over three years of turbulence and crisis, four remarkable young women of color fight for a Green New Deal, and ignite a historic shift in U.S. climate politics.”
TO THE END
U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION
DUAL. Written and directed by Riley Stearns. Staring Karen Gillan, Aaron Paul, and Beulah Koale. “After receiving a terminal diagnosis, Sarah commissions a clone of herself to ease the loss for her friends and family. When she makes a miraculous recovery, her attempt to have her clone decommissioned fails, and leads to a court-mandated duel to the death.”
U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
AFTERSHOCK. Directed and produced by Paula Eiselt and Tonya Lewis Lee. “Following the preventable deaths of their partners due to childbirth complications, two bereaved fathers galvanize activists, birth-workers and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises of our time – the U.S. maternal health crisis.”
FIRE OF LOVE. Directed by Sara Dosa. “Intrepid scientists and lovers Katia & Maurice Krafft died in a volcanic explosion doing the very thing that brought them together: unraveling the mysteries of volcanoes by capturing the most explosive imagery ever recorded. A doomed love triangle between Katia, Maurice and volcanoes, told through their archival footage.”
FIRE OF LOVE
TIKTOK, BOOM. Directed by Shalini Kantayya. “With TikTok now crowned the world’s most downloaded app, these are the personal stories of a cultural phenomenon, told through an ensemble cast of Gen-Z natives, journalists and experts alike. This film seeks to answer, ‘why is an app, best known for people dancing, the target of so much controversy?’”
WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION
BRIAN AND CHARLES. Directed by Jim Archer. Written by David Earl and Chris Hayward. Starring David Earl, Chris Hayward, Louise Brealey, and Jamie Michie. “An endearing outlier, Brian lives alone in a Welsh valley, inventing oddball contraptions that seldom work. After finding a discarded mannequin head, Brian gets an idea. Three days, a washing machine, and sundry spare parts later, he’s invented Charles, an artificially intelligent robot who learns English from a dictionary and proves a charming, cheeky companion.”
BRIAN AND CHARLES
THE COW WHO SANG A SONG INTO THE FUTURE. Written and directed by Francisca Alegría. Written by Fernanda Urrejola and Manuela Infante. Starring Leonor Varela, Mia Maestro, Alfredo Castro, and Marcial Tagle. “In a river in the south of Chile, fish are dying due to pollution from the nearby cellulose factory. Amid their floating bodies, long-deceased Magdalena bubbles up to the surface gasping for air, bringing with her old wounds and a wave of family secrets.”
WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION
ALL THAT BREATHES. Directed and produced by Shaunak Sen. “Against the darkening backdrop of Delhi's apocalyptic air and escalating violence, two brothers devote their lives to protect one casualty of the turbulent times: the bird known as the Black Kite.”
WE MET IN VIRTUAL REALITY. Written, directed, and produced by Joe Hunting. “Filmed entirely inside the world of VR, this vérité documentary captures the excitement and surprising intimacy of a burgeoning cultural movement, demonstrating the power of online connection in an isolated world.”
INDIE EPISODIC PROGRAM
INSTANT LIFE. Directed by Mark Becker and Aaron Schock. “Destitute without electricity and running water, Yolanda Signorelli Von Braunhut has lost control of her late husband Harold’s iconic Amazing Live Sea Monkeys novelty. Yet she alone knows their secret formula, and from her crumbling estate on the Potomac, Yolanda wages legal and existential battles to fully win them back.”
NEW FRONTIER
GONDWANA. Lead Artists: Ben Joseph Andrews and Emma Roberts. “A durational VR experience that runs over 24 hours, and a constantly-evolving virtual ecosystem chronicling the possible futures of the world’s oldest tropical rainforest, the Daintree. Powered by climate data, each showing is unrepeatable and speculative, a meditation on time, change and loss in an irreplaceable landscape.”
SEVEN GRAMS. Lead Artist: Karim Ben Khelifa. “An entirely new way for people to understand the human cost that went into producing their smartphones. This project brings the Democratic Republic of Congo’s tragic mining industry straight to the smartphone that its mineral resources helped make, via an app on both IOS and Android systems.”
SURROGATE. Lead Artist: Lauren Lee McCarthy. “How do we relate to the future while living in a world in crisis? Amidst climate change, inequity, and pandemic, it’s no longer possible to view ourselves as separate from past and future. How much control should we have over a birthing person’s body, and a life before it’s born?”
THEY DREAM IN MY BONES - INSEMNOPEDY II. Lead Artist: Faye Formisano. “Immersed on virtual veils, this VR360 experience tells the story of Roderick Norman, a researcher in onirogenetics, the science he founded, which makes it possible to extract dreams from an unidentified skeleton at the frontier of gender and the human.”
INTERNATIONAL LIVE ACTION SHORT FILMS
RECKLESS. Written and directed by Pella Kågerman. Starring ElleKari Bergerud and Amed Bozan. “Stockholm, 2121: an underwater city is blasted into the bedrock. In a society on the verge of being crushed by mounting water pressure, Nikki's highest wish is to get back together with her ex-boyfriend.”
U.S. NONFICTION SHORT FILMS
CHILLY AND MILLY. Written and directed by William David Caballero. “Exploring the director's father's chronic health problems, as a diabetic with kidney failure, and his mother's role as his eternal caretaker. A combination of 3D-modeled/composited characters, with cinema verité scenes from a documentary shot over 13 years ago.”
$75,000
INTERNATIONAL NONFICTION SHORT FILMS
$75,000. Written and directed by Moïse Togo. “Highlighting the biological aspect of albinism, a genetic and hereditary abnormality that affects not only pigmentation, but also and above all the physical and moral conditions of people with albinism.”
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