The 41st annual Sundance Film Festival kicks off Thursday in Park City, Utah, with a heady slate of 90 feature films from around the world. Each film will also screen in nearby Salt Lake City at least once during the festival, which runs through February 2.
Long at the forefront of breaking out the best and boldest in LGBTQ cinema, Sundance will once again bring the goods, with 15 dramatic and documentary features on the exciting and largely upbeat slate.
“The list is really celebratory,” said Sundance programmer Ash Hoyle. “Sometimes the weird community, we’re really good at looking at and documenting our own stories and our own struggles, and that’s certainly at play with a lot of these, but the tone this year is overwhelmingly really optimistic and really celebratory.”
Jennifer Lopez stars opposite Diego Luna in an extravagant musical remake of the 1985 weirdo classic “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” while Bowen Yang co-stars as Lily Gladstone in a reimagining of the 1993 gay favorite “The Wedding Party.”
A host of returning Sundance directors and LGBTQ audience favorites will also debut their latest works, including Ira Sachs (“Peter Hujar’s Day”), Zackary Drucker (“Elevated Scrutiny”) and Elegance Bratton (“Move NOW Body: “The Birth of House” ).
Last year’s Sundance Film Festival debuted several of the year’s most acclaimed LGBTQ titles, including Jane Schoenbrun’s “I Sea The TV Glow,” which recently picked up nine Dorian Award nominations from Galeca, the Society of Entertainment Critics LGBTQ+.
“I think this shows how audiences crave something different and movies that are breaking the mold and filmmakers like Jane who are willing to take risks in their work,” said Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.
Fortunately for those who can’t attend the festival, more than half of this year’s LGBTQ titles will also be available for ticketed online screening starting January 30.
Here are the LGBTQ features premiering this year:
“We’re starting the festival on the first day with Sophie Hyde’s latest film,” Yutani said. “She’s had many films at the festival, most recently ‘Good Luck to You, Big Leo,’ but this feels like her most personal film as it looks at intergenerational relationships, with a character who is a filmmaker played by Olivia Colman. The “Sophie’s own son, Aud Mason-Hyde, is one of the main actors, which adds another layer of things like a close personal story. It’s a really fun film: it’s set in Amsterdam; it’s John Lithgow like you’ve never seen him before.” .
“Particularly exciting is Sam Feder’s new film that follows Chase Strangio, the ACLU attorney who went to the Supreme Court for litigation this year,” Hoyle said. “It’s just one of many really prescient and urgent films at the festival this year. Really grateful for Sam’s voice on the show and being able to really meet the moment that we’re in the States this year.”
“This is definitely one that’s already buzzing and people are going to be really excited,” Hoyle said of the film about two young people who meet in a twin grieving group and form an unlikely bromance. “Talk about bold: this is a movie about messy dark weirdness, with a really interesting angle. It’s funny, it’s sexy, and it’s actually one of a slew of films in America’s dramatic competition this year that are written, directed by, and star a singular voice, James Sweeney.” (available online)
“It has all the right elements, like the fun, starry cast [including Yang and Gladstone] and direction by Andrew Ahn, who made the beloved ‘Spa Night’ and ‘Fire Island,’ of course, and co-wrote the script with James Schamus, who was the writer of the original ‘Wedding Reception.’ “It is not a direct remake, but rather uses the Ang Lee movie as a launch release to tell its own story.”
Already a 1985 queer film classic and a 1993 Tony Sweeping musical, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is reinvented here as a musical film from director Bill Condon (“Dreamgirls,” “Gods and Monsters”) starring Lopez and Moon. “This movie has such incredible performances and old school Hollywood grandeur. We couldn’t be happier that this is also one of the strongest titles at the festival.”
“This Elegance Bratton doctor looks at the history of house music and its birthplace in Chicago and, of course, the strange black community that the scene burst out of,” Hoyle said. “This movie has an incredible cast of characters, people who really touched and started the scene.
This documentary feature from Zackary Drucker, who co-directed 2023’s “The Stroll,” explores the lives of two legendary transgender women: English model April Ashley and French singer Amanda Lear. “This is a really fun title that looks at two divergent lives and how they explore and conflict with each other in terms of how a person navigates the queer community,” Hoyle said, adding that the film is a “fascinating story and a rich look at trans history.”
Hoyle said that this narrative feature “feels so nuanced to a degree that it’s really not something I’ve seen before. It explores spaces of gay male affinity and how trans and non-trans men fit into them. It’s also a romantic love story, but No shy away from the parts of love and infatuation that are really close to jealousy and competition. What does that look like?
“Ira Sachs [‘Keep the Lights On,’ ‘Passages’] He is one of the filmmakers who has played Sundance the most, if not the most,” Yutani said. “This one appealed to us because it is very different from his other work. I think one of the exciting things about IRA is how it continues to challenge itself and work in almost different ways. This is adapted from an interview with artist Peter Hujar, and is basically a monologue that Ben Whishaw delivers so exquisitely. This is just a special film that transports you to a different time, a different place, a specific place, and it’s done with such a delicate touch.”
“This movie is gut-wrenching,” Hoyle said. “It’s a beautiful portrait of Colorado Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson, who is a real talent and who is navigating a really difficult cancer diagnosis with her girlfriend. It’s a beautiful portrait of their relationship and their kind of loving intellectual approach to the dying process. And then, of course, it’s interwoven with his poetry, which moves relentlessly. This is not one to miss, but not one to attend without a full pack of Kleenex.”
This documentary about the life of astronaut Sally Ride “really has everything,” Hoyle said. “It has a queer love story, it has an analysis of the implications, and it’s a great way to track the way being out has changed in the public eye over the years since Sally Ride’s career. Our own space program, but especially right now, when we see gender politics playing out in that space very strongly.”
“This is a semi-autobiographical film about a young man who returns to his hometown in India and is struggling to be true to his own identity with his family,” Yutani said. “The kind of pastoral gay story it’s telling is a really special one. It’s probably one of the most explicit gay films I’ve seen in India as well.”
This documentary feature “focuses on a doctor in Milan, Dr. Bini, and we get a very intimate view of how he communicates with his patients, some of whom are grappling with their gender identity,” Yutani said. “If this movie offers anything, it’s offering optimism and what medical treatment for all people could be. And it’s really extraordinary to see this doctor at work.”
“This is a period piece about the ’90s, a fun look at the very recent story about a plainclothes police officer who is rounding up gay men in mall bathrooms and then ends up exploring his own sexuality through the role play that’s involved,” Hoyle said. “One of the things we responded to about this film is how exquisitely it is made. We were very excited to see a first-time filmmaker executing technically at the level that Carmen [Emmi] It is in a first characteristic. It’s beautifully done, really precise and really interesting narrative terrain.”
This feature film from Colombia centers on a group of misfits who run a dive bar that doubles as purgatory, according to the film’s description on Sundance’s website. Yutani described it as a “very engaging film with this strange gothic punk feel” and said that it “completely builds its own landscape that is totally unique.”
