Emilia Clarke kicked off the first in-person Sundance festival in three years, when independent filmmakers and Hollywood celebrities donned their winter boots and returned to the Utah mountains.
Sundance, co-founded by Robert Redford, has released innumerable independent films, but its absence has been acutely felt at its wintery, high-altitude location in Park City ever since Covid forced subsequent editions online.
“This is my first Sundance festival. Clarke, whose “The Pod Generation” film debut was the highlight of Thursday’s opening night, exclaimed, “I am ecstatic that everyone is as excited as I am.”
“It’s also vitally crucial for independent film. We must preserve it,” she told AFP.
Clarke co-stars with Chiwetel Ejiofor in “The Pod Generation,” a near-future social satire in which a firm has produced a detachable egg-shaped “womb” that couples can use to carry their offspring to term externally.
The system is promoted to spare women the physical complications of pregnancy, while keeping the inventor’s female staff at the office and free from “distractions.”
Clarke stated, “There are so many aspects of this film that raise so many fundamental questions that I believe many of us will be grappling with right now.”
I believe it is timely, significant, and lovely.
Clarke is one of dozens of Hollywood actors who will go to Park City for premieres of high-wattage pictures, despite the fact that Sundance is dominated by low-budget flicks.
Daisy Ridley, a “Star Wars” alumna, debuted “Sometimes I Think About Dying” on Thursday, a low-key independent drama in which she plays a painfully shy office worker whose calm life is disrupted by the entrance of a dynamic new coworker.
On Friday, Jonathan Majors will debut a much anticipated performance in “Magazine Dreams,” which is set in the perilously competitive world of amateur bodybuilding.
Anne Hathaway stars in the weekend film “Eileen,” about a young prison clerk who befriends a gorgeous counselor with a sinister secret.
Emilia Jones returns to the festival that screened her Oscar-winning best picture “CODA” for the first time with “Cat Person,” an adaptation of a New Yorker short story, and “Fairyland,” a film based on a best-selling memoir about San Francisco’s AIDS crisis.
This year, anticipation for Sundance’s comeback has been exceptionally high despite — or because of — the challenges currently facing the market for films geared at adults and arthouse cinemas.
Sundance CEO Joana Vicente stated at a Thursday news conference, “It’s so exciting to be back on the mountain.” Vicente was referring to the festival’s posh ski resort home.
Sundance distinguishes itself from other film festivals, according to program director Kim Yutani, due to the innumerable instances of “directors landing their next gig or people meeting their next collaborators on the shuttle” between locations.
Nicole Newnham, whose previous Oscar-nominated documentary “Crip Camp” debuted at the last in-person festival in 2020, told AFP that returning felt “surreal.”
Her most recent documentary, “The Disappearance of Shere Hite,” recounts the remarkable but forgotten story of the author of “The Hite Report” – a groundbreaking survey on female sexuality that sold millions of copies but sparked a fierce backlash from conservatives.
Alongside “Judy Blume Forever,” which chronicles how the American novelist guided a generation of young girls through puberty, but was also attacked by activists, it is one of several big documentaries released this year that deal with sex and politics.
Brooke Shields will attend Sundance as the subject of the documentary “Pretty Baby,” which examines the sexualization of young girls through the lens of the supermodel’s own path.
“I am truly thrilled to be featured in this year’s event… “It’s very encouraging that there are so many films about the sexuality of women and women’s issues,” said Newnham.
Jason Momoa narrates “Deep Rising” on Friday, an eye-opening and distressing look at the race to harvest the ocean seafloor for rare metals in the name of advancing the “so-called green revolution.”
Other famous and topical documentary themes include documentaries on the Ukraine and Iranian women.
The Sundance Film Festival 2023 concludes on January 29.
»New film by Emilia Clarke opens at the Sundance Film Festival«