The online portion of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival was held from January 30 through February 2. We saw ten films, plus several short programs. There was nothing that I thought was absolutely terrific, but most things were pretty good, and there was nothing that we actively disliked.
My favorite things in the festival were Andre is an Idiot, Omaha, and Zodiac Killer Project. By Design, Love, Brooklyn, and Mr. Nobody Against Putin were also quite good.
- ANDRE IS AN IDIOT: This is a documentary about a man (Andre) who delays his first colonoscopy, and, when he finally has it (a year and a half late), discovers that he has stage 4 colon cancer. He decides to make a movie about the story to prevent anyone else from making the same mistake he made. The story ends pretty much the way you would expect, but the journey there includes a lot of good humor. You’ll likely find yourself laughing more than you’ll end up crying.
- LUZ: There are two parallel storylines here: in one, a small-time criminal in Chongqing, China, searches for his long-estranged daughter, while in the other story a young woman from Hong Kong travels to Paris to reconnect with her stepmother (played by Isabelle Huppert), a noted dancer and the muse of her late father, who was a noted artist. The stories connect through a massively multiplayer virtual reality game called Luz. The film has a real William Gibson vibe, what with the virtual reality and lots of scenes of cities at night with lots of neon. It’s nice to look at, but there’s really not enough story here. Nothing really resolves, and you’ll likely go away unsatisfied.
- BY DESIGN: This is probably the strangest thing we saw at Sundance. A woman, played by Juliette Lewis, becomes obsessed with a chair she finds in a fancy store; so much so that she becomes the chair, much to the consternation of her friends and family, who can’t figure out what’s going on. To make things even stranger, there are interpretive dance interludes explaining some of the action. I’ve mentioned in the past that I particularly like the kinds of films that I’ve never seen before, and this is one of those films. I liked it a lot; Deborah maybe not so much. In his review of the film, the rogerebert.com critic said “That is a film for someone but that someone is not me.” I think that someone was me.
- OMAHA: A drama about a father (John Magaro) and two kids during the financial crisis of 2008 who are evicted from their Nevada home and take a road trip, eventually ending up in the city of the film’s title. The father tries to show his kids a good time on the road, but it’s never clear until the end why he’s going to Omaha or what his goal is. The film hits pretty hard. The cast does a great job (the kids are surprisingly good), and the screenplay says just enough but not too much. This one will probably be in theaters, and you should try to find it.
- ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT: A documentary by a filmmaker who was in negotiations to make a true-crime documentary about the Zodiac killer based on a second-tier memoir by one of the case’s investigators. The negotiation falls through, so this documentary has the filmmaker telling us scene by scene how he would have made the film if he had made it. He does this entirely with stock footage and b-roll, and by telling stories that are sourced from public sources and not from the memoir that he failed to get the rights to (and he assures us that he’s run it all through a lawyer). In the process, he deconstructs the entire true-crime genre. He shows how every true-crime story has the same kind of credits, and that they all include the same set of scenes. I thought it was brilliant, although I probably haven’t done a good job of explaining it. If you ever get a chance to see this, probably on a streaming service although maybe in an art theater, please do so.
- LOVE, BROOKLYN: A very pleasant low-stakes drama about three young-ish Black professionals looking for love and fulfillment in a gentrifying Brooklyn. The relationships between the characters (who will end up with whom?) are at the forefront of the story, and Brooklyn (mostly Fort Greene and Bedford-Stuyvesant) provides a nice backdrop. The characters also spend time discussing the ways that Brooklyn has changed over the years, both for better and worse, although the movie doesn’t go too deeply into that. Nothing very deep, but a pleasant way to spend two hours.
- MR. NOBODY AGAINST PUTIN: A documentary about Pasha, a teacher in a provincial Russian city who loves his job, which includes organizing and videotaping school events. Then the Ukraine war starts, and teachers are ordered to become propagandists for the war. Pasha doesn’t like where this is going, and decides to document it, using his cover as the school’s videographer. He then smuggles the footage out of the country to his co-director in Europe, at considerable risk to himself. The footage was edited into this documentary, and it’s fascinating. A very relevant story for us, too, as it shows how quickly things can change for the worse inside a country. Fortunately for Pasha, he was able to get out of Russia before the film was released. Not sure where this film will show; hopefully people will be able to see it on a streaming service.
- BUBBLE & SQUEAK: A comedy about a honeymooning American couple visiting an Eastern European country where cabbages are forbidden. (Don’t ask.) Of course, they’re accused of smuggling cabbages and have to go on the run from the police. A one-joke film where the joke is stretched pretty thin. We watched it because the premise seemed unusual, but it was disappointing. This wasn’t terrible, but it’s not worth seeking out.
- VIRGIN OF THE QUARRY LAKE: A coming-of-age story set among teenagers in Argentina during a financial crisis in the early 2000s. Based on two short stories by the Argentine gothic writer Mariana Enríquez, with a lot of additional story added by the filmmakers. I’d say that the gothic elements are placed in the background for most of the film, but by the end they definitely come forward. I’d say this is just as well; the stories the film is based on are almost aggressively strange, and downplaying these elements makes the film work better. We enjoyed this one.
- OBEX: Strange science-fiction/fantasy by the director of Strawberry Mansion, one of my favorite things at Sundance a couple of years ago. An agoraphobic computer nerd lives with his dog in a house that he rarely leaves in 1987 Baltimore. One day he sends away for a computer adventure game, called OBEX, for his Macintosh. The monster from the game comes out of the computer, steals the dog, and takes him back into the computer game. The guy has to go into the computer to save his dog and win the game. Interesting ideas and lots of fun old technology, but ultimately kind of disappointing.
We also watched five short programs that I won’t get into here. The best short we saw was probably EM & SELMA GO GRIFFIN HUNTING. In an alternate-reality North America (which looks a lot like the 1930s), a mother and daughter engage in a rite of passage where the daughter has to hunt and kill a griffin. A surprisingly beautiful production, and one of the few short films that was actually a story, rather than just a mood piece. Not sure where you’d be able to see it.