Sundance 2021 is a Wrap
Friday, February 5, 2021 at 3:21PM by Nathaniel R
CODA was the big winner at Sundance and sold for an extravagant amount of money.
Thank you to Jason, Abe, Murtada, and Eurocheese for their coverage of the traditionally snowy but now virtual and room temperature Sundance Film Festival which wrapped on Wednesday. In case you missed any of the reviews here they all are in one place. As with ALL Sundance film festivals, some of these picture will fade quickly from awareness, others will be talked about incessantly upon release, and still others might strangely go into hiding for a year and all but forgotten before being rediscovered when they get a streaming deal or some such in the not so near future. But which ones? It all depends on the vagaries of distribution, media and public reaction, and future awards play. For example at the 2020 Sundance Awards Minari and I Carry You With Me (both on my top ten list for 2020) were both multiple winners but only Minari seems to have any heat going into the Oscar nominations while I Carry You With Me just kind of sat out awards season despite a qualifying week in virtual cinemas and now won't be released until May 21st, 2021 (sigh) one and a half years after its high profile success at Sundance.
Our complete list of reviews plus all the Sundance 2021 winners are after the jump...
AWARD WINNERS, REVIEWED
• CODA (Siân Heder, US) Abe's Review
US Dramatic Competition prizes: Grand Jury Prize, Director, Best Ensemble, and Audience Award. Apple+ will release
• Flee (Jonas Poher, Rasmussen, Denmark) Eurocheese's Review
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize. NEON will release
• Jockey (Clint Bentley, US) Abe's Review
US Dramatic Competition Special Jury Prize Best Actor Clifton Collins Jr. Sony Pictures Classics will release
• Summer of Soul (Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, US) Murtada's Review
US Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award
OTHER AWARD WINNERS, NOT REVIEWED
• All Light Everywhere (Theo Anthony) Special Jury Award Nonfiction Experimentation US Doc
• Cusp (Parker Hill & Isabel Bethencourt) Special Jury Award Emerging Filmmakers US Doc
• Hive (Bierta Basholli, Kosovo) Grand Jury Prize, Directing, and Audience Award World Cinema
• Homeroom (Kristina Motwani & Rebecca Adorno) Editing Award US Doc
• Luzzu (Alex Camilleri, Malta) Special Jury Acting Award for Jesmark Scicluna World Cinema
• Motherhood (?) Sundance Institute NHK Award for Meryam Joobeur
• My Belle My Beauty (Marion Hill) Audience Award NEXT
• On the Road (Baz Poonpiriya) Special Jury Prize Creative Vision World Cinema
• Philly DA (Yoni Brook & Ted Passon) Sundance Institute Producers Award for Documentary for Nicole Salazar
• President (Camilla Nielsson) Special Jury Prize Verité Filmmaking World Cinema Doc
• Run (Aneesh Chaganty) Sundance Institute Producers Award Narrative for Natalie Qasabian
• Sabaya (Hogir Hirori, Sweden) Directing World Cinema Doc
• Users (Natalie Almada) Directing Award US Doc
• Writing With Fire (Sushmit Ghosh & Rintu Thomas, India) Audience Award and Special Jury Prize Impact for Change World Cinema Doc
OTHER FILMS REVIEWED - PERHAPS SOME WILL POP IN RELEASE?!
• Ailey (Jamila Wingot) Murtada's review NEON
• Blazing World (Carlson Young) Jason's Review
• How it Ends (Zoe Lister-Jones & Daryl Wein) Abe's Review
• John and the Hole (Pascual Sisto) Jason's Review
• Knocking (Frida Kempff) Jason's Review
• Land (Robin Wright) Abe's Review Focus Features
• Mass (Fran Kranz) Abe's Review
• Mayday (Karen Cinorre) Jason's Review
• Most Beautiful Boy... (Kristina Lindstrom & Kristian Petri) Jason's Review Juno Films
• On the Count of Three (Jerrod Carmichael) Abe's Review
• Passing (Rebecca Hall) Jason's Review
• Rita Moreno: Just a Girl... (Mariem Pérez Riera) Abe's Review PBS
• Strawberry Mansion (Kentucky Audley & Albert Birney) Jason's Review
• Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (Marilyn Agrelo) Jason's Review
• Violation (Madeleine Sims-Fewer & Dusty Mancinelli) Jason's Review Shudder
• World to Come (Mona Fastvold) Jason's Review Bleecker Street
Reader Comments (4)
I managed to see 23 Sundance festival movies this year (+ saw World to come already last year & Pleasure today at Gothenburg film festival)... and out of those 23, my top 3 were:
1. One for the road - an amazing asian film, that has so much in itself. About two friends and one of them has cancer... the other one comes to help to go and meet all the girls he has dumped... but that's just half the movie, the other half is about the other guy... loved it!
2. CODA - what a good scenario -witty jokes and it made me cry for all the right reasons on the latter part of the movie. Great cast too... specially the guys who played the father and the son.
3. Land - I guess there are already many movies like it, but Robin Wright deserves oscar nomination for the role. It felt like a movie for older generation, but somehow it managed to move me deeply.
The rest of my TOP10: 4. How it ends; 5. On the count of three; 6. Misha and the wolves (nazi doc); 7. Passing; 8. Flee; 9. Night of the kings (Ivory Coast sent it for International Film oscar - I doubt it will make it into 15, if it does, then just barely), 10. Sabaya, Hive or Luzzu - can't decide - all where quite ok - latter two have a good chance to represent Kosovo and Malta respectively at the next year's international oscar category.
Is Marlee Matlin starring in Coda it looks like her.
@markgordonuk - Yes, it's her - playing the mother of the main charater.
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