Sundance Film Festival: Buzziest Movies for Sale

Just before COVID upended the movie competition scene, Sundance premieres ended up a hotbed of drama as studio chiefs and streaming executives staked out the finest seats in the theater and then defeat a route for the exits as soon as the credits rolled in the hopes of outmaneuvering each and every other for the best movies. Immediately after two several years of heading digital, Sundance is again in-human being. On the other hand, it’s unclear if the all-night bidding wars that had been these a staple of past festivals will also return in pressure. At a time of charge-reducing and box office environment struggles for indie motion pictures, a new era of fiscal restraint may perhaps be the purchase of the working day.  

But Sundance’s slender mountain air could trigger all that economizing to evaporate. And if it does, below are 13 films that could have purchasers composing massive checks.  

Drift

Forged: Cynthia Erivo, Alia Shawkat 
Director: Anthony Chen
Sales Agent: UTA
Why Buyers Are Circling: Erivo is explained to be very little brief of spectacular as Jacqueline, a refugee who flees war-torn Liberia for the basic safety of a Greek island. By means of her friendship with a tour-guide (Shawkat), she commences to locate a way to shift past the violence and trauma she has endured to forge a new daily life for herself. Tears will be drop.  

Cat Human being

Cast: Emilia Jones, Nicholas Braun and Geraldine Viswanathan 
Director: Susanna Fogel
Revenue Agent: Studiocanal/ UTA
Why Purchasers Are Circling: Embrace the controversy. The buzzy stars of “Succession” and “CODA” workforce up for a trenchant dissection of “first date” social pressures. Based on a New Yorker tale that went viral with its considered-provoking depiction of gender and intercourse, “Cat Person” appears to be destined to be the mostly fiercely debated motion picture at Sundance.   

Journal Desires

Cast: Jonathan Majors, Haley Bennett, Taylour Paige
Director: Elijah Bynum
Revenue Agent: CAA
Why Buyers Are Circling: The showy central efficiency. Majors offers a transformative transform as a unstable youthful gentleman with goals of bodybuilding superstardom. In a calendar year in which the actor is established to show up in sequels to “Creed” and “Ant-Gentleman and the Wasp,” this is the movie that could make Majors an invite to the Oscars.  

Young.Wild.Absolutely free

Cast: Sanaa Lathan, Algee Smith, Sierra Capri and Mike Epps
Director: Thembi Banks
Income Agent: UTA
Why Consumers Are Circling: Pegged as just one to view, “Young.Wild.Free” is said to mark a classy attribute debut for Financial institutions. The film has been described as a modern acquire on “Bonnie & Clyde,” just one that follows an aspiring artist who finds himself smitten with a local negative girl.  

Eileen

Solid: Anne Hathaway, Thomasin McKenzie, Jefferson White, Marin Ireland
Director: William Oldroyd
Product sales Agent: WME
Why Buyers Are Circling: Otessa Moshfegh’s pitch black coming-of-age novel wowed critics with its narrative twists and unstinting glance at abuse and neglect. It’s powerful stuff, and a film that has captivated a major-shelf duo in McKenzie and Hathaway as two girls whose lives collide in a perilous way. To spoil something far more would be a criminal offense.  

Jamojaya

Forged: Brian Imanuel, Yayu A.W. Unru, Kate Lyn Sheil, Henry Ian Cusick, Anthony Kiedis
Director: Justin Chon
Income Agent: UTA
Why Prospective buyers Are Circling: Imanuel, an acclaimed Indonesian rapper, is explained to deliver a star-generating overall performance as an up-and-coming musician whose romantic relationship with his father turned supervisor is put to the exam. It is a story of family members ties and ambition spun by Chon, who has confirmed himself to be a learn of these type of tangled romance dramas in films these as “Blue Bayou” and “Ms. Purple.” 

Shortcomings

Cast: Justin H. Min, Sherry Cola and Ally Maki 
Director: Randall Park
Income Agent: WME/UTA
Why Potential buyers Are Circling: Park’s directorial debut is the sort of charmer that feels destined to be a Sundance hit. The coming-of-age story follows a Bay Place cinephile named Ben, who manages a movie theater, however he’d fairly be checking off titles on his Criterion Assortment check out-list or hanging with his best close friend Alice at a area deli. When his girlfriend Miko moves to New York for an internship, he’s left to figure out what he definitely needs out of lifestyle. Warning: it may depart you craving pastrami on rye.

A Still Little Voice

Director: Luke Lorentzen
Gross sales Agent: Submarine / CAA
Why Prospective buyers Are Circling: It is tricky to not experience psychological when wondering about the pressure on health care personnel in the early pandemic days. The spiritual documentary centers on an aspiring clinic chaplain, who commences a yearlong residency in non secular treatment at New York’s Mount Sinai Medical center in 2020 and 2021, just one of the deadliest periods in U.S. historical past. As a result of the system, she discovers the ideal way to present emotional assist to patients is to appear deep in just herself. Don’t forget about the tissues.

From time to time I Believe About Dying

Forged: Daisy Ridley, Dave Merheje, Brittany O’Grady, Megan Stalter
Director: Rachel Lambert
Income Agent: CAA
Why Potential buyers Are Circling: Fran (Ridley) is a girl who, as the title indicates, likes to consider about dying. Her morbid pattern is challenged when she satisfies Robert, a new co-employee who’s seemingly destined to make a new pal out of Fran. Following a long time of pandemic-connected isolating and working from household, it is a meet-cute tale that practically feels nostalgic.

Aum: The Cult at the Finish of the Entire world

Director: Ben Braun and Chiaki Yanagimoto
Sales Agent: Submarine/ Fifth Season
Why Buyers Are Circling: Does the title by itself not have you hooked? The gripping documentary about the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo takes an unrelenting search the warning signals and ghastly actions that in the long run led to its designation as a terrorist business. At the heart is Shoko Asahara, who started a seemingly innocuous yoga college in Japan. Not even 10 years later on, the team — whose name implies Supreme Truth — masterminded war crimes, which includes the deadly 1995 sarin gas assault on the Tokyo subway.

Passages

Solid: Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw and Adèle Exarchopoulos
Director: Ira Sachs
Profits Agent: SBS / WME
Why Prospective buyers Are Circling: Sachs is no stranger to delighting audiences at Sundance “Passages” is the director’s eighth movie to debut at the competition. Described as a tale about the “messiness of daily life,” Rogowski and Whishaw enjoy a identical-sex pair whose longtime partnership is rattled when one has an affair with a female. So, the other begins an extramarital fling of his individual, effectively gaining back his husband’s attention even though unearthing a tiny jealousy. Will they reconcile, or has their relationship operate its study course?

Over and above Utopia

Director: Madeleine Gavin
Revenue Agent: Submarine
Why Customers Are Circling: It may possibly be the most politically-potent documentaries in a festival stuffed with politically billed non-fiction movies. “Beyond Utopia” follows different people as they risk all the things while making an attempt to flee North Korea in the hopes of getting a superior life absent from the brutal regime. The footage of their treacherous journey is what will have persons talking, but Gavin’s candid interviews with the courageous asylum seekers is what lingers very long soon after the lights appear up.

Flora and Son

Cast: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Eve Hewson, Jack Reynor, Orén Kinlan
Director: John Carney
Profits Agent: Fifth Season/WME/FilmNation
Why Potential buyers Are Circling: Carney is a grasp of mixing memorable music and emotional uplift in films this kind of as “Begin Again” and “Once.” His most up-to-date effort is the tale of a solitary mom (Hewson) who finds a way to reconnect with her distant son (Kiln) by operating collectively on some bangers. It is a journey that also finds her forming a bond with a hunky guitar tutor (Gordon-Levitt) about a collection of Zoom lessons. This has the sort of star electrical power and relatable storyline that could assistance the film crack out at a time when indie films are finding a cold shoulder from moviegoers.