It’s the middle of the second week of the Sundance Film Festival, but I, unfortunately, am no longer in Park City. Sad, I know.
My Sundance journey isn’t quite over yet, however. I’ve still got plenty of virtual screenings to attend, so be on the lookout for my thoughts about even more movies in the coming weeks. For now, I wanted to dive into some of the movies I was lucky enough to see in person during my time at the festival. Here are my top five films (so far!) from Sundance.
- “Brides” (dir. Nadia Fall)
With a script by Suhayla El-Bushra, “Brides” tells the story of two teenage girls, Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar) who concoct – and follow through on – a dangerous plan to run away from home and travel to Syria.
Doe and Muna are both Muslim girls living in the U.K., and both racism and their home lives contribute to their decision to leave it all behind. They’re propelled on their journey by a potent mix of anger, fear and hope, sure in their convictions at one moment and questioning them the next.
“Brides” is not an easy movie by any means; Doe and Muna’s friendship is volatile, so much so that you wonder at times how strong the core of this relationship really is, The ties that bind them are revealed mostly through Doe’s memories, a hazy collection of visions that jump around and arise at inconvenient times – as memories so often do. But as the film unfurls, you begin to understand the urgency with which both of them move through the world, how this long and terrifying journey – whatever you might think of it – could seem so unambiguously necessary to them. Both actors deliver strong performances, and Nadia Fall’s direction brings an uncompromising eye, carrying the movie’s weighty themes with a soft, but sure hand.
2. “Omaha” (dir. Cole Webley)
This was one of my most anticipated movies going into Sundance, and one that hit me like a punch straight to the gut. “Omaha,” written by Robert Machoian and directed by Cole Webley, stars John Magaro as a father of two who takes his children Ella and Charlie (played by Molly Belle Wright and Wyatt Solis) on an impromptu road trip to Omaha, Nebraska.
For the most part, the story unfolds through the eyes of Ella, roughly 10 years old and a little more grown up than a 10 year old should be. She’s at that age where she doesn’t quite understand the world of adults, but she knows enough to know when something is wrong, watching her father with growing unease and concern as the trip wears on. Because the film is so with the kids, the moments that it shifts to stay in the father’s perspective become all the more potent. In one scene, the dad pulls over to allow Ella and Charlie the chance to fly a kite. As the children get out of the car, the camera stays with the father for a beat and watches them leave through the window, a sense of bittersweet dread filling the frame as they get farther away.
What struck me most about “Omaha” is the theme of failure, specifically just how easy it can be to fail your children, often through no real fault of your own. It feels trite to call a John Magaro performance “sensitive,” but he really does excel at feeling everything, the look on his face always betraying just how “too much” all of this is.
3. “The Dating Game” (dir. Violet du Feng)
There’s a scene in Violet du Feng’s insightful dating documentary where Hao, a popular dating coach in China, is having dinner with his wife, Wen (also a dating coach). The dinner is near silent, Hao making half-hearted attempts to speak, Wen not really taking the bait. She’s upset with him – she disapproves of the way he coaches his clients, filling their heads with tricks and games, rather than focusing on how to actually get to know someone or work on their own self-improvement. Just as the dinner is getting slightly too uncomfortable, we cut away from Wen’s clear annoyance to a news broadcast, where a report reveals that 80% of Chinese women dislike their husbands.
This is just one example of the clever and insightful editing that ripples through “The Dating Game,” a documentary about one dating coach’s way of helping his male clients navigate a complicated, to say the least, dating pool in China. Eligible men in the country outweigh women by about 30 million, and Hao makes a good living teaching insecure and single men how to nab a wife. His proof that his tactics works? He’s married himself (although when the movie starts, that’s clearly not going well).
There’s an argument to be made that “The Dating Game” could use a little bit more political context for the social scene that many Chinese singles find themselves navigating, and I would have appreciated a little more attention paid to Wen and her clients, as well as her thoughts about how Hao has changed over the course of their relationship. But on another level, I appreciate how insular this felt. By keeping things small, the film can really focus on the characters and their stories.
4. “Magic Farm” (dir. Amalia Ulman)
Written and directed by Amalia Ulman, “Magic Farm” follows a film crew who travels to Argentina to do a story on a local musician. But when they arrive in Argentina, they realize they severely miscalculated where the musician actually lives, and are left stranded in a rural town with no story. What’s a documentary crew to do? Make up a story, of course.
“Magic Farm” is a delightful little romp with one of my favorite scores of the entire festival – a zany, carnival-like Latin theme by Burke Battelle (also known as Chicken). It starts off as a pretty hard satire about the ethics of how the American media captures and consumes content about other countries. But, unlike other satires, it also really makes an attempt to dive into the lives of the locals themselves – not just focused on the interlopers and the chaos they cause, but the locals and the connections formed between both groups.
As “Magic Farm” becomes more about those connections, it becomes very sweet, losing nearly all of the bite that its satirical beginnings promised. I can’t be too mad at that, however; what comes out of that switch is a pretty lovely meditation on how the creation of art – or in this case, the creation of a fake documentary and music video – is not about the destination, but rather the journey. Shout out to Alex Wolff for delivering the funniest performance in the film and keeping the legacy of The Naked Brothers Band alive.
5. “East of Wall” (dir. Kate Beecroft)
If there’s one thing I know for certain after watching “East of Wall,” it’s that horses are the most inherently cinematic animal in existence. There is no other option.
“East of Wall” is a semi-biographical film that follows a young horse trainer, Tabatha Zimiga (playing herself) in the wake of her husband’s death. She struggles to keep her ranch afloat, dealing with financial issues, her own teenaged children, and a wayward, rotating group of other teens who Tabatha welcomes in when they need a place to call home.
“East of Wall” is full of non-professional actors playing some version of themselves, giving it a quasi-documentary feel, and those performances feel raw in a way that’s almost uncomfortably authentic, particularly when the grief that the family is struggling with rears its ugly head. There are professional actors included in the cast as well, namely Scoot McNairy as a man interested in buying Tabatha’s ranch and Jennifer Ehle as her mother. Both of these performances are quite grounded, Ehle especially. But, when they come into contact with the other performers, there is a slight hint of artifice that arises in a film that is otherwise completely authentic. It’s a small qualm, but a noticeable one.
This article previously misspelled Tabatha Zimiga’s name. It has been updated with the correct spelling.
