TROOP ZERO premiere, cast and principle crew.
Over 120 feature-length films screened at this year’s festival and the winners have been announced. The future of these films is yet to be determined, however Amazon was the big player, paying big bucks and picking up films like “Late Night” for $13 million and both “The Report” and “Brittany Runs A Marathon” for $14 million each. Netflix picked up the Zac Efron as Ted Bundy film “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile” for a pretty penny ($9 million) and Focus Features will release “The Mustang” in March, 2019.
It’s impossible to see all of the films, but I did manage to squeeze in 18 features ranging from rom-coms and documentaries to fictional tales depicting socially relevant issues as well as comedies. Quite coincidentally, more than half of the films I recommend were written and/or directed by women or by underrepresented groups. And several of these films garnered one or more prestigious awards at the festival.
Sundance is widely known for its documentary films and this year, like last, is proving to be exceptional. “Words from a Bear” is quite possibly one of the best documentaries I have ever seen as it impacted me in almost inexplicable ways. Filmmaker and Kiowa Indian Jeffrey Palmer delves into not only the life of Native American author and Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday, but into his psyche. Momaday reminisces about his early years, as Palmer expertly layers archival photos sweeping cinematography to augment Momaday’s luxuriously poetic descriptions. Candid interviews with celebrities such as Robert Redford and those who know Momaday best connect us to this man, lifting our own knowledge base of history and humanity through compassion and understanding.
Additional documentaries that did more than educate, included “Hail Satan?” by Penny Lane, “Anthropocene: The Human Epoch” by Jennifer Baichwel and Edward Burtynsky, “Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen” by Hepi Mita, and “Cold Case Hammarskjold” by Mads Brugger. The talent and vision behind creating documentaries that also entertain is evident in each of these very different films.