Sundance Film Festival takes its lineup virtual this year
While some passes are only for U.S. audiences, others available globally
In a normal year, the Sundance Film Festival is centred on the remote ski town of Park City, Utah. This obviously is not a normal year.
Sundance has shifted to a largely virtual program for 2021, with limited in-person events at satellite venues around the country. And that means audiences can access the festival, which runs Jan. 28 to Feb. 3, from anywhere.
While passes and tickets are available to U.S. audiences only, the festival’s special Explorer Pass, which allows for access to the New Frontier, Indie Series and Shorts sections, is available globally.
The talks and events hosted at the online festival village will be free and also available globally.
While some of the festival’s starrier titles — such as “Summer of Soul (… Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised),” the feature documentary directorial debut of Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and “Passing,” the directing debut of actress Rebecca Hall, starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga — are already sold out, there are currently still plenty of tickets available for other titles.
In hopes of fostering the same kind of excitement around a film’s first screening — leading to the indefinable, uncategorizable, know-it-when-you-feel-it Sundance buzz — there will be
live Q&As after each film’s premiere showing and the movies will have a limited streaming window, a playbook also used by the Toronto International Film Festival last fall.
The festival announced the lineup for its series of free talks and events.
There will be special events for both opening day and a festival-closing awards ceremony, as well as a series of conversations between artists, including one with “Judas and the Black Messiah” director Shaka King and Thompson, and another with actresses Sonia Manzano and Rita Moreno.
Other talks include “Barbed Wire Kisses Redux,” a program on LGBTQ plus cinema, moderated by author B. Ruby Rich and including filmmakers Gregg Araki, Lisa Cholodenko, Cheryl Dunye, Andrew Ahn, Silas Howard, Rose Troche and Isaac Julien, and a conversation between festival director Tabitha Jackson and filmmaker Raoul Peck, dubbed “The Past in the Present: A Personal Journey Through Race, History and Filmmaking.” More information is available at the festival’s website.