Our Sundance 2024 most anticipated films come from all over the world and represent the most exciting new talent (and intimate stories) hitting the warm theaters up in snowy Park City this year. Though the virtual infrastructure remains in place from its back-to-back online-only years, Sundance’s online access has changed as the festival continues to encourage in-person attendance: It’ll only offer online viewing of certain movies from January 25 – 28. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be getting the goods even if you’re watching from home. Though its expansive slate—Sundance ramped up from 2021 to 2023, moving from 72 feature films to over a hundred in 2023—has contracted a bit, with 82 feature films in the program this year, the festival has plenty to offer across its Premiere, Midnight, Next and Competition categories. We dipped a toe into all of them, watching a boom of speculative AI documentaries and exciting dramatic debuts from all over the world, to find you some of the most exciting movies you won’t want to miss—and which don’t have big-name movie stars backing them up.
As per usual, Paste will be covering the festival from afar, pumping out reviews throughout the fest’s run from January 18–28, but with the benefit of some sneak peeks, we’ve been able to narrow down a handful of movies that shouldn’t be skipped. If these pique your interest and you want to learn more, or if you just want to take in the flood of films that may soon be dominating Film Twitter conversations for the next year and change, you can find the full program here.
Here are Paste’s 10 most anticipated films at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival:
Agent of Happiness
Imagine if your government was, even superficially, concerned with your happiness. While so many countries use the boogeyman of The Economy to distract its people from the atrocities of the world (sometimes committed by those very countries), Bhutan, brilliantly, found a far buzzier acronym than Gross Domestic Product. It tracks Gross National Happiness. No more worrying about vague manipulable factors like inflation or the unemployment rate—just ask yourself, “Am I happy?” Ok, to be fair, Arun Bhattarai and Dorottya Zurbó’s documentary Agent of Happiness makes it clear that it’s a lot more complicated than that (and just as made up as stock prices). But even if the Bhutanese government doesn’t really care if its people are happy, posing this question to its populace is at least a diversion that encourages introspection. Those on the front lines, collecting this data for the government, are professionally confronted by life’s biggest question, interpreted by people from all walks of life. The quiet, intimate charms of Agent of Happiness pulse from this poignant collective consideration, filtered through the personal experience of a professional happiness inspector. Amber and his coworker drive around the mountainous countryside, looking for folks whose lives they can translate into numbers, recorded on forms and diluted down to a single digit through their job’s complex happiness formula. These census-takers strike a memorable image, in their plaid knee-length gho, white tego underneath with sleeves rolled back, black baseball caps and tall socks. Door-to-door style-wise, Mormons have nothing on Bhutanese government officials. As Amber plays air guitar in the passenger seat and chats about his lacking love life, Agent of Happiness immerses us in a doc that’s partially invested in the day-to-day of a unique profession, partially enraptured by the beauty of Bhutan’s bright colors and vast vistas, and partially surprised to have found itself on a buddy-comedy road trip. As we watch everyday people think deeply about this high-stakes satisfaction survey, the act of asking our friends and neighbors how they’re doing—how they’re really doing—develops an alluring grassroots appeal beyond the bragging rights of institutions. Agent of Happiness, with its personal point-of-view and delightfully candid discussions, motivates us to use our compassion for individuals to see past this façade.
Black Box Diaries
All stories documenting the personal anecdotes making up the #MeToo movement are courageous. Speaking up about a painful truth, knowing that if society at large was going to listen with generosity or empathy, well, it wouldn’t need a movement to get these tales told. They are brave alliances between survivors and journalists, battling entrenched sexism with unrelenting professionalism and mutual trust. Black Box Diaries tracks a moving #MeToo story that brought the movement to Japan, from the crime itself, through the journey of going public and to the uneasy closure of its long war of attrition. Its devastation is familiar. But because filmmaker Shiori Itō is both survivor and journalist, and recorded her own investigation into her assault in real time, the documentary becomes a thrilling testament to her exceptional, tenacious agency in the face of a hostile world. A bit like how Navalny saw Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny pursue the men Vladimir Putin sent to assassinate him, there’s a macabre adrenaline running through the first-person perspective of Black Box Diaries. Nobody has the same incentive to bring about justice than the survivors themselves. There’s also the same interconnectedness of sinister power on the other side: Itō’s attacker is Noriyuki Yamaguchi, biographer of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government maintained the same sexual assault laws for over a century. Yamaguchi’s political and police connections protect him from arrest at least once, and gets a helpful detective removed from Itō’s case. If all sexual assault cases are uphill battles, Itō’s is a Sisyphean conspiracy. And we get a front-row seat to the endless struggle. Not shying down from the crushing interconnectedness of powerful forces set against her, Itō’s journalistic rigor and personal vulnerability prevents a landmark moment in a movement from becoming a simple summary in a history book.
Eternal You
It stands to reason that if there’s money to be made in biotech, there’s an equal amount to be made in necrotech. Eternal You explores the sectors of the artificial intelligence business that’s wasted no time adopting the psychological tricks of the spiritual trade and applying them to chatbots and CG models. Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck’s Eternal You observes the burgeoning industry around techno-spiritualism with wry skepticism. While AI in general is currently being sold as a miracle do-it-all to the most credulous among us, this specific use of AI is targeted towards an even more vulnerable demographic: The credulous and grieving. And those working behind the scenes are used to grifting. As Eternal You listens to those in charge of these startups, like Project December founder Jason Rohrer, we hear self-assured PR exaggerations. It’s showmanship. It’s the crystal ball, the velvet curtains, the copious candles. It’s the stuff that gets you funded by the rich and attracts comfort-seekers to your website. The filmmakers then immediately rebut with people like Carl Öhman, who are willing to cut through the bullshit about this segment of the AI gold rush pursued by “the most skillful in turning the dead into a business.” Their straight talk is an oasis, especially when the topic involves one people are inclined to be too hurt to be anything but trusting around: Death. It’s all existentially depressing, housed in a bleak aesthetic. A glitchy score from Gregor Keienburg and Raffael Seyfried harmonizes reversed and edited vocalizations in an aural replica of Eternal You’s central concept, its soothing inhumanity haunting cold drone shots. Block and Riesewieck aren’t afraid to show off a little style, which goes a long way when covering subject matter that inherently entails a lot of sitting at the keyboard, staring at a screen. Wide shots, giving a broader montaged context to human experience, go a long way to underscore the impossible concept of replicating consciousness. Balancing this is an icy off-handedness. Even cathartic, emotional moments are filtered through imperfect technological lenses: Reality TV, computer monitors, iPhone speakers, text on a screen. Eternal You is a necessary warning klaxon for our culture’s increasing inability to accept death, just as it finds a techno-economic structure happy to oblige it.
Girls State
A follow-up to their 2020 documentary Boys State, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss’ Girls State returns to the American Legion’s week-long government workshop, this time observing the girls’ side of things as, for the first time, the Boys and Girls State programs will be on the same campus in Missouri. While their first movie—as our Dom Sinacola put it, “a dramatic account of modern American masculinity in the making, blisteringly hormonal and desperate to be taken seriously”—was interested both in this microcosm of politics and the kind of concentrated Lord of the Flies testosterone that comes up with the “screaming masses of peachfuzz and popularity contests,” Girls State finds more compelling ground as its politically active Gen Zers not only question U.S. politics, but the very event that they’re attending. It does a heart good to see a bunch of teens across the political spectrum (mostly progressive, all feminist) use their informed, confident stances to confront power…especially when that power lies with, say, the counselors and organizers of Girls State. Though shot conventionally and with a sometimes-overbearing patriotic score, Girls State offers insight into up-and-coming political actors and a few thrilling juxtapositions. What better climate is there to talk to a bunch of civic-minded young women than one in which Roe v. Wade is actively being overturned?
Girls Will Be Girls
A tangible takedown of patriarchal hypocrisy, and how these larger social forces impact women in specific ways, Girls Will Be Girls is a bold and thoughtfully shot debut from writer/director Shuchi Talati. Complicating the story of Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) and Sri’s (Kesav Binoy Kiron) boarding-school romance with erotic thriller psychology and cultural observation, Girls Will Be Girls documents coming-of-age moments with refreshing spirit and explicitness. Adding in the complex role of Mira’s wannabe cool-mom Anila (Kani Kusruti) can make the movie seem like it’s juggling quite a bit, but within Talati’s confident, cramped, physically intimate frames, the latent energy is enough to carry us forward through the movie’s sometimes-warring interests. With beautiful colors, lived-in performances and a searing perspective on Indian society, Girls Will Be Girls is a heightened, beautiful, painful return to high school—with enough uncomfortable twists to make you squirm in your seat.
In the Land of Brothers
An expansive, three-act observation of Afghan refugees struggling to make their lives under the oppressive discrimination in Iran, In the Land of Brothers is an assured dramatic debut from filmmakers Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi. Bolstered by an impressive cast playing across time-jumps, In the Land of Brothers’ entrancing script and evocative settings sweep you up in the tragic yet steely vignettes. As the stories connect across themes and families, building to a cathartic climax, the resoundingly tragic and consuming humanism is woven with enough subtlety to avoid melodrama. A brutal, beautiful depiction of life under discrimination, filmed with a painterly eye and a compassionate heart.
In a Violent Nature
While shifting into the eyes, bodies and mindsets of killers has long been a disruptive tool in the ambitious horror filmmaker’s bag of torture implements, the commitment to this perspective-switch rarely involves a total shift in form. These gambles usually manifest as single montages that jolt us out of our seats, or short film gimmicks briefly impressing video store gorehounds sniffing through anthologies for promising new blood. Writer/director Chris Nash cut his teeth on at least one of these short showcases—ABCs of Death 2—before making his feature debut with In a Violent Nature. How do monsters like Jason or Michael Myers teleport behind their hapless, horny co-ed victims? Where are they before being awakened by this hormonal hubris? What is the murderer up to in the moments before or directly after the music shrieks and the blood hits the wall? With grim patience, vibrant realism and genre-nodding humor, Nash marches us one plodding bootstep at a time through the procedure of slashing. A gorgeous, quiet and still horror film, In a Violent Nature is as methodical as its unstoppable lead, filled with gruesome, delightfully disgusting kills. The rhythms are right, the gags all land, the deaths are absolutely massive and the craftsmanship is the very reason Fangoria was established.
Kidnapping Inc.
A brisk and brutal bit of slapstick action-comedy from debut director/co-writer Bruno Mourral, Kidnapping Inc. is a bumbling buddy crime caper channeling the idiotic absurdity of Quentin Dupieux and the stylistic energy of Edgar Wright. Doc (Jasmuel Andri) and Zoe (Rolaphton Mercure) can’t get anything right, including the kidnapping they’re in the middle of. The Haitian goofballs looking to get rich end up on a rambling, rambunctious chase throughout Port-au-Prince, colliding with every corrupt official in every institution you can think of along the way. Full of ridiculous reversals, bursts of violence punctuating punchlines and sweaty, frantic crowd scenes, Kidnapping Inc. is over-the-top in all the right ways. This is mostly thanks to the pitch-perfect comic pairing of scowling straight man Andri (who also co-wrote) and insecure blabbermouth Mercure, who zip through scenes and play off each other with loud, constant frustration. There’s little I like more than watching two dummies get in over their heads, and Kidnapping Inc. revels in its stupidity without sacrificing its social satire of Haitian life. Its balance isn’t perfect, especially as it tends towards more serious subject matter as it goes on, but when it’s set in its successfully silly tone, it’s a blast.
Porcelain War
Slava Leontyev and his wife Anya Stasenko are porcelain artists in Ukraine. Slava makes the objects, Anya paints them with intricate figures navigating miniature worlds. Slava is also an ex-Special Forces soldier who trains civilians to take up arms to defend their homes against Russian invaders. This dissonance adds a poignant and inescapable friction to Leontyev and Brendan Bellomo’s war documentary Porcelain War. Anya and Slava tour their local forest, picking mushrooms from around the landmines and helping clear the wilderness of unexploded missiles from Putin’s forces. The rubble of their cities, shattered across the streets, is echoed in their delicate artwork. Getting to know the fighters in Slava’s unit (a milk farmer, furniture sales manager, home contractor, graphic designer, weapon designer and IT worker fill out the force) on top of the warm, indomitable couple at the doc’s heart, makes the reportage’s more intense moments — including a bodycam segment that’s one of the most heart-pounding moments of the war I’ve seen caught on tape — all the more affecting. Porcelain War‘s questions around how we cope, and what’s worth fighting for, are as vital as ever with the world still full of ignored pandemics, government-sponsored genocide and ongoing invasions. Its answers, quiet and bittersweet, hit like a drone strike.
Thelma
Every good action hero knows you’ve got to stick to your guns. Ethan Hunt is a marathon-running master of disguise. John Wick has never lost count of his remaining bullets. Jackie Chan’s various inspectors and agents view the world as their personal set of monkey bars. When writer/director Josh Margolin’s debut Thelma keeps its sights trained on its rogue granny on a mission (June Squibb), its hilarious geriatric reframe of action-movie tropes has a game champion. Like its absentminded hero, the film can sometimes get sidetracked right when things are getting good, wandering down schmaltzy or twee narrative paths. But when it lets Thelma (and Squibb) do her thing, the comedy is perfectly cute and a stellar showcase for what an actor’s late career can offer. There’s novelty in the comedic turns from the 94-year-old Squibb and her 81-year-old co-star, Richard Roundtree (in his final film role). These actors get to tap a well that’s unique to their age and the genre without sticking them into the boxes that generally contain old performers. They’re not utterly dignified, wisdom-dispensing elders. They’re not tragic victims of time. And they’re certainly, blessedly not the dreaded “rapping grannies” who are more punchline than performer. As the pair abscond on their quest to retrieve Thelma’s stolen savings, solicited from her cookie jar and mattress by phone scammers, they’re clearly complex, pulling off warm humor, endless charm and impressive stunts. A 94-year-old doesn’t have to ride a motorcycle off a cliff to make you gasp. Thelma’s emphasis on the unique pleasures found at different stages of life works because we can see the trust it places in Squibb as its front-and-center star.
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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