The sentiment on the ground at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, America’s premier showcase for modern independent cinema, was that something was o
The sentiment on the ground at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, America’s premier showcase for modern independent cinema, was that something was off. A combination of the wildfires in Los Angeles, the dawning of a second Trump administration, and a sluggish sales market made for a more muted affair than usual. Buzz was minimal, moods were distracted and worried, and there were frustrations over scheduling—some of the best movies on offer were held until the second half of the festival.
Though awards potential is not terribly high on Sundance’s list of concerns, further troubling the Park City air for some attendees was that in 2025, no major awards contender seemed to emerge—like A Real Pain did last year, or Past Lives the year before. (At least in the scripted sector; the documentaries are likely a different story.) This heightens the concern that too many of these movies, which took so much scrambling to get made at all, will have trouble finding audiences upon release. Cynical as it may often be, awards chatter does at least raise the profile of some titles. (At least some of Sundance’s horror movies—like big-seller Together—ought to do fine either way.)
But Sundance 2025 wasn’t a total wash in that regard. The festival did premiere a few movies that could forge a circuitous path toward the attention of awards-giving bodies, if given the right roll-out. Let’s take a look at the just-maybe-if-we’re-lucky contenders that premiered at Sundance this year.
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
While Mary Bronstein’s relentlessly stressful descent into motherhood hell is a really complex watch, it’s impossible to look away from Rose Byrne’s ferocious, tireless performance. As a Long Island therapist unraveling over the course of a few months, Byrne is breathtaking: humorous, furious, heartsick. It’s bold, full-bodied work, the kind that typically gets the attention of the Academy. The question, though, is whether that tremendous work is housed in the right kind of movie. A bleak and routinely grating film about a parent making lots of mistakes might prove too alienating for the Academy; after all, they didn’t recognize Amy Adams for the comparatively much softer Nightbitch. But we’re hopeful that a sharp campaign can be mounted anyway. Byrne is long overdue for that kind of recognition, and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is maybe her best chance yet.
Sorry, Baby
This film may be more in line with the Spirit Awards than, say, the Oscars, but we can’t really know for certain when the Academy has been so rapidly mutating in recent years. Writer-director-star Eva Victor’s melancholy dramedy was the most invigorating debut film I saw at the festival this year, a sharp and idiosyncratic contemplation of the aftermath of sexual assault. Sorry, Baby, which won the screenplay award at Sundance on Friday, will certainly be a contender with critics groups for its writing, acting, and direction, a feat of auteurism that mightily succeeds where so many other ambitious films fail. (Some directors just can’t write. Some writers can’t direct. And most of either can’t act.) Sorry, Baby may ultimately be too diminutive, too intimate to compete with flashier, more star-driven titles. But if a drumbeat starts now, maybe it will eventually grow too thunderous to ignore.
Train Dreams
Netflix just acquired this decades-spanning period drama for a sum said to be in the “high-teens millions.” That’s a huge number for a movie that, while shot beautifully and given palpable humanity by lead actor Joel Edgerton, is not terribly plot-heavy. But the streamer must see something sellable in Clint Bentley’s despondent Western. It has the necessary visual sweep to merit as prestige, and its portrait of grief and the changing nature of American life in the first half of the 20th century may be powerful enough to hook voters. Train Dreams is not exactly The Brutalist in terms of complicated ideas, but its moving ending casts what’s come before in a grand sort of delicate. I’d say it would be wise to aim for an acclaim-boosting second festival stop at Cannes—audiences there would no doubt appreciate the film’s pensive and lyrical version of Americana. But Netflix is effectively barred from that festival. Oh well.
Kiss of the Spider Woman
If this musical were to get any kind of awards recognition outside of technical categories, it would likely be for Jennifer Lopez’s sultry turn as a 1950s screen icon haunting the memory and fantasy of an imprisoned gay man in 1980s Argentina. Lopez sings, dances, and slinks effectively; it might be the stuff of Golden Globes dreams. She’d surely run in lead there, but vexingly would probably have a better shot at the Oscars in supporting. How that quandary is handled will be up to whoever buys the film—no sale has been announced yet.
Best Actors
Dylan O’Brien, co-star of the unhappy, biting comedy Twinless, won a special jury prize at Sundance for his performance. And for good reason: he’s brilliant in two roles, vastly different from one another. Twinless is not an Oscar movie, I don’t think, but perhaps the right distributor could keep O’Brien in the mix for Spirits and critics prizes. I hope for a similar fate (if not more) for Ben Whishaw’s terrific performance in Ira Sach’s Peter Hujar’s Day, a diminutive conversation movie that nonetheless feels awfully cinematic, thanks in huge part to Whishaw’s fluid, natural work. Stephan James is also quite powerful in Ricky (which won the Sundance directing prize for Rashad Frett), even if the larger film is a tad generic.
What’s Up, Docs?
Four of the films currently nominated for the best documentary Oscar premiered at Sundance last year, yet another indicator that Sundance is perhaps the world’s best launchpad for non-fiction films. This year’s festival had a powerful crop as well. Predators is a damning look at the compassionless mechanics behind the grimmest prank show in American history, To Catch a Predator. The Perfect Neighbor assembles heaps of body cam footage to tell a bleak and bitterly unhappy story about armed, paranoid, racist America. Top doc prize winner Seeds is a stirring, wrenching survey of the history and present-day realities of Black farmers in the American south. Mr. Nobody vs. Putin is a profile of a brave schoolteacher standing up to an oppressive government. And 2000 Meters to Andrivka is director Mstyslav Chernov’s followup to his Oscar-winning Mariupol, another harrowingly up-close immersion into the war in Ukraine. That could easily be your five nominees right there.
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