Sundance 2017 unveils US, world competitions, NEXT selections

A number of selections fall under the inaugural New Climate banner focusing on storylines about environmental and climate change.

There is new work starring Greg Kinnear (Brigsby Bear), Chloë Sevigny (Golden Exits, from Sundance 2016 Joshy director Alex Ross Perry), Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen in Ingrid Goes West (pictured) and Melanie Lynskey and Elijah Wood in Blue Ruin star Macon Blair’s directorial debut, I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore.

Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Patric, Toni Collette and Jennifer Aniston star in Alexandre Moors’ The Yellow Birds, marking the director’s return to Sundance after Blue Caprice in 2013.

NEXT boasts star wattage including Oscar frontrunner Casey Affleck opposite Rooney Mara in A Ghost Story, two films from Michael Cera – Lemon and Person To Person – and the late Anton Yelchin in Thoroughbred.

World Cinema entries includes Australian Cate Shortland’s Berlin Syndrome with Hacksaw Ridge’s Teresa Palmer, Alicia Scherson and Cristián Jiménez’s Family Life from Chile, and Francis Lee’s UK entry, God’s Own Country.

Documentaries from the US and world categories include Cartel Land director Matthew Heineman’s ISIS protest film City Of Ghosts, Water & Power: A California Heist from Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired director Marina Zenovich, Jiu-liang Wang’s Plastic China, and Last Men In Aleppo from Feras Fayyad and Steen Johannessen.

“The films in this year’s festival show the human sides of issues, people and places we don’t often see,” said festival director John Cooper. “Independent filmmakers, with their fearless, bold perspectives, are challenging us to witness our world’s whole story. These artists, armed with their films, will lead us into the future.”

Commenting on New Climate, Sundance Institute president and founder Robert Redford said, “My own engagement on climate change began more than 40 years ago, and the urgency I felt then has only grown stronger given its very real and increasingly severe consequences. If we’re going to avoid the worst-case scenario, then we must act boldly and immediately, even in the face of indifference, apathy and opposition.”

The Sundance programming team selected 113 features representing 31 countries and 36 first-time filmmakers, including 19 in competition, from a pool of 13,782 submissions including 4,068 features and 8,985 shorts.

There were 2,005 US features and 2,063 international. Ninety-five feature films are world premieres.

In 2016, the festival drew 46,600 attendees, generated $143.3m in economic activity for the state of Utah, and supported 1,400 local jobs.

The Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to run in Park City, Salt Lake City and at Sundance Mountain Resort from January 19-29.

Full line-up announced on November 30. All synopses provided by the festival.

U.S. DRAMATIC COMPETITION

All films are US nationality and are world premieres unless stated otherwise.

Band Aid
Zoe Lister-Jones
A couple who can’t stop fighting embark on a last-ditch effort to save their marriage: turning their fights into songs and starting a band.
Cast: Zoe Lister-Jones, Adam Pally, Fred Armisen, Susie Essman, Hannah Simone, Ravi Patel.

Beach Rats
Eliza Hittman
Frankie wastes his summer snorting oxy and playing handball with his neighborhood boys, while stringing on a girl he meets at Coney Island. After a family tragedy, Frankie initiates his first gay encounters on a cruising beach. Struggling to reconcile competing desires, his decisions leave him hurtling toward powerful consequences.
Cast: Harris Dickinson, Madeline Weinstein, Kate Hodge, Neal Huff.

Brigsby Bear
Dave McCary
Brigsby Bear Adventures is a children’s TV show produced for an audience of one: James. When the show abruptly ends, James’s life changes forever, and he sets out to finish the story himself.
Cast: Kyle Mooney, Claire Danes, Mark Hamill, Greg Kinnear, Matt Walsh, Michaela Watkins.

Burning Sands
Gerard McMurray
Deep into a fraternity’s Hell Week, a favoured pledge is torn between honouring a code of silence or standing up against the intensifying violence of underground hazing.
Cast: Trevor Jackson, Alfre Woodard, Steve Harris, Tosin Cole, DeRon Horton, Trevante Rhodes.

Crown Heights
Matt Ruskin
When Colin Warner is wrongfully convicted of murder, his best friend, Carl King, devotes his life to proving Colin’s innocence. Adapted from This American Life, this is the incredible true story of their harrowing quest for justice.
Cast: Keith Stanfield, Nnamdi Asomugha, Natalie Paul, Bill Camp, Nestor Carbonell, Amari Cheatom.

Golden Exits
Alex Ross Perry
The arrival of a young foreign girl disrupts the lives and emotional balances of two Brooklyn families.
Cast: Emily Browning, Adam Horovitz, Mary-Louise Parker, Lily Rabe, Jason Schwartzman, Chloë Sevigny.

The Hero
Brett Haley
Lee, a former Western film icon, is living a comfortable existence lending his golden voice to advertisements and smoking weed. After receiving a lifetime achievement award and unexpected news, Lee re-examines his past, while a chance meeting with a sardonic comic has him looking to the future.
Cast: Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon, Krysten Ritter, Nick Offerman, Katherine Ross.

I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore
Macon Blair
When a depressed woman is burglarized, she finds a new sense of purpose by tracking down the thieves, alongside her obnoxious neighbor. But they soon find themselves dangerously out of their depth against a pack of degenerate criminals.
Cast: Melanie Lynskey, Elijah Wood, David Yow, Jane Levy, Devon Graye.
DAY ONE

Ingrid Goes West
Matt Spicer
A young woman becomes obsessed with an Instagram lifestyle blogger and moves to Los Angeles to try and befriend her in real life.
Cast: Aubrey Plaza, Elizabeth Olsen, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Wyatt Russell, Billy Magnussen.

Landline
Gillian Robespierre
Two sisters come of age in ‘90s New York when they discover their dad’s affair – and it turns out he’s not the only cheater in the family. Everyone still smokes inside, no-one has a cell phone and the Jacobs finally connect through lying, cheating and hibachi.
Cast: Jenny Slate, John Turturro, Edie Falco, Abby Quinn, Jay Duplass, Finn Wittrock.

Novitiate
Maggie Betts
In the early 1960s, during the Vatican II era, a young woman training to become a nun struggles with issues of faith, sexuality and the changing church.
Cast: Margaret Qualley, Melissa Leo, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor.

Patti Cake$
Geremy Jasper
Straight out of Jersey comes Patricia Dombrowski, AKA Killa P, AKA Patti Cake$, an aspiring rapper fighting through a world of strip malls and strip clubs on an unlikely quest for glory.
Cast: Danielle Macdonald, Bridget Everett, Siddharth Dhananjay, Mamoudou Athie, Cathy Moriarty.

Roxanne Roxanne
Michael Larnell
The most feared battle emcee in early ’80s NYC was a fierce teenager from the Queensbridge projects with the weight of the world on her shoulders. At age 14, hustling the streets to provide for her family, Roxanne Shanté was well on her way to becoming a hip-hop legend.
Cast: Chanté Adams, Mahershala Ali, Nia Long, Elvis Nolasco, Kevin Phillips, Shenell Edmonds.

To The Bone
Marti Noxon
In a last-ditch effort to battle her severe anorexia, 20-year-old Ellen enters a group recovery home. With the help of an unconventional doctor, Ellen and the other residents go on a sometimes funny, sometimes harrowing journey that leads to the ultimate question – is life worth living?
Cast: Lily Collins, Keanu Reeves, Carrie Preston, Lili Taylor, Alex Sharp, Liana Liberato.

Walking Out
Alex Smith, Andrew Smith
A father and son struggle to connect on any level until a brutal encounter with a predator in the heart of the wilderness leaves them both seriously injured. If they are to survive, the boy must carry his father to safety.
Cast: Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins, Bill Pullman, Alex Neustaedter, Lily Gladstone.

The Yellow Birds
Alexandre Moors
Two young men enlist in the army and are deployed to fight in the Gulf War. After an unthinkable tragedy, the surviving soldier struggles to balance his promise of silence with the truth and a mourning mother’s search for peace.
Cast: Tye Sheridan, Jack Huston, Alden Ehrenreich, Jason Patric, Toni Collette, Jennifer Aniston.

U.S. DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

All films are US nationality and are world premieres unless stated otherwise.

Casting JonBenet (USA-Australia)
Kitty Green
The unsolved death of six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey remains the world’s most sensational child murder case. Over 15 months, responses, reflections and performances were elicited from the Ramsey’s Colorado hometown community, creating a bold work of art from the collective memories and mythologies the crime inspired.

Chasing Coral
Jeff Orlowski
Coral reefs around the world are vanishing at an unprecedented rate. A team of divers, photographers and scientists set out on a thrilling ocean adventure to discover why and to reveal the underwater mystery to the world
NEW CLIMATE

City Of Ghosts
Matthew Heineman
With unprecedented access, this documentary follows the extraordinary journey of “Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently” – a group of anonymous citizen journalists who banded together after their homeland was overtaken by ISIS – as they risk their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.

Dina
Dan Sickles, Antonio Santini
An eccentric suburban woman and a Walmart door- greeter navigate their evolving relationship in this unconventional love story.

Dolores
Peter Bratt
Dolores Huerta bucks 1950s gender conventions by co-founding the country’s first farmworkers’ union. Wrestling with raising 11 children, gender bias, union defeat and victory, and nearly dying after a San Francisco Police beating, Dolores emerges with a vision that connects her newfound feminism with racial and class justice.

The Force
Pete Nicks
This cinema verité look at the long-troubled Oakland Police Department goes deep inside their struggles to confront federal demands for reform, a popular uprising following events in Ferguson and an explosive scandal.

ICARUS
Bryan Fogel
When Bryan Fogel sets out to uncover the truth about doping in sports, a chance meeting with a Russian scientist transforms his story from a personal experiment into a geopolitical thriller involving dirty urine, unexplained death and Olympic Gold – exposing the biggest scandal in sports history.

The New Radical
Adam Bhala Lough
Uncompromising millennial radicals from the United States and the United Kingdom attack the system through dangerous technological means, which evolves into a high-stakes game with world authorities in the midst of a dramatically changing political landscape.

NOBODY SPEAK: Hulk Hogan, Gawker And Trials Of A Free Press
Brian Knappenberger
The trial between Hulk Hogan and Gawker Media pitted privacy rights against freedom of the press, and raised important questions about how big money can silence media. This film is an examination of the perils and duties of the free press in an age of inequality.

Quest
Jonathan Olshefski
For over a decade, this portrait of a North Philadelphia family and the creative sanctuary offered by their home music studio was filmed with vérité intimacy. The family’s 10-year journey is an illumination of race and class in America, and it’s a testament to love, healing and hope.

STEP
Amanda Lipitz
The senior year of a girls’ high school step team in inner-city Baltimore is documented, as they try to become the first in their families to attend college. The girls strive to make their dancing a success against the backdrop of social unrest in their troubled city.

Strong Island (USA-Denmark)
Yance Ford
Examining the violent death of the filmmaker’s brother and the judicial system that allowed his killer to go free, this documentary interrogates murderous fear and racialised perception, and re-imagines the wreckage in catastrophe’s wake, challenging us to change.

Trophy
Shaul Schwarz, co-director Christina Clusiau
This in-depth look into the powerhouse industries of big-game hunting, breeding and wildlife conservation in the US and Africa unravels the complex consequences of treating animals as commodities.
NEW CLIMATE

Unrest
Jennifer Brea
When Harvard PhD student Jennifer Brea is struck down at 28 by a fever that leaves her bedridden, doctors tell her it’s “all in her head.” Determined to live, she sets out on a virtual journey to document her story – and four other families’ stories – fighting a disease medicine forgot.

Water & Power: A California Heist
Marina Zenovich
In California’s convoluted water system, notorious water barons find ways to structure a state-engineered system to their own advantage. This examination into their centres of power shows small farmers and everyday citizens facing drought and a new, debilitating groundwater crisis.
NEW CLIMATE

Whose Streets?
Sabaah Jordan, co-director Damon Davis
A nonfiction account of the Ferguson uprising told by the people who lived it, this is an unflinching look at how the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown inspired a community to fight back – and sparked a global movement.
DAY ONE

WORLD CINEMA DRAMATIC COMPETITION

All are world premieres unless stated otherwise.

Axolotl Overkill (Germany)
Helene Hegemann
Mifti, age 16, lives in Berlin with a cast of characters including her half-siblings; their rich, self-involved father; and her druggy friend Ophelia. As she mourns her recently deceased mother, she begins to develop an obsession with Alice, an enigmatic, and much older, white-collar criminal.
Cast: Jasna Fritzi Bauer, Arly Jover, Mavie Hörbiger, Laura Tonke, Hans Löw, Bernhard Schütz.

Berlin Syndrome (Australia)
Cate Shortland
A passionate holiday romance takes an unexpected and sinister turn when an Australian photographer wakes one morning in a Berlin apartment and is unable to leave.
Cast: Teresa Palmer, Max Riemelt.

Carpinteros (Woodpeckers) (Dominican Republic)
José María Cabral
Julián finds love and a reason for living in the last place imaginable: the Dominican Republic’s Najayo Prison. His romance with fellow prisoner Yanelly must develop through sign language and without the knowledge of dozens of guards.
Cast: Jean Jean, Judith Rodriguez Perez, Ramón Emilio Candelario.

Don’t Swallow My Heart, Alligator Girl! (Brazil- Netherlands-France-Paraguay)
Felipe Bragança
In this fable about love and memories, Joca is a 13-year-old Brazilian boy in love with an indigenous Paraguayan girl. To conquer her love, he must face the violent region’s war-torn past and the secrets of his elder brother, Fernando, a motorcycle cowboy.
Cast: Cauã Reymond, Eduardo Macedo, Adeli Gonzales, Zahy Guajajara, Claudia Assunção, Ney Matogrosso.

Family Life (Chile)
Alicia Scherson, Cristián Jiménez
While house-sitting for a distant cousin, a lonely man fabricates the existence of a vindictive ex-wife withholding his daughter, in order to gain the sympathy of the single mother he has just met.
Cast: Jorge Becker, Gabriela Arancibia, Blanca Lewin, Cristián Carvajal.

Free And Easy (Hong Kong)
Jun Geng
When a traveling soap salesman arrives in a desolate Chinese town, a crime occurs, and sets the strange residents against each other with tragi-comic results.
Cast: Gang Xu, Zhiyong Zhang, Baohe Xue, Benshan Gu, Xun Zhang.

God’s Own Country (UK)
Francis Lee
Springtime in Yorkshire: isolated young sheep farmer Johnny Saxby numbs his daily frustrations with binge drinking and casual sex, until the arrival of a Romanian migrant worker, employed for the lambing season, ignites an intense relationship that sets Johnny on a new path.
Cast: Josh O’Connor, Alec Secareanu, Ian Hart, Gemma Jones.

My Happy Family (Georgia)
Nana & Simon
Tbilisi, Georgia, 2016: In a patriarchal society, an ordinary Georgian family lives with three generations under one roof. All are shocked when 52-year-old Manana decides to move out from her parents’ home and live alone. Without her family and her husband, a journey into the unknown begins.
Cast: Ia Shugliashvili, Merab Ninidze, Berta Khapava, Tsisia Qumsishvili, Giorgi Tabidze, Dimitri Oragvelidze.

The Nile Hilton Incident (Sweden)
Tarik Saleh
In Cairo, weeks before the 2011 revolution, Police detective Noredin is working in the infamous Kasr el-Nil Police Station when he is handed the case of a murdered singer. He soon realises that the investigation concerns the power elite, close to the president’s inner circle.
Cast: Fares Fares, Mari Malek, Mohamed Yousry, Yasser Ali Maher, Ahmed Selim, Hania Amar.

Pop Aye (Singapore-Thailand)
Kirsten Tan
On a chance encounter, a disenchanted architect bumps into his long-lost elephant on the streets of Bangkok. Excited, he takes his elephant on a journey across Thailand in search of the farm where they grew up together.
Cast: Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Penpak Sirikul, Bong.
DAY ONE

Sueño En Otro Idioma (I Dream In Another Language)(Mexico)
Ernesto Contreras
The last two speakers of a millennia-old language haven’t spoken in 50 years, when a young linguist tries to bring them together. Yet hidden in the past, in the heart of the jungle, lies a secret concerning the fate of the Zikril language.
Cast: Fernando Álvarez Rebeil, Eligio Meléndez, Manuel Poncelis, Fátima Molina, Juan Pablo de Santiago, Hoze Meléndez.

The Wound (South Africa)
John Trengove
Xolani, a lonely factory worker, travels to the rural mountains with the men of his community to initiate a group of teenage boys into manhood. When a defiant initiate from the city discovers his best-kept secret, a forbidden love, Xolani’s entire existence begins to unravel.
Cast: Nakhane Touré, Bongile Mantsai, Niza Jay Ncoyini.

WORLD CINEMA DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION

All are world premieres unless stated otherwise.

The Good Postman (Finland-Bulgaria)
Tonislav Hristov
In a small Bulgarian village troubled by the ongoing refugee crisis, a local postman runs for mayor – and learns that even minor deeds can outweigh good intentions.
North American premiere

In Loco Parentis (Ireland-Spain)
Neasa Ní Chianáin, David Rane
John and Amanda teach Latin, English and guitar at a fantastical stately home-turned-school. Nearly 50-year careers are drawing to a close for the pair who have become legends with the mantra: “Reading! ’Rithmetic! Rock ’n’ roll!” But for pupil and teacher alike, leaving is the hardest lesson.
North American premiere

It’s Not Yet Dark (Ireland)
Frankie Fenton
This is the incredible story of Simon Fitzmaurice, a young filmmaker who becomes completely paralysed from motor neurone disease but goes on to direct an award-winning feature film through the use of his eyes.
International premiere

Joshua: Teenager vs. Superpower (USA)
Joe Piscatella
When the Chinese Communist Party backtracks on its promise of autonomy to Hong Kong, teenager Joshua Wong decides to save his city. Rallying thousands of kids to skip school and occupy the streets, Joshua becomes an unlikely leader in Hong Kong and one of China’s most notorious dissidents.

Last Men In Aleppo (Denmark)
Feras Fayyad, Steen Johannessen
After five years of war in Syria, Aleppo’s remaining residents prepare themselves for a siege. Khalid, Subhi and Mahmoud, founding members of The White Helmets, have remained in the city to help their fellow citizens – and experience daily life, death, struggle and triumph in a city under fire.

Machines (India-Germany-Finland)
Rahul Jain
This intimate, observant portrayal of the rhythm of life and work in a gigantic textile factory in Gujarat, India, moves through the corridors and bowels of the enormously disorienting structure – taking the viewer on a journey of dehumanizing physical labour and intense hardship.
North American premiere.
NEW CLIMATE

Motherland (USA- Philippines)
Ramona Diaz
The planet’s busiest maternity hospital is located in one of its poorest and most populous countries: the Philippines. There, poor women face devastating consequences as their country struggles with reproductive health policy and the politics of conservative Catholic ideologies.

Plastic China (China)
Jiu-liang Wang
Yi-Jie, an 11-year-old girl, works alongside her parents in a recycling facility while dreaming of attending school. Kun, the facility’s ambitious foreman, dreams of a better life. Through the eyes and hands of those who handle its refuse, comes an examination of global consumption and culture.
International premiere.
NEW CLIMATE

RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World (Canada)
Catherine Bainbridge
This powerful documentary about the role of Native Americans in contemporary music history – featuring some of the greatest music stars of our time – exposes a critical missing chapter, revealing how indigenous musicians helped shape the soundtracks of our lives and, through their contributions, influenced popular culture.

Tokyo Idols (UK-Canada)
Kyoko Miyake
This exploration of Japan’s fascination with girl bands and their music follows an aspiring pop singer and her fans, delving into the cultural obsession with young female sexuality and the growing disconnect between men and women in hypermodern societies.

WINNIE (France)
Pascale Lamche
While her husband served a life sentence, paradoxically kept safe and morally uncontaminated, Winnie Mandela rode the raw violence of apartheid, fighting on the front line and underground. This is the untold story of the mysterious forces that combined to take her down, labelling him a saint, her, a sinner.

The Workers Cup (UK)
Adam Sobel
Inside Qatar’s labour camps, African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup compete in a football tournament of their own.
DAY ONE

NEXT

Presented by Adobe. All films are US nationality and are world premieres unless stated otherwise.

Columbus
Kogonada
Casey lives with her mother in a little-known Midwestern town haunted by the promise of modernism. Jin, a visitor from the other side of the world, attends to his dying father. Burdened by the future, they find respite in one another and the architecture that surrounds them.
Cast: John Cho, Haley Lu Richardson, Parker Posey, Rory Culkin, Michelle Forbes.

Dayveon
Amman Abbasi
In the wake of his older brother’s death, 13-year-old Dayveon spends the sweltering summer days roaming his rural Arkansas town. When he falls in with a local gang, he becomes drawn to the camaraderie and violence of their world.
Cast: Devin Blackmon, Kordell “KD” Johnson, Dontrell Bright, Chasity Moore, Lachion Buckingham, Marquell Manning.
DAY ONE

Deidra & Laney Rob A Train
Sydney Freeland
Two teenage sisters start robbing trains to make ends meet after their single mother’s emotional meltdown in an electronics store lands her in jail. Cast: Ashleigh Murray, Rachel Crow, Tim Blake Nelson, David Sullivan, Danielle Nicolet, Sasheer Zamata.

A Ghost Story
David Lowery
This is the story of a ghost and the house he haunts.
Cast: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Will Oldham, Sonia Acevedo, Rob Zabrecky, Liz Franke.

Gook
Justin Chon
Eli and Daniel, two Korean-American brothers who own a struggling women’s shoe store, have an unlikely friendship with 11-year-old Kamilla. On the first day of the 1992 LA riots, the trio must defend their store – and contemplate the meaning of family, their personal dreams and the future.
Cast: Justin Chon, Simone Baker, David So, Curtiss Cook Jr., Sang Chon, Ben Munoz.

L.A. Times
Michelle Morgan
In this classically styled comedy of manners set in Los Angeles, sophisticated thirtysomethings try to determine whether ideal happiness exists in coupledom or if the perfectly suited couple is actually just an urban myth.
Cast: Michelle Morgan, Dree Hemingway, Jorma Taccone, Kentucker Audley, Margarita Levieva, Adam Shapiro.

Lemon
Janicza Bravo
A man watches his life unravel after he is left by his blind girlfriend.
Cast: Brett Gelman, Judy Greer, Michael Cera, Nia Long, Shiri Appleby, Fred Melamed.

Menashe
Joshua Z Weinstein
Within Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community, a widower battles for custody of his son. A tender drama performed entirely in Yiddish, the film intimately explores the nature of faith and the price of parenthood.
Cast: Menashe Lustig.

Person To Person
Dustin Guy Defa
A record collector hustles for a big score while his heartbroken roommate tries to erase a terrible mistake, a teenager bears witness to her best friend’s new relationship and a rookie reporter, alongside her demanding supervisor, chases the clues of a murder case involving a life-weary clock shop owner.
Cast: Abbi Jacobson, Michael Cera, Tavi Gevinson, Philip Baker Hall, Bene Coopersmith, George Sample III.

Thoroughbred
Cory Finley
Two teenage girls in suburban Connecticut rekindle their unlikely friendship after years of growing apart. In the process, they learn that neither is what she seems to be – and that a murder might solve both of their problems.
Cast: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Paul Sparks, Francie Swift, Kaili Vernoff.