This weekend, the snowy streets of Park City, Utah will be packed with some of today’s coolest stars and tomorrow’s most thrilling talent. This Thursday marks the kickoff of the Sundance Film Festival, now in its 41st year (and perhaps a temporary one in its homeland), and next week will see the premiere of an exciting new Indian slate on Mt. It will be counted among the hottest titles of 2025.
Didn’t book your condo in time? Don’t worry! You can get into the indie spirit from the comfort of your own home. Whether it’s a film that celebrates the drive to make art, a trio of films from esteemed festival alumni, or finally your own mini-Sundance, you’re in the indie spirit. Weekends are much longer.
But first, what’s new on Netflix?
A completely new lifestyle. The glamorous new DocuSoapWag follows a group of attractive and driven women in Miami whose relationships with famous athletes and artists are just part of what makes life thrilling. Not your style? Please call the night agent instead. Season 2 of the spy thriller (created by Sean Ryan, based on the novel by Matthew Keake and starring Gabriel Basso in the title role) is on the screens.
If you are just spending the night…
Go meta. Sandi Tan’s acclaimed documentary Shirkers not only premiered at Sundance in 2018 (Tan won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award), but also makes independent filmmaking its subject. Tan’s film tells the story of how she and her friends shot a road movie together in the 90s. When Tan got it a few years later, rediscovery sent her, which resulted in the completed document. This is an investigation into a mystery, a reflection on deep disappointment, and a celebration of the creativity that started it all.
If there is one day…
Check in with the master. Hundreds of filmmakers began their careers at Sundance, but a select few remain in film history as indie legends. The debut films of Joel and Ethan Coen (1984’s Blood Simple), Steven Soderbergh (1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape), and Quentin Tarantino (1992’s Reservoir Dogs) all came at the beginning of the independent film movement. It will be shown at Sundance. Follow their careers by calling out some of their later works. The Coen Brothers’ 2018 Western anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs consists of six stories of the American frontier, all shot with the filmmakers’ signature dark humor. Soderbergh’s 2019 sports drama High Flying Bird was shot on an iPhone, one of the filmmaker’s many explorations of new technology. And Tarantino brings his penchant for stylish violence to the West with the 2015 star studding his eighth feature, The Hateful Eight. They may have become household names, earned studio budgets, and landed on film school syllabuses, but none of these artists lost their independent spirit.
If only we had the whole weekend…
Program your own festival using titles from Sundance’s streaming past. These all exemplify the kind of originality the festival is known for. Start with some documentaries: Since we’re talking about the indies, call the underdog story of an independent baseball team for strangers with Chapman and McClain Way’s “Bectored Bastards of Baseball” (2014) Masu. To follow the journey of another filmmaker, check out these two films: 2008’s The Order of Myths and 2022’s Descendants, Margaret Brown. Both examine racial dynamics in the South. Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson is Dead for a darkly funny but moving reflection on mortality. And if you’ve already missed the ERAS Tour, Lana Wilson’s Miss Americana (2020) follows Taylor Swift at Turning Point.
But let’s not ignore fiction too! Ava Duvernay is a festival director for her second feature, the 2012 drama Midder of Nowhere, About A Woman (Emayatzy Corineldi), about a woman navigating her life after her husband’s incarceration. I won an award. In 2023, Randall Park made his directorial debut with the romantic dramatist The Disadvantages. Noah Bambach’s Oscar nominated Squid and The Whale (2005), which sees two brothers dealing with their parents’ divorce, are bested by Sidney Freeland’s crime drama Deidre & Laney Rob-A-Train. sees two sisters dealing with their mother’s imprisonment (by robbing a train). And for a truly singular musical experience, there’s Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank. The 2014 dark comedy features the frontman (Michael Fassbender) constantly wearing a giant papier mache mask.
Remember, you have one last chance…
…for a killer match. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie star in Doug Liman’s 2005 action comedy Mr. & Smith, whose boring suburban life becomes a little more exciting when they discover they’re both going undercover. For married couples, they are assigned to. Take each other out. After this weekend, the movie will be dispatched.
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