Sundance Film Festival Wrap-Up

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SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL WRAP-UP

MUST-SEE FILMS

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ucky film fans made it to the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah in January to view juryselected documentary and dramatic films from both Amer ican and international independent film-makers. The films getting buzz this year feature topics including the controversial religion of Scientology, the origins of Greenpeace and Mexican drug cartels. We picked the must-see movies from Sundance 2015 that you won’t want to miss. >>

“Cartel Land,” a chilling look at two modernday vigilante groups who took on murderous Mexican drug cartels. Heineman put his own life at risk to make the movie, immersing himself completely in the project. After the Sundance premiere, “Cartel Land” was quickly picked up by The Orchard for distribution in theaters.

director Alex Gibney is based on the book

by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lawrence Wright. Gibney profiles eight former members of the Church of Scientology and in doing so, reveals shocking information from the insiders’ perspectives, including details about high-ranking and celebrity members of the Church. “Going Clear” premieres Sunday, March 29 on HBO.

THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD

BEST OF ENEMIES

The documentary, directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, delves into a specific historical moment that changed the media landscape for good: the televised debates between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley in 1968. This heated conversation between two intellectuals changed the way that political debates are handled in the media and some say marks the beginning of pundit television.

CARTEL LAND

In the U.S. documentary category, Matthew Heineman took home the Directing Award and the Special Jury Award for Cinematography for

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For a smart and funny take on a comingof-age tale, watch “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” from director and screenwriter Marielle Heller. Talented newcomer Bel Powley stars as a teenage girl experiencing a sexual awakening with the boyfriend (played by Alexander Skarsgaard) of her own mother (Kristen Wiig) and is set in counterculture 1970s. Combining live-action and animation in the film is fitting for one that is based on the acclaimed Phoebe Gloeckner graphic novel of the same name.

Winner of the World Cinema Documentary Jury Special Award for Directing, Jerry Rothwell’s “How to Change the World” charts the early days of Greenpeace.

Rothwell’s extensive research into the origins of Greenpeace makes for a fascinating documentary of a group of people who wanted to change the world and began what would later become the world’s largest activist organization.

THE HUNTING GROUND

GOING CLEAR SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF

People are calling it the film Scientology doesn’t want you to see. The documentary expose from Academy Award-winning

Emmy Award-winning documentar y director Kirby Dick premiered a powerful film about rape on college campus, “The Hunting Ground.” One in five college women are victims of sexual assault, but

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many of their cases go unreported and, if reported, unpunished. Dick exposes the reality of this statistic with expert insights and first-person testimonies; he follows college rape survivors and examines the toll taken on them and their families, and doesn’t spare elite universities and colleges in his scrutiny of the epidemic. A must-see on a topical national issue.

THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

UNEXPECTED

In the U.S. dramatic competition, Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s “The Stanford Prison Experiment” stood out. Based on the true story of Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s 1971 psychology experiment, in which 24 male college students were assigned randomly to be either a prisoner or a guard, the film takes a powerful look at the psychology of imprisonment. Dr. Zimbardo himself (played to perfection by Billy Crudup) served as a consultant on the film.

JAMES WHITE

Josh Mond’s drama “James White” is a gritty, character-driven film that follows a man coming to terms with his mother’s serious illness while trying to straighten out his own life in New York. Strong performances

by Christopher Abbott (best known for his role of Charlie in HBO’s Girls), who plays James White, and supporting cast, including Cynthia Nixon, Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi and Ron Livingston, add to the film’s strength.

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Kris Swanberg’s dramatic film “Unexpected” takes a look at modern motherhood and the timely question of whether women can really “have it all” — that is, both a career and a family. The lead character, Samantha, is a science teacher who questions whether she should leave the classroom to be a mother fulltime when she becomes pregnant. When her student, Jasmine, faces an unplanned pregnancy, Samantha makes it her mission to ensure that Jasmine graduates and makes her way to college, against the odds.

THE WOLFPACK

Marc Silver’s riveting documentary explores the danger of Florida’s Stand Your Ground self-defense laws by telling the specific story of Jordan Davis, an unarmed black teenager who was killed by Michael Dunn, a white man who got into an argument with him at a gas station in 2012. We see moments from Dunn’s trial and hear from members of the community as well as Davis’s family.

THE RUSSIAN WOODPECKER

This Sambo Gadjigo and Jason Silvermandirected documentary explores the life and career of Senegalese filmmaker and novelist Ousmane Sembene, often called “the father of Afr ican film.” Gadjigo makes it personal by weaving the story of Sembene with tales from his own artistic journey. This comprehensive picture doesn’t gloss over the difficult aspects of Sembene’s personality, making for a revealing and true portrait of the artist’s forty-year career.

the Chernobyl nuclear disaster discovering a dark secret. By packaging the film as a paranoid thriller, director Chad Garcia draws the audience in to examining relations and history between Russia and Ukraine, while also being entertained.

Winner of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize in the documentary category., “The Russian Woodpecker” centers on a Ukrainian victim of

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Crystal Moselle went into the home of a family known as “The Wolfpack”and emerged with a fascinating glimpse into the lives of a family that lives away from society. Seven brothers locked inside a Manhattan apartment learn about the outside world through the films they watch; they spend much of their childhood days reenacting their favorites with homemade props and costumes. Moselle shows without judgment how the power dynamics in the family change when one of the brothers escapes the apartment. “The Wolfpack” won the Grand Jury Prize in the U.S. Documentary category, a well-deserved award.

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