The Sundance Film Festival Edition.

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Four days spent with a grown man so thrilled he was “impervious to getting tired.”

The real magic of the Sundance Film Festival is that you will spend the majority of your time on buses and in lines and still when someone asks you what it was like you will say it was a once-in-a-lifetime, pinch-me-so-I-know-I’m-not-dreaming kind of experience.

Now, take a second and actually imagine that someone invited you on such a trip. That they want to spend the weekend with you boarding buses with criss-crossing routes that transfer to each other and get stuck behind crowds of often older people crossing the street like bundled-up geese that stop in the middle of the road for seemingly no real reason. That they want to take these ten-to-thirty-minute bus rides that span inside of a mile far more than once a day to then wait in hour-and-a-half lines to see films, or something else that in day-to-day life doesn’t often warrant wait times beyond a few minutes, if at all. Is it not a feat of probably-dangerous voodoo dark magic that such a trip can yield sheer joy and also the indescribable feeling that preempts nostalgia?

I want you to understand this feeling deeply and so what follows is this writer’s full account of the Sundance experience, including every film Drew and I liked. Only excluded from this account are the films we didn’t like because — as has been established since tnmn began — your author doesn’t write about the films we don’t like.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. On 22 January 2026, your tnmn team and our capital-I Insanely Supportive Partners (i.e. our wives) landed in Salt Lake City to attend our very first film festival; ironically one with a grim finality about it ever since Boulder, Colorado won their bid to host the film festival for (per the contract) the next 10 years starting in 2027. Prior to the relocation, Sundance’s annual festival had been held in Park City, Utah for over 40 years.

It’s obvious why any state responsibly-run would want to play host to a festival like Sundance — an economic study (albeit commissioned by the Institute itself) estimated that the 2024 festival contributed some $132 million and $13.8 million to Utah’s GDP and tax revenue, respectively.

Though if you’re wondering why the Sundance Institute itself wants to relocate an event with such an illustrious history, you’d have to search somewhere beyond the heaps of PR-speak usually reserved for athletes in post-game press conferences (e.g. “we played our best in Utah and we’re excited to capitalize on the new opportunity with Boulder…”). Publications clamoring for juicy bits were likely sorely disappointed in the very-disciplined approach taken by the formerly scrappy Sundance Film Institute, and they often were only able to get boilerplate-ish quotes — 

“This decision was informed by a detailed evaluation of the key components essential to creating our Festival.”

“Together [in Boulder] we continue to create a Festival that acts as a vibrant space for independent films and filmmakers to shine.”

“...it [Boulder] was a place where we could continue to grow and expand the festival.”

— and any grounded-in-facts explanation for the move can only be discerned by reviewing the proposals from each finalist city’s bid (Park City, Cincinnati, Boulder). Here there’s plenty of evidence that the move was a practical decision rather than a spiritual one. A larger population, more sophisticated infrastructure, and $34m in tax incentives offered to the Institute by the state of Colorado frankly seems like a better alternative to Utah’s offer that included, among other things, a bolt-on, simultaneously-occurring technology conference. Your festival correspondent isn’t thick enough to miss the point that the technology conference offers more visitors with high spending power to a festival seeking growth, but I also suspect it’s probably been a while since anyone’s left Sundance or anywhere else wishing they’d come across more Mark Zuckerbergs or Elon Musks or people with really interesting start-up ideas and free laptop stickers.

Beyond the proposal details, one can speculate any number of reasons for the move. Despite the Institute’s firm and maybe true declaration that politics had nothing to do with the festival’s departure, it really is hard to reconcile Utah’s incredibly conservative state politics (e.g. they recently banned pride flags from public schools and government buildings which apparently is how you lower egg prices) with the festival’s core ethos. The spirit of the Institute’s late founder, Robert Redford, no doubt is a contrast to this brand of divisive politics and obviously his aura loomed large at the festival. Every film began with the same splicing together of Redford speeches mostly in the tenor of what can be found on the Sundance website (e.g. “[I] could see and feel that there were other voices out there and there were other stories to be told … but they weren’t being given a chance”, “I’m competing for what I consider to be a higher purpose: making the world safe for artistic diversity.”).

As it were the impending move to Boulder was on everyone’s mind enough throughout the festival to warrant not infrequent discussion and may as well be named The Elephant in the Room.

Before long, we were tapping our feet and discussing the Elephant in the Room in a heated white tent in front of a charming make-shift-built theater called The Ray — which is actually an old Sports Authority store garnished with those string lights people run along the perimeters of their yards. It was here that we were waiting to see our very first film of the very last Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

The First Screening. Paralyzed By Hope: The Maria Bamford Story

Genre. Documentary

Logline. A documentary about Comedian Maria Bamford, who turns her mental health journey into (very) funny material.

Thoughts. A documentary is unquestionably elevated when you watch alongside the star subject about whom it was made. At the end of our screening, Maria Bamford takes the stage and fields questions and she is visibly moved having seen her story and late parents on the big screen. Most others in the theater are moved too, because her story is powerful. If you’re already a fan of her, the film will make you a bigger one. If you’re not, you’ll likely become one by the time the credits roll.

THE CROWD. One of the things to know about Sundance is that it attracts a very specific collection of people, the likes of which are worth defining to give a sense of what waiting in line or riding buses with this crowd is actually like. Your festival correspondent has done you the service of preparing a glossary as an optional aide before you continue:

TRAVERSAL. The buses at Sundance are a hodge-podge mix of charters and trolleys both electric and gas and look as much a part of the same fleet as I would the Kardashian family. Towards the front of the bus, there’s almost always a movie nerd “who’s been going to Sundance for thirty years” chit-chatting with the driver about how much has changed since it all started and trying in earnest to make it feel like they’re part of an exclusive club of Sundance insiders by saying things like “I was here before so and so started and it was just a blah blah blah.” Behind this chit-chatty movie nerd, either quietly grinning or grimacing in tiredness, is their ISP or group of CWs.

The rest of the bus is filled with mostly forward-facing people who, if you don’t take the time to get to know them, look like the derpiest school of fish — a mix of movie nerds and yellowjackets and CWs and at least always one PRP. The whole group is all so bored and antsy and a lifelike force only reenters their eyes under three circumstances. (1) The bus driver is one of the ones that brings an amusingly lighthearted energy to the job and says things with such a personality that (we) derpy fish chuckle and smile. (2) Someone jaywalks in front of the bus and they glance at the fish next to them and say something that sounded funnier in their head, like “I didn’t know that was a crosswalk!” (3) They’ve just watched the same movie, and they discuss what they thought as if they’re film critics and say persnickety things that make me question how I sound when I talk about movies, like, “I wish they’d have taken a beat before the big reveal” or “I’m not sure it punched hard enough. I left wanting a little more from so and so.” 

Every once in a while, there’s someone on their phone typing furiously enough to make you think they are a PRP, or someone in a furry jacket that appears to be a celebrity; though, in your correspondent’s experience, most of the time the furious phone typing PRP is actually just a movie nerd or CW thumbing through social media and the celebrity instead a fur coat.

With all the PRPs tapping away on the bus rides and in lines, I usually end up wondering what the festival’s energy felt like prior to the mobile Internet — but before I get much of a chance to think about it we’ve arrived at the festival’s largest theater and also a high school auditorium: Eccles.

Maybe it speaks to the festival’s demographics or it’s just a coincidence but while in line for our second film, I (actually) hear three different groups discussing whether or not they have do-not-resuscitate orders in place yet. Before every film allows audiences into the theater, a yellowjacket comes out and shouts something to fluff up the audience (i.e. “Welcome to the final Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah! Who’s ready to see…!”) along with general rules of conduct for entering the theater. Applause always follows and throughout the festival impressively its riotousness remains intact.

Seeing a movie at Sundance is different in more ways than one and one such difference worth mentioning right now is how ticketing works. The process was less straightforward than I’d realized and best explained like this: tickets guarantee you a spot in line for a film but not a seat in the theater. So, you need to get in line early enough to “claim your spot” (usually about an hour and a half before the movie is scheduled to start), otherwise either someone can take your seat from the waitlist or for some other reason (e.g. PRP, celebrity, producer, etc.). Once you gain entry there are no assigned seats, and so prior to the start of the movie is a kind of polite-but-competitive mad dash to claim the best seats. You’ll bump shoulders with strangers and for about fifteen minutes you’ll observe a temporary new world order in which everyone is on a level playing field except for the cast and crew for whom the front-lefthand side of the theater is reserved for. There’s a woman staring at her phone screen while standing and waving her hand high in the air, halfheartedly trying to get the attention of her CW, and a lot of other shuffling around and removing of coats and hats and gloves.

“Lynne…Lynne!” There’s a man behind me who has forgotten he’s in a room full of other people also trying to get seats, which becomes especially apparent to me when I notice the person who’s attention he’s after is a full thirty rows ahead of him. “We can sit up here! I got great seats!”

“I found seats down here!” She’s shaking her head and also yelling and your correspondent is squarely in between their exchange.

“I have seats up here Lynne. They are DEAD CENTER. Dead center!”

Lynne shrugs and looks back at him and she shakes her head and points down to two seats in front of her. She must have realized what Drew and I would learn later on, that the cast and crew enter from the door to her left and that these seats will give her and her husband a good look at their entrances and the film itself.

“Lynne! These seats are perfect. Dead center; come up here! I’m not moving!”

“Honey, just come down, I have two seats!” At this moment we can see she’s starting to wear thin and you sort of know who’s going to get their way. How much longer it went on I don’t know, but Lynne caved and shamefully walked back thirty rows to her stubborn partner who again tells her the seats are dead-center and she mostly shrugs him off. A few people around us joke that they’re so happy for Lynne that she gets to sit dead center and the lights go down for the start of the film. Your correspondent hasn’t come up with a term for these sorts of festival goers yet and they mostly reek of the seat saver (mal) persuasion; though compared to a quantifiable unclaimed seat, there’s a less knowable social cost to this couple’s conduct in the theater.

The Second Screening | Hot Water

Genre. Drama

Logline. An American high schooler and his Lebanese mom hit the road out west.

Thoughts. Our wives agreed to come to three films with us during Sundance and this was their favorite of the three. It was just the sort of indie fare you might expect from a Sundance film: a hearty filmed-on-location and slightly unconventional road trip film about a first-generation Lebanese immigrant (Lubna Azabal) and her son (Daniel Zolghadri). Ramzi Bashour’s feature-length debut has a couple of funny surprises up its sleeve but ultimately the characters are so darned lovable you can’t help but like it and root for the familial catharsis you know they probably have coming by the end of the film.

MAIN STREET. We don’t have another showing until eight o’clock this evening and so we decided to bop around downtown. I don’t think main street in Park City vibrates with the free-spirited energy of an independent film festival any longer (my guess, not a statement of fact) and there’s lots of buildings temporarily scaffolded by very big companies like Adobe and DropBox and Chase Bank and Amazon and outfits priced in such a way that makes your eyeballs fall immediately out of your skull upon seeing. It's still a lovely stroll and there’s lots of cute little side attractions (e.g. this year, there’s a tribute to Little Miss Sunshine, which includes the Volkswagen from the film, that often commands a crowd of yellowjackets and movie nerds) and restaurants and bars and string lights zig-zagging from building to building. Here and there I also see people fully equipped to ski, coming off the slopes for the day and making their way back to whatever lodge they’re from.

Under the string lights of Main Street, your festival correspondent saw a couple of people strolling Main Street in head-to-toe, shimmering golden apre-chic outfits (puffer jackets, pants, shoes, beanies — everything golden). I overheard someone bravely ask them who they were, presuming these were celebrities, and the Golden Couple replied that this was a common mistake and they wear head-to-toe gold because their last names are Golden or Goldstein or something else along those lines (i.e. they were fur coats). So much to say that there are plenty of ways to find yourself dumbfounded at the festival and for this feeling you often don’t even need to set foot in a movie theater.

At some point there’s a live protest against ICE after the Minnesota murder of Alex Pretti with protesters walking the streets chanting “Love melts ICE” which is a catchy chant and also a sort of better-than-nothing thing to do when you find yourself at a film festival in the wake of a national tragedy. Before long we’re leaving dinner at a fancy Italian restaurant at the top of Main Street and bundling up for a long evening of watching (hopefully) good movies.

Tonight is our first double-header at a theater called The Library, which is a library, and despite probably having the worst A/V and seating arrangement, this was the best theater at the festival because it housed the least amount of people and felt like the most intimate watching experience. When you walk into The Library and you’ve already been to The Ray you can start to see clearly one of the arguments people like to make when they oppose the festival’s move to Boulder: the better film-watching infrastructure offered by Boulder will never have the make-shift charm for which Sundance in Park City has become known. The make-shift theaters are aesthetically charming and also create more magical little community moments:

EXAMPLE ONE.   Before our first showing in The Library, Drew taps me on the shoulder: “That’s Peter Dinklage behind us.” I turned around and, well, it was Peter Dinklage sitting there, getting ready to enjoy a film that he stars in and hear what the audience thinks about it for the very first time. The theater is too small and therefore just about everyone is sitting close to people they’ve only seen on television.

EXAMPLE TWO.   Peter Dinklage was seated near several of his co-stars, including Dave Franco, who is as much exactly the way he seems in interviews as any celebrity I’ve ever met. Before the screening of The Shitheads started, just as the lights were going down, he audibly cheered “Let’s go!!!”. Everyone can hear this and also knows who said it because again the theater is too small.

The other thing that’s different about seeing a movie at Sundance, or probably any film festival, is the audience you’re with. Not just that it often includes the cast and crew, but also that most others are movie nerds and their CWs or ISPs (i.e. they all also really really like movies). You can feel that energy during the screening of the films. There’s more audible laughter and gasping and shock and awe and appreciation through every minute. They mostly all sit through the credits after the film concludes, a behavior that is relatively unusual in your typical chain theater, and every single one of them talks when the credits end the same way people tend to after they’ve just disembarked from a rollercoaster. When the film team including directors and cast and crew take the stage for the post-screening Q&A (another very special thing about Sundance screenings), you can feel the reverence the crowd has for the craft.

The Third Screening | The Shitheads

Genre. Comedy

Logline. Two guys are hired to drive an unhinged rich teen to rehab.

Thoughts. Macon Blair spent nearly a decade trying to get The Shitheads made and the library theater laughed so hard throughout its runtime that he must have felt pretty darned nice about his efforts. The S***heads is pretty much what it sounds like, and I’ve no problems with it. It’s an unhinged comedy about two complete s***heads who are threatened by other s***heads trying to prevent them from transporting a wealthy s***head to rehab. Watching the film, you might admire the sorts of filmmaking prowess Macon Blair has picked up along his acting and directing journey. The snappy editing, kinetic camera-work, and no-nonsense storytelling. You also might appreciate that you’re watching a very funny story packed to the brim with drug and sex and poop jokes and that not everything needs to break new ground.

The Fourth Screening | Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant

Genre. Horror Comedy

Logline. Mary gets alien pregnant.

Thoughts. I’m not sure what to say about the directing duo Sean Wallace and Jordan Mark Windsor, who together go by the moniker THUNDERLIPS, other than that they made a film that outperformed all of my wildest expectations at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival for what a midnight premiere could feel like. The horror-comedy is gooey and glowing and bonkers and also rife with the sort of matter-of-fact humor for which New Zealand productions have become known. It’s an absolute spectacle of low-budget practical effects and in this author’s opinion (perhaps I’m saying this at the risk of my own reputation) one of its biggest accomplishments is a very well-designed alien penis.

DAVE FRANCO AND (UNRELATED) A PAIR OF DETACHED NIPPLES. As we shuffled out of The Library in between The Shitheads and Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, Drew and I noticed we were standing directly behind the cast of the film. A tan-suited, characteristically grinning Dave Franco was in front of us fielding all kinds of congratulations and we pretended not to notice because we didn’t want to bother him. The truth: we were just being cutesy and shy the same way toddlers often are around new grownups. It was adorable. We left our spot in line to use the bathroom and upon return the universe gave us the clearest sign that we were meant to say something cool to Dave Franco. Because during the few minutes we went potty, Dave Franco didn’t progress an inch towards the exit and behind him remained a Drew-and-Blake-sized spot in line. So there he was in front of us still and I tapped him right on the shoulder and said something that I imagine both stunned him right then and probably also upon further reflection and, just a guess, will dramatically alter his career trajectory and choice-of-projects in the coming years:

“Great job, Dave. That was really, really funny. You were really, really funny.” He turned around and said something appropriately aww shucks-y and was a real mensch about it. Drew said something just as revelatory to Nicholas Braun, who gave him the same assured, validating response.

After the midnight screening of Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant, the film’s directors known collectively as THUNDERLIPS, came out for the post-screening audience Q&A — another thing that makes these screenings all quite special. With them was seemingly their entire cast and crew and the actual alien baby prop complete with a several-feet-long tail, which they graciously allowed fans to take pictures with on the way out.

Someone asked the filmmakers what inspired them to make such a film and a producer interjected that she is married to one of the directors and had one of the most genuinely terrifying pregnancies this planet has ever seen culminating in her nipples “literally falling off” which your author cannot confirm or deny. But this is exactly the sort of fodder you stick around for the Q&A to hear, and so the answer filled me with interest so much that I asked my own question despite Drew’s (jokingly, I reckon) urging “not to embarrass him with a dumb question.”

On the bus ride home at nearly three o’clock in the morning, which was one of the few uncrowded rides we took, we sat next to someone who works the press line for Sundance (likely not a volunteer but an actual pay-rolled employee of Sundance). I asked her how Sundance had changed after she’d done the thing where she said how long she’s been attending, and she shot me a knowing glance.

“Yes, of course Sundance has changed. And people will complain about it but everything else has changed and so Sundance has to change also.” She went on to talk about the before-times when Third Eye Blind was playing free shows for festival goers and celebrities used to sled down a man-made hill in between screenings and now that stuff doesn’t happen anymore. It all sounds nice and I’d have loved to see it and I also agree with her that often times things do need to change.

THE NEVER-ENDING PLIGHT OF YELLOWJACKETS. Back at Eccles (the high school auditorium) the next afternoon was your correspondent sitting in the very back row because we got on the wrong bus in a state of confused stupor after staying up too late to laugh at some shitheads and see Mary “get alien pregnant” which was all completely worth it. It was at this point in the festival that I was comfortable enough to notice the increasingly lawless behavior of people who know their seats aren’t guaranteed. A friend of mine mentioned there’ve been studies on the way these sorts of situations prompt the creation of temporary-and-specific new social orders to form and how people interact and in real time write the rules and customs of the new little line-based mini-society.

More than the other venues, Eccles was a petri dish for seat savers (mal) and so there was a poor rotating staff of yellowjackets tasked with policing these folks. The yellowjackets would spot the seat-savers and ask them to remove their winter garments (hats, gloves, scarves, jackets, puffers, etc.) from the seat, and predictably they’d exclaim their friends were in the bathroom or buying concessions (i.e. they would try to convince the yellowjacket that they were the good kind of seat-saver). It’s obviously impossible to tell the difference between the two until minutes would pass and the seats wouldn’t fill up and the yellowjackets inevitably return frustrated. Now, the yellowjacket explains that they are not somehow personally offended when they see garments on chairs but rather that their job is to literally count the available seats remaining and tell the admissions desk how many more people can enter the theater; and that if the seat-saver were to keep their garments covering seats then the theater will stop letting people in. And so the very existence of the seat saver (mal) is a colossal irony because by claiming a seat is taken they all but guarantee their friends outside will never gain admission into the theater. In giving this explanation, the yellowjacket always either becomes more visibly frustrated or actually laughs at the seat-saver’s response, circles around the theater and repeats their request until they comply. The final exchange results in the seat-saver begrudgingly taking their shit back and this author chuckling at the redundancy of it all thinking high-horse thoughts like “we all have to follow the rules here, even you” but of course not saying them aloud.

Around this phenomenon friendships were formed, sometimes between yellowjackets and do-gooder movie nerds helping them get their points across to the thick-headed and other times fellow attendees expressing disbelief at the seat-savers unyielding selfishness and inability to understand the self-defeating irony of their saving seats in the first place.

The Fifth Screening | Wicker

Genre. Fable, Drama

Logline. The village fisherwoman purchases a husband made of wicker.

Thoughts. In this author’s opinion there aren’t enough fable-oriented films these days, or at least not nearly proportional to the radical volume of moral quandaries that we in 2026 seem to be so-often embroiled in. I’m not here to tell you that a film’s primary task is to teach us a lesson, but I do believe film is an unusually powerful medium for exposing some of humanity's most fatal and dooming qualities from which we can learn. Alex Huston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker, punctuated by characteristically strong performances from Olivia Colman, Peter Dinklage, and Alexander Skarsgård, is a smart and savvy exploration of tradition, conformity, marriage, and jealousy. And, notable for the fable genre, it’s not afraid to have a little fun with the silliness of its central premise.

The Sixth Screening | The Musical

Genre. Dark Comedy

Logline. A petty middle school theater teacher seeks revenge on the school’s principal.

Thoughts. I’ve no doubt some critics will (wrongfully) see it as a big tasteless joke, though Giselle Bonilla’s The Musical shouldn’t be defined by the lead character’s hijinks but rather its shrewd and hysterical study of a man so hopelessly self-serving and spiteful that he’d conceive of a most terrible and ill-intentioned plan for revenge. In this author’s view, comedy is at its finest when it is unpredictable and boundary-crossing and most importantly when it explores real feelings most people deal with (in this case: envy, self pity, anger). Alexander Heller’s script is all of these things and knows that probably a washed-up playwright teaching drama at a middle school — particularly given a playwrights’ plausible self-interest and proclivity for the spectacular — is a very funny place to examine these feelings.

The Seventh Screening | Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass

Genre. Comedy

Logline. Gail must use her “free celebrity sex pass” in order to save her marriage.

Thoughts. There’s something so unpretentious and childish about David Wain’s comedy that gives a weightlessness to the viewing experience and seemingly to the actors who participate in the making of his films. Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass adds some new cast members to his always-growing entourage but the formula remains relatively unchanged: get very funny people onto the same set and let them be funny. Zoey Deutch plays the titular Midwestern bride with an absurd, over-the-top earnestness in her quest to lay Jon Hamm in order to save her forthcoming marriage. In short: it’s a good fucking time.

KEN JEONG IS AN ANGEL. Our second-and-final midnight showing started with a several-hours-long wait where Drew and I were sandwiched between our first quasi-industry-person (QIP) and separately a movie nerd and his ISP which created an experience packed full with so much dissonance that this author’s head nearly exploded and splattered all over the white tent which appeared to have a few wear-and-tear holes at its peak.

Your author went to the restroom and Drew held our place in line as the QIP asked Drew how the festival has been for him. The QIP asked questions like “what brought you out to the festival” and “what do you do for work” and my observation (admittedly incomplete observations; your author was peeing when the exchange began) is that he seemed to tune out at the very moment we answered his questions. It is possible that we’re not all that interesting but that’s not the point because, conversely, when offered reciprocity (“Here’s what I do, and how about you?”) which may have been his only goal in the first place, our QIP would trail off for minutes about how what he does isn’t such a big deal and it’s so admirable that two regular folks would come here simply for the love of movies and he loves when people do that. We denied him exactly zero satisfaction and asked him questions and listened graciously as he told us about his work and so on. The movie nerd and his ISP, two of the most endearing personalities potentially on planet Earth (both young and chipper and involved in important work like clean water and sewage or something), were also treated to the same cat-and-mouse conversational games with ISP and I had a leisurely time watching it all unfold again.

Noteworthy is that this is the second of two films in which we saw the great Ken Jeong in the audience despite not appearing in the film (the first was Gail Daughtry) and I’m now convinced he is the most patient and understanding man on Earth and maybe we should all go to his therapist or take his medication. I witnessed somewhere above forty-five movie nerds and CWs and celebrity chasers interrupt him mid-conversation at an inhuman rate and without hesitation every time he smiled ear-to-ear graciously to take selfies they fell over themselves asking for. I started counting the time he was able to converse uninterrupted (between pictures) and the count never exceeded fifteen seconds. I suppose there are probably two schools of thought when it comes to this part of being a celebrity and perhaps that a thought for another day because counting the seconds has become a fun little game for me, which perhaps makes me no better than the interruptors.

It’s possible Ken Jeong is just a man but it’s also plausible he is emblematic of the next stage of human evolution and one that transcends the petty disagreement and impatience and distractibility that so dominates our age. I hereby submit one solution for the next time you feel frustrated or lack serenity or calm: visualize you are Ken Jeong.

The Eighth Screening | Rock Springs

Genre. Horror

Logline. A young girl discovers something monstrous behind her new home.

Thoughts. The thing about Sundance is that there are a lot of debut features, few of which are flawless masterpieces and most that come so close but fail in some way. That this film falls in the latter category bothered me because this director will go on to do incredible work and her debut horror film was heartfelt and tense and brilliant and didn’t hold together as well as I’d have liked in the final act.

ONE. MORE. FILM. I’m tired and worn down and we only have one more film to go before we board our plane and that film tackles the incredibly light subject matter of mass shootings at high schools and I’m frankly uncertain if I have the energy. Your festival correspondent can’t find a reasonable way to say that waiting in lines and on buses and sitting to watch lots of movies is at-once one of the most wholly rewarding experiences of my lifetime and the most genuinely exhausting (I’ve left bachelor parties feeling better than this).

The Ninth Screening | Run Amok

Genre. Drama

Logline. A student stages a musical to commemorate a school tragedy.

Thoughts. The special part about Run Amok is the way it looks at gun violence unflinchingly through the eyes of the people it affects most. And for director NB Mager to take a swing this big with her feature debut is admirable even if it doesn’t work 100% of the time. Ultimately it’s a powerful, tearful, and (against wildly unfavorable odds) sometimes funny ride. Alyssa Marvin is a revelation as the film’s leading young cast member and there are a few scenes in this film that I will remember for the rest of my life. So what if there were a few things didn’t quite work for me (e.g. some attempts at surrealist humor); these things totally worked for Drew. But I think Drew should be more critical about stuff and Drew thinks for me the opposite. The worst part is that no one knows who’s right (except for me; I’m right).

DREW DOESN’T KNOW WHEN TO LET THINGS END. A few days after arriving home, Drew called me and in a celebratory tone exclaimed he’d bought us virtual tickets to the winner of the Grand Jury Prize, which he expected (and was correct) to be Josephine, starring Channing Tatum. He is, as mentioned, still “impervious to being tired”, and I cannot believe my ears but I’m into it, and so I walk over to his house the following day to watch the film.

The Tenth Screening | Josephine

Genre. Drama

Logline. 8-year-old Josephine witnesses a sex crime.

Thoughts. It appears we finished our festival with very heavy films. Beth de Araujo’s Josephine isn’t for the faint of heart but it’s an important movie. One that provides an intuitive, un-shy look into how young girls experience, process, and learn about sex and trauma. Seven-year-old newcomer Mason Reeves plays Josephine with the poignance of someone with far more life experience; though perhaps it's her lack of life experience that allowed her to play Josephine so true. Araujo deftly positions the camera from Josephine’s perspective often, a decision that grounds every event in the experience of the young titular character. End-to-end: the kid was unbelievable and Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan are marvelous and your heart will break into tiny pieces for Josephine and somehow you’ll find some hope by the end of it all.

The One That Got Away | The Invite

Genre. Comedy

Logline. A married couple is invited to their neighbors’ weekly orgies.

Thoughts. This film is, for your tnmn crew, the one that got away. We weren’t able to secure tickets to every film we wanted to see and this was one of the buzziest titles. A24 acquired it and I suspect we’ll all be able to see the film in theaters soon, but a friend of our’s who’d been to the festival for many years said this was in his top five filmgoing experiences of all time, so we expect it to be a good one.

SUNDANCE IS OVER & I REMEMBER IT FONDLY.

And so ends this festival goer’s account of Sundance 2026. To be at the world premiere of so many wonderful films was a privilege as was the chance to better understand the magic of Sundance. Since returning home, I’ve been asked plenty what it is that really makes the festival worth all the time and energy and money and to this I can say the following — 

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, as it were, has a kind of strange fairy dust sprinkled all over it. You will see great films of all sorts and do something that has become nearly impossible to do in today’s day and age which is to experience something (in this case, a film) without knowing much of anything about it. These are world premieres and there are no star ratings or cumulative scores or Letterboxd comments and actually all that’s there is a title, logline, cast and crew. When every film ends, you get to see the people that made it basque and take pride in its completion and from this you can almost derive the same pleasure you get witnessing a gymnast stick their landing with that prideful look on their face as they look out to a cheering crowd, knowing they did something special. And also by joining the festival and supporting independent film you will meet and become a part of an eclectic gathering of folks including but not limited to movie nerds and celebrity chasers and quasi-industry-people and PRPs and Me-Me’s and seat savers; and no matter your fancy it will be fascinating to share with them lines and buses and theaters and I suspect that, as they say, this is some of what life is about if you’re open minded enough to see it.

I’d nearly collapsed after hearing that Drew still wanted to watch movies with me after watching ten films in four days and waiting in (cumulatively) nearly thirteen hours of lines and riding at least 15 buses; but I love my brother and who was I to end our Sundance experience simply because I’d arrived home.

¹ I’ve been reading David Foster Wallace’s collection of essays, Consider the Lobster, and I’ve wholesale lifted this glossary format from his essay entitled Up, Simba. I figured it’s probably best to be up front about this kind of thing because credit where credit is due and yada yada.