The Freebie

Showing at Sundance: The Freebie, written and directed by Katie Aselton

For some reason I thought I hated this Dax Shepard person, but I think I was just confusing him with Dane Cook.

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Darren and Annie have an enviable relationship built on love, trust, and communication. After seven years of marriage, they wouldn’t change their relationship one bit. They still enjoy each other’s company and laugh at each other’s jokes, but, unfortunately, they can’t remember the last time they had sex. When a dinner party conversation leads to an honest discussion about the state of their love life, and a bikini photo shoot leads to crossword puzzles instead of sex, they begin to flirt with a way to spice things up. The deal: one night of no-strings-attached sex with a stranger for each of them. Can one night of freedom be just what they need?

With a keen eye and fresh take, Katie Aselton’s directorial debut shines. The Freebie is an insightful, humorous look at love, sustaining relationships, and the awkwardness of monogamy when the haze of lust has faded.


Nothing on YouTube yet, but if you click the Sundance link above, it'll take you to a trailer.

A Small Act

Showing at Sundance: A Small Act, directed by Jennifer Arnold

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

As an impoverished boy in Kenya, Chris Mburu's life was dramatically changed when an anonymous Swedish woman sponsored his primary and secondary education. Now a Harvard-educated human-rights lawyer, he hopes to replicate the generosity he once received by founding his own scholarship fund to aid a new generation. The challenges Mburu faces instituting his new program seem at times insurmountable but lead him down the path to discovery. Who is Hilde Back, the person who signed the checks that gave him a chance to succeed?

With clarity and grace, Jennifer Arnold's film bears cinematic witness to the lasting ramifications of a small ripple of human kindness. Using a strong narrative thread, she unearths fascinating accounts and weaves them together seamlessly. It doesn't hurt that her subjects have pure motivations and back stories to match. The secret of A Small Act was destined to be discovered, if only to remind and inspire others to take such a chance—and change a life.

The film's website is here.

Russian Lessons

Showing at Sundance: Russian Lessons, directed by Olga Konskaya and Andrei Nekrasov

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Andrei Nekrasov, with directing partner Olga Konskaya, returns to Sundance with a formidable documentary that energetically delves into the violent and bewildering conflicts in the Caucasus, with Russia pitted against the former Soviet state of Georgia, and involving Georgia’s troubled regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Boldly visiting conflict zones rarely filmed, the codirectors uncover damning evidence of Russian violence, incidents whose few recorded images are often reprocessed in mass-media reports as evidence of other people’s crimes (often, supposedly, residents of Georgia).

Parsing the complex history of the region, as well as oversimplified cultural assumptions about internecine ethnic conflicts, Nekrasov and Konskaya construct a portrait of a cynical Russia willing to engage in secret wars and manufacture conflicts and media reports simply to consolidate power. With immediacy and passion, but also with a commanding mastery of film form, their documentary dignifies the struggles of powerless people and holds a sobering mirror up to a superpower and its media.

Please Give

Showing at Sundance: Please Give, written and directed by Nicole Holofcener

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Kate (Catherine Keener) and Alex (Oliver Platt), a married couple who run a successful business reselling estate-sale furniture, live in Manhattan with their teenage daughter, Abby. Wanting to expand their two-bedroom apartment, they buy the unit next door, planning to knock the walls out. However, before doing so, they have to wait for the occupant, Andra, a cranky elderly woman, to die. The wait becomes complicated when the family develops relationships with Andra and her two grown granddaughters.

Nicole Holofcener infuses her story of love, death, and liberal guilt with a rare balance of humor and complexity that stems from her uncanny ability to understand people—their motivations, interactions, and contradictions. Her characters go to great pains to navigate a world of moral confusion; we want to feel good about ourselves, but we never feel quite good enough. In avoiding judgment, she offers a funny and philosophical reflection on the give and take of modern life.

Waste Land

Showing at Sundance: Waste Land, directed by Lucy Walker

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. His "Sugar Children" series portrays the images of deprived children of Caribbean plantation workers using the sugar from their surroundings. When acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker trains her camera on Muniz, he is cultivating a new idea for a project. He knows the material he wants to use—garbage—but who will be the subject of the new series of works?

Waste Land is a wonderfully resonant documentary that chronicles Muniz's journey to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He collaborates with an eclectic band of catadores, or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials, and photographs these inspiring characters as they recycle their lives and society’s garbage. Walker gains fantastic access to the entire process and, in doing so, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the dignity that can be found in personal determination.

The film's (under construction) website is here.

The Kids Are Alright

Showing at Sundance: The Kids Are Alright, directed by Lisa Cholodenko

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

A couple, Nic and Jules (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore), live with their teenage children, Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson), in a cozy craftsman bungalow in Los Angeles. As Joni prepares for college, her younger brother pesters her for a big favor—help him find their biological father. Against her better judgment, she makes a call to the sperm bank; the bank, in turn, calls Paul (Mark Ruffalo) and asks him if he’s willing to meet his daughter. He agrees, and a complicated new chapter begins for the family.

Director Lisa Cholodenko returns to Sundance (Laurel Canyon played at the 2003 Festival, and High Art won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 1998 Festival) with this vibrant, astute, and richly drawn portrait of a modern family. Once again, Cholodenko demonstrates her uncanny ability to reach beneath the gloss of Southern California to illuminate the emotional and transformative power of human vulnerability and, in doing so, establishes herself as one of America’s most formidable auteurs.

The Oath

Showing at Sundance: The Oath, directed by Laura Poitras

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Unraveling like a lush, gripping novel that constantly subverts expectations, The Oath is the interlocking drama of two brothers-in-law, Abu Jandal and Salim Hamdam, whose associations with al Qaeda in the 1990s propelled them on divergent courses. The film delves into Abu Jandal's daily life as a taxi driver in Sana’a, Yemen, and Hamdan’s military tribunal in Guantanamo Bay prison. Abu Jandal and Hamdan’s personal stories—how they came to serve as Osama bin Laden’s bodyguard and driver respectively—act as prisms through which to humanize and contextualize a world the Western media demonizes. As Hamdan’s trial progresses, his military lawyers challenge fundamental flaws in the court system. As charismatic Abu Jandal dialogues with his son, Muslim students, and journalists, he generously unveils the complex evolution of his belief system since 9/11.

Exquisitely constructed so multiple threads and time periods commingle seamlessly, and gaining astonishingly intimate access to subjects and information, The Oath illuminates a realm too long misunderstood.

Facebook page here (still getting going, apparently).

Meet the Artists: Laura Poitras

Bhutto

Showing at Sundance: Bhutto, directed by Jessica Hernández and Johnny O'Hara

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

As the first woman to lead an Islamic nation, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's life story unfolds like a tale of Shakespearean dimensions. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Bhutto evolved from pampered princess to polarizing politician battling tradition and terrorism in the most dangerous country on Earth. Her father, the first democratically elected president of Pakistan, chose Benazir over his eldest son to carry his political mantle. Accused of rampant corruption, imprisoned, then exiled abroad, Bhutto was called back in 2007 as her country’s only hope for democracy. When she was struck down by an assassin, her untimely death sent shock waves throughout the world, transforming Bhutto from political messiah to a martyr in the eyes of the common people.

With exclusive interviews from the Bhutto family and never-before-seen footage, filmmakers Jessica Hernández and Johnny O'Hara have crafted a sweeping epic of a transcendent, yet polarizing, figure whose legacy will be debated for years to come.


The movie's website is here, and you can become a fan on Facebook.

The Extra Man

Showing at Sundance: The Extra Man, written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Louis Ives, a lonely dreamer who fancies himself the hero of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, leaves his job and heads to Manhattan to become a writer. He rents a room in the ramshackle apartment of Henry Harrison, a wildly eccentric, but brilliant, playwright who happens to be an “extra man”—a social escort for the wealthy widows of New York’s high society. The two form an unexpected bond.

Paul Dano and Kevin Kline couldn't be better suited to bring to life these two dapper men lost in time, each lending his own distinct sensibility to the sharply conceived characters. Delicately balancing humor and pathos, writers/directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini (American Splendor) have a knack for bringing edgy tales to life with humanity, a rich universe, and a brisk compelling intellect that all combine to leave the audience splendidly satisfied. The Extra Man is a sophisticated comedy that will do just that.

Night Catches Us

Showing at Sundance: Night Catches Us, directed by Tanya Hamilton

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

In the summer of ’76, as President Jimmy Carter pledges to give government back to the people, tensions run high in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood where the Black Panthers once flourished. When Marcus returns—having bolted years earlier—his homecoming isn’t exactly met with fanfare. His former movement brothers blame him for an unspeakable betrayal. Only his best friend’s widow, Patricia, appreciates Marcus’s predicament, which both unites and paralyzes them. As Patricia’s daughter compels the two comrades to confront their past, history repeats itself in dangerous ways.

Night Catches Us masterfully reckons with the complexity of its characters’ revolutionary ideologies and internal desires. Bell-bottoms, Afros, potlucks, and Caddies set the scene as the film potently interweaves political media with an evocative soul-inspired score, summoning a vivid sense of place and time. The golden light that bathes characters’ faces seems to express the promise—and elusiveness—of the necessary change Marcus and Patricia struggle for so dearly—each by separate means.

There is a trailer on the film's website.

Meet Tanya Hamilton:

Countdown to Zero

Showing at Sundance: Countdown to Zero, directed by Lucy Walker

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

During the cold war, public consciousness fixated on the atomic bomb. Then the cold war ended, and we retreated into denial. In fact, the danger of nuclear annihilation never disappeared; it only swelled. Countdown to Zero sweeps us into a scorching, hypnotic journey around the world to reveal the palpable possibility of nuclear disaster and frame an issue on which human survival itself hangs.

Scientists, world leaders, and security experts—including Valerie Plame herself—expose the absurdities and alarming realities of the situation. The 1990s heralded a second nuclear age. Many countries and terrorist groups are now actively acquiring fissile materials and construction blueprints. The possibility of an accident or miscalculation looms even larger. As the film projects a startling vision, interviews with Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, and Pervez Musharraf yield a unified message: our only option is to eradicate every-last nuclear missile. Luckily for us, getting to zero is possible—step by step. Let’s jump-start the change.

The film's take-action website is here.

Winter's Bone

Showing at Sundance: Winter's Bone, directed by Debra Granik

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Deep in the Ozark Mountains, clans live by a code of conduct that no one dares defy—until an intrepid teenage girl has no other choice. When Ree Dolly's crystal-meth-making father skips bail and goes missing, her family home is on the line. Unless she finds him, she and her young siblings and disabled mother face destitution. In a heroic quest, Ree traverses the county to confront her kin, break their silent collusion, and bring her father home.

With thrilling tension, Winter’s Bone depicts an archetypal rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood. Only this time, the young warrior is a girl. As our heroine braves immoveable obstacles, she redefines the notion of family loyalty and, in the process, discovers her own power. The spare precision of Debra Granik’s direction is effortlessly profound. Stunningly genuine performances and exquisite visual details capture the textures and rhythms of a world where the mythic and the naturalistic intermingle.

No trailer on YouTube yet (come on, people!), but there is a segment with Debra Granik...

12th & Delaware

Showing at Sundance: 12th & Delaware, directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing

A little confused by the poster—what is that shadow? Is it a straight-up sonogram, or altered in some way?

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

On an unassuming corner in Fort Pierce, Florida, it’s easy to miss the insidious war that’s raging. But on each side of 12th and Delaware, soldiers stand locked in a passionate battle. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic. On the other, a pro-life outfit often mistaken for the clinic it seeks to shut down.

Using skillful cinema-vérité observation that allows us to draw our own conclusions, Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, the directors of Jesus Camp, expose the molten core of America’s most intractable conflict. As the pro-life volunteers paint a terrifying portrait of abortion to their clients, across the street, the staff members at the clinic fear for their doctors' lives and fiercely protect the right of their clients to choose. Shot in the year when abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was murdered in his church, the film makes these fears palpable. Meanwhile, women in need become pawns in a vicious ideological war with no end in sight.

You can become a Facebook fan of the movie here. There is a trailer on the Sundance website linked above, but nothing embeddable, so here is an interview with Grady and Ewing:

Grown Up Movie Star

Showing at Sundance: Grown Up Movie Star, written and directed by Adriana Maggs

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

When Lillian leaves town in search of stardom, her husband, Ray, and two precocious daughters, Ruby and Rose, are left to salvage the family. Ray’s emotional development is plagued by a past that won't go away. As he flails from woman to woman in search of a replacement mother for his girls, starry-eyed teenager Ruby is on her own path—discovering that her newfound sexuality is an easy way to get the attention she desperately craves. Separated only by their generations, father and daughter find themselves on similar journeys of sexual awakening.

Grown Up Movie Star is an accomplished first feature by Adriana Maggs. Using a remote small town in Newfoundland as her backdrop, she orchestrates a highly capable cast—with an especially riveting breakout performance by Tatiana Maslany as Ruby. Sharp, honest dialogue blurs the roles of parent and child and magnifies the pain of growing up . . . at any age.

The film's website is here.

Kick in Iran

Showing at Sundance: Kick in Iran, directed by Fatima Geza Abdollahyan

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Sarah Khoshjamal, a 20-year-old Taekwondo superstar, is the first female professional athlete from Iran to qualify for the Olympics. This skillful vérité portrait follows the unassuming Khoshjamal in the nine months leading up to the 2008 Beijing games. Living in an Islamic country, she is required to wear a hijab at all times and, unlike her fellow competitors around the world, cannot train with men; however, the power in her fighting resoundingly breaks down stereotypical barriers.

Khoshjamal’s experience as a world-class athlete may be familiar, but captured here is the importance of the coach-athlete relationship. The bond she shares with her feisty and much-admired female coach is revealed through everyday moments as both struggle through inequality to make their mark—in sport and society. Though it’s still the male athletes who are ultimately celebrated in her country, Khoshjamal’s accomplishments and lasting influence on scores of girls in Iran are undeniable.

The film's website is here.

Obselidia

Showing at Sundance: Obselidia, directed by Diane Bell

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

Believing he’s the last door-to-door encyclopedia salesman in the world, George decides to write The Obselidia, a compendium of obsolete things. George believes that love, among other things, is obsolete. In his quest to document nearly extinct occupations, he befriends Sophie, a beautiful cinema projectionist who works at a silent movie theatre. Sophie believes that nothing is obsolete as long as someone loves it. When they interview a reclusive scientist who predicts that 80 percent of the world’s population will be obliterated by irreversible climate change by the year 2100, the two must face the question, if the world is going to disappear tomorrow, how are we going to live today?

Diane Bell’s soft-spoken, profound, and disarmingly charming debut feature engages these fateful issues of our time with a warm, sparkling sense of beauty, sincerity, and compassion. Obselidia offers a rare and humane lens through which we can view a world increasingly preoccupied with and inhabited by extinction.

The film's website is here, you can find it on Facebook here, and there is even a blog that seems to be written by George.

Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Showing at Sundance: Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child, directed by Tamra Davis

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

In his short career, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a phenomenon. He became notorious for his graffiti art under the moniker Samo in the late 1970s on the Lower East Side scene, sold his first painting to Deborah Harry for $200, and became best friends with Andy Warhol. Appreciated by both the art cognoscenti and the public, Basquiat was launched into international stardom. However, soon his cult status began to override the art that had made him famous in the first place.

Director Tamra Davis pays homage to her friend in this definitive documentary but also delves into Basquiat as an iconoclast. His dense, bebop-influenced neoexpressionist work emerged while minimalist, conceptual art was the fad; as a successful black artist, he was constantly confronted by racism and misconceptions. Much can be gleaned from insider interviews and archival footage, but it is Basquiat’s own words and work that powerfully convey the mystique and allure of both the artist and the man.

Basquiat in action:

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Showing at Sundance: Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, directed by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

This exposé chronicles the private dramas of irreverent, legendary comedian and pop icon Joan Rivers as she fights tooth and nail to keep her American dream alive. The film offers a rare glimpse of the comedic process and the crazy mixture of self-doubt and anger that often fuels it. A unique look inside America's obsession with fame and celebrity, Rivers's story is both an outrageously funny journey and brutally honest look at the ruthless entertainment industry, the trappings of success, and the ultimate vulnerability of the first queen of comedy.

Being able to break through Rivers’s self-made façade is a tribute to filmmakers Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg. It is obvious the magic of this film is the inherent trust between filmmakers and subject. Shot over the course of a year, the film enlists a resilient cinema vérité style to craft a moving look at this iconic performer, stripping away her comedy masks and laying bare the truth of her life and inspiration.

The movie's (unfinished) website is here, or you can follow along on Facebook.

Stern and Sundberg:

The Imperialists Are Still Alive!

Showing at Sundance: The Imperialists Are Still Alive!, directed by Zeina Durra

Synopsis from the film's website:

A successful visual artist working in post-9/11 Manhattan, Asya lives the life of the hip and glamorous, replete with exclusive art parties, supermodels, and stretch limousines while she carefully follows the situation in the Middle East on television. Asya learns that her childhood friend, Faisal, has disappeared-the victim of a purported CIA abduction. That same night, she meets Javier, a sexy Mexican PhD student, and romance blossoms. Javier finds Asya's conspiracy theories overly paranoid-but nothing in Asya's world is as it seems. Asya's life is reflective of the themes of cultural fusion, and the complications and humor that arise simultaneously out of everyday life.

Zeina Durra's atmospheric debut feature is an alluring and intelligent look at the way the war on terror seeps into the texture of everyday American life. Gorgeous 16 mm grain imbues the film with an anachronistic feel that interestingly evokes times past. The Imperialists Are Still Alive! is an exceptional work and heralds the arrival of Durra as an exciting new directorial talent.

There is a trailer at the link above; here is more Durra:

My Perestroika

Showing at Sundance: My Perestroika, directed by Robin Hessman

Synopsis from the Sundance website:

The Bolshevik revolution, the cold war, and the collapse of the Soviet Union defined the history of the twentieth century. With such a past, what does it mean to be Russian today? Robin Hessman's lovingly crafted documentary, My Perestroika, adopts the idea of the “everyman story,” suggesting that the unheralded lives of the last generation of Soviets to grow up behind the iron curtain hold the key to understanding the contradictions of modern Russia from the inside out.

Crafted during five years of researching and shooting, and based on almost a decade of living in Russia in the 1990s, Hessman's film poetically interweaves an extraordinary trove of home movies, Soviet propaganda films, and intimate access to five schoolmates whose linked, but very different, histories offer a moving portrait of newly middle-class Russians living lives they could never have imagined when they were growing up.

The film's official site is here, and its Facebook page is here.No trailer on YouTube, but here is an interview with Robin Hessman.