Park City, Utah will soon welcome a variety of talents to celebrate independent filmmaking at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. The lineup of Sundance Film Festival competition was initially announced on December 7, 2022. In the span of ten days, commencing on January 19 and concluding on January 29, the festival will offer unique spectacles from a plethora of categories, such as U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, as well as Kids films and Indie Episodic beauties.

Sundance is heralded as one of the Big Five festivals — alongside Cannes, Venice, Toronto, and Berlin — and it surely won’t be short of highly-awaited premieres and screenings. Indeed, many popular films over the years made their premieres at Sundance, from Little Miss Sunshine to CODA. With that being said, let’s take a look at the movies in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition program.

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Animalia

     Wrong Films

French-Moroccan director and screenwriter Sofia Alaoui is back at Sundance, after winning the Grand Jury Prize two years back for her short film Qu’importe si les bêtes meurent. This year, she’ll introduce to us an imaginative sci-fi spectacle called Animalia. The plot follows a heavily pregnant Itto, who finally earns a moment of peace when left home alone after her husband leaves for business. The peace is cut short when the world order gets disrupted by a supernatural presence and Itto is finally given the emancipation she’s always craved for.

Bad Behaviour

     Bee-Hive Productions

Australian director/actress Alice Englert, best known for her role in Beautiful Creatures (2013), is taking a step forward in her career as a director. Her upcoming sophisticated feature film debut Bad Behaviour is a dark comedy joining Jennifer Connelly and Ben Whishaw in the lead roles. Connelly plays a former child actress, co-dependent toxic mother Lucy, whose bad behavior endangers the turbulent relationship she has with her stunt person daughter Dylan. Led by her guru Elon Bello, Lucy joins a silent retreat at a beautiful mountain resort, where her behavior reaches an astonishing low.

Girl

     BBC Film

The UK is certainly well-represented in this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with three debut features, one of which is the poignant story Girl. Adura Onashile’s work is well-known to Scottish audiences, but she’s slowly expanding her horizons. With Girl, she tells a delicate mother-daughter story about trauma and coming-of-age experiences. Following Grace and her teenage daughter Ama, the plot follows the duo as they start anew in Glasgow. While Ama thrives in the new community, Grace’s reminded of the painful past she’s been sheltering her daughter from. It showcases the painful sacrifices we’re sometimes forced to undergo to reach self-love and acceptance.

Heroic

     Teorema

Fans of Mexican cinema won’t be left out of the equation either. In his second feature as a writer-director, David Zonana takes an unflinching look at the Mexican military in his upcoming film Heroic. As an ex-cadet himself, Santiago Sandoval Carbajal plays the main character Luis with utmost realism. The 18-year-old protagonist enlists as an infantry cadet in the Heroic Military College, in hopes to move up the social ranks and make a name for his struggling family. But after encountering his malevolent mentor Sergeant Sierra, he’s slowly drawn to madness with the rituals of abuse and humiliation.

MAMACRUZ

     La Claqueta PC

Having won multiple accolades, particularly for her 2018 film Being Impossible, Venezuelan director Patricia Ortega is back with yet another intriguing tale: MAMACRUZ. Veteran actor Kiti Mánver portrays an extremely religious woman (Cruz), whose routine existence gets disrupted when she accidentally comes across online pornography. Although she’s horrified by her reawakened desires, she gradually leads a tentative journey toward self-love after joining a women’s sex therapy group.

Mami Wata

     Fiery Film Company LTD

C.J. “Fiery” Obasi’s film, Mami Wata, takes us to a spiritual fable rooted in West Afrikan folklore. Set in an oceanside village of Iyi, the film centers around the revered Mama Efe, who acts as the intermediary between the people and the all-powerful water deity Mami Wata. A sudden death of a young boy and an arrival of a mysterious rebel deserter named Jasper fracture the matriarchal spiritual order. Mama Efe gets stuck between two ideologies: do they want to keep living in harmony with the ocean, or do they fall victim to technological progress?

La Pecera

     Canica Films

Having a body of work in multimedia, interdisciplinary artist Glorimar Marrero has prepared an arresting debut feature in La Pecera. Portrayed by Isel Rodríguez​​​​​​​, Noelia is a young Puerto Rican woman, whose attempts to defeat her cancer exhaust her. She decides to return to her native land of Puerto Rico and look for an answer to her pain among her family and friends. The subsequent tale talks about U.S colonization, as well as healing and reverence.

Scrapper

     Charades

Scrapper is the second British entry in this program, depicting an inventive British working-class cinema. The film follows resourceful 12-year-old girl, Georgie​​​​​​​ (newcomer Lola Campbell), who even after her mother’s death, continues living alone in their London-outskirts flat. Her ingenious independence gets disrupted when her estranged father Jason shows up and suddenly takes an interest in her life. Director Charlotte Regan​​​​​​​ brings a magical quality to this father-daughter story.

Shayda

     Screen Australia

Iranian-Australian writer/director Noora Niasari has drawn from her personal experiences to create the beautifully crafted film Shayda. An Iranian woman, Shayda, finds refuge in a women’s shelter with her frightened six-year-old daughter, Mona, after having fled her husband from Iran to Australia. As she attempts to grant her daughter the freedom she deserves, her husband, Hossein, is granted visitation rights, creating fears for their freedom again.

Slow

     Totem Films

Considered to be one of the most talented upcoming filmmakers in Lithuania​​​​​​​, Marija Kavtaradze is back with a sophomore feature Slow. Contemporary dancer Elena meets a sign language interpreter Dovydas, and they immediately gravitate towards each other. Dovydas discloses his asexuality in no time and while they promise to honor their individual needs, the bond is quickly tested. Just how much generosity, compromise, and sacrifice are we willing to do for the ones we love without losing ourselves?

Sorcery

     The Match Factory

Based on actual events, Christopher Murray’s dark decolonial fantasy Sorcery is set on Chiloé Island in 1880. After her father gets murdered by German settlers, Huilliche indigenous 13-year-old girl Rosa renounces her Christian upbringing and joins an Indigenous organization that practices witchcraft. Her hunger for vengeance helps her discover her dormant powers. This enigmatic coming-of-age tale provides a hopeful account of Indigenous resistance.

When It Melts

     The Party Film Sales

Last but not least, Belgian actress/singer Veerle Baetens introduces us to her debut feature film When It Melts. Rosa Marchant and Charlotte De Bruyne portray the juxtaposed characters of a young fragile Eva and a brittle, isolated adult. The protagonist returns to her home village to relive her traumatic past of a scorching summer that altered her life. The film portrays the tragic lasting impact on an untreated trauma.