You thought Sundance 2024 was over? Nothing is over until we decide it is! So, once more until next year: Sundance 2024 — the gift that keeps on giving.
History unfolded on the stage of the Chicago Cultural Center on June 28, 2024, as Mayor Brandon Johnson and Clinée Hedspeth, Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events commissioner, welcomed the Sundance Institute to the city of Chicago. Eugene Hernandez, Sundance Festival director and head of public programming, was joined by Jonah Zeiger, DCASE Deputy Commissioner of the Chicago Film Office and Dawn Porter, director of “Luther: Never Too Much,” to inaugurate an event entirely singular in the 40-year history of Sundance.
The Sundance Institute selected four films from their 2024 competition program to make their Midwestern premiere in Chicago, allowing magic to emanate from Park City, Utah for the very first time — a historic brushstroke across the map of the United States. News broke in April of 2024 that the Sundance Film Festival may be looking for a new home after four decades in Park City. Whether Sundance and Chicago will form an alliance of more consequence is unlikely, but one thing is for certain: Sundance x Chicago 2024 was here for the movies. Keep reading if you are too.
“Sugarcane”
Courtesy of the official press kit for “Sugarcane.”
In a movie theater, you practice empathy with yourself and with strangers — the strangers next to you and the strangers on the screen. This is perhaps the most beautiful and important part of watching films, something I was reminded of as I sat in a theater of strangers who cried together for nearly the entire runtime of “Sugarcane.” Described as “a gut-punch of a documentary” by The Hollywood Reporter, “Sugarcane” is a heartbreaking portrait of the victims of the Indigenous boarding schools that forced a breathtakingly resilient people into pain, silence and secrecy by a system hell-bent on the erasure of Indigenous ways of life.
Documentary filmmakers Emily Kassie (“Explained”) and Julian Brave NoiseCat (debut) met at The Huffington Post, uniting years later after evidence of unmarked graves at an Indigenous residential school incited an investigation into the abuse at St. Joseph’s Mission and within an Indigenous community that continues to be ravaged in its wake. “Sugarcane” is made intensely personal when NoiseCat becomes a subject of the documentary. He is a member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq’escen and a descendant of the Lil’Wat Nation of Mount Currie whose grandmother boarded at St. Joseph’s Mission.
This is a documentary that doesn’t just get under your skin or make you itch, but one that carves a deep cavity in your chest and fills it with devastating weight. An absolute must-see. What it may lack in cohesive storytelling is made up for with brutal and necessary honesty, care for its subjects and a cinematography style rarely found in documentaries. The camera frequently remains still and takes in the natural landscape of the Sugarcane reservation, the gaze of audience members often drawn to a single point of light surrounded by darkness or dullness. Great care is taken in filming the subjects, who are artfully framed as pillars of strength, survival, beauty and, above all, humanity.
In one scene, the camera pans over a field and the expansive sky above it as audio from a conversation between NoiseCat and his grandmother and father plays. Her voice is crippled by pain as the final moments of sunlight bleed through an opening between a thick swarm of clouds and the land — an “open wound” as Kassie called it. Visual poetry is Kassie’s greatest strength in her endeavor to tell a story that was lived by so many, survived by so few, silenced so callously, erased so easily, denied so adamantly, remembered so powerfully and inherited so painfully.
“Sugarcane” will open theatrically on Aug. 9. See the trailer here.
“Your Monster”
Courtesy of the official press kit for “Your Monster.”
Director Caroline Lindy (“Aspirational Slut”) quotes Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” in the director’s statement for her debut film “Your Monster” — set to hit North American theaters on Oct. 25 after being snapped up by Vertical following its premiere at Sundance in January — “O God, that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the marketplace.”
Rage is the apple we are told never to pick, even if it falls from a tree and rolls to our feet. Punish the wrongdoer, and feel the wrath of society. Wrong! Punish the wrongdoer, and feel catharsis tend to your wounds and watch as color returns to the world. Bite into the crisp and ripe apple of rage, and let its juices dance on your tongue, dribble down your chin and fill your stomach. Or so says “Your Monster.”
When a 24-year-old Lindy awoke from surgery to remove a cancerous mass from her appendix and was greeted by a break-up text from her boyfriend of three years, she swallowed her rage — until it came back up and ripped through her with the might of a monster stirred from a years-long slumber. “Your Monster” is Lindy’s ode to this horrific but exquisite turn in her life — a semi-autobiographical fantasy tale of Broadway-hopeful Laura Franco (Melissa Barrera, “Abigail”) who, in the depths of her despair, answers the door when a frightening and charming monster (Tommy Dewey, “Pivoting”) comes knocking.
Franco — freshly dumped, recovering from surgery and playing host to Monster — is dealt another bad hand when her ex-boyfriend — part-time playwright and full-time asshole — Jacob (Edmund Donovan, “Civil War”) attempts to put their collaborative work on stage without her. What results from these extraordinary circumstances is a groovy, glittering, swoon-worthy, funny, loud and, at times, terrifying experience. What genre of film is more flavorful and overflowing with pure, distilled expression than the great musical-horror-romantic-comedy? Surely there is not one.
It is difficult to comprehend that this is Lindy’s debut film, as “Your Monster” plays like the craftsmanship of well-practiced hands. Perhaps it is Lindy’s fresh eyes and spry voice that makes this film sing so audaciously. There is music to “Your Monster” even when its characters aren’t singing. It’s a musical-horror-rom-com film about the gore of a breakup along with the beauty and beastliness of falling in love with both the dirt and grime and the shiny and wonderful things you find within yourself when you are left alone with your darkest feelings.
Whether “Your Monster” will strike other critics as it did me, I cannot say. All I know for sure is that Caroline Lindy speaks in a language that I understand. After all, if my anger were personified and I found him lurking under my bed, I would let him up too.
“A Different Man”
Courtesy of the official press kit for “A Different Man.”
David Cronenberg (“Crimes of the Future”) meets early Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”). “The Fly” meets “Annie Hall.” Love meets self-love meets body horror. Sold yet?
“You’re afraid to be destroyed and recreated, aren’t you? … You can’t penetrate beyond society’s sick, gray fear of the flesh … I’m talking about penetration beyond the veil of the flesh!” This is the sermon Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum, “Jurassic World Dominion”) delivers to his lover Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis, “Thelma & Louise”) in Cronenberg’s “The Fly” — emboldened and wide-eyed as he climbs the high delivered by the insect power pumped by frantic veins like a flesh-eating bacteria as he transforms into a human-sized fly. Edward (Sebastian Stan, “Fresh”), an aspiring actor whose career and social prospects are — in his eyes — hindered by his disfigured face, makes quite the opposite transformation in Aaron Schimberg’s (“Chained for Life”) “A Different Man.”
Schimberg is set to debut his third feature film on Sept. 20 after “A Different Man” was picked up by A24 following its premiere at the 40th Sundance Film Festival. One of a lucky few to participate in a drug trial that seeks to recover that which has been lost, Edward’s face is restored to its former glory: averageness. Edward fakes his death, ditches “Edward,” and becomes “Guy.” Guy becomes lost in the haze and sick of metamorphosis. “A Different Man” balances between dark comedy and horror while commenting on how society is conditioned to perceive and articulate the human experience of the other — Schimberg points at the irony and humor in man’s fear of the flesh.
Guy is forced to accept the horrifying possibility that the reason he was ignored as Edward may not have been because of the face he grew, rather because of the face he chose to wear, when his former neighbor (Renate Reinsve, “The Worst Person in the World”) writes a play about him and casts a charismatic man (Adam Pearson, “Under the Skin”) who bears striking resemblance to Edward.
This makes two films at Sundance x Chicago 2024 set in New York City about an actor’s relationship with themselves that is tested by an exploitative playwright in an off-broadway/broadway show. “A Different Man” leans more into horror than “Your Monster,” but still remains bitingly funny and character-driven. The world around us and the worlds inside of us wear ugly and strange masks — faces. Faces are elusive and deceiving and, at times, utterly meaningless. But we all wear them. We are fascinated by them — repulsed by, attracted to and envious of them. We are often unable to look past our own — to penetrate beyond the veil of the flesh — despite them never “(changing) a bit.”
“A Different Man” will open theatrically on Sept. 20. See the trailer here.
“Luther: Never Too Much”
Courtesy of the official press kit for “Luther: Never Too Much.”
It is with a heavy heart that I report that I was unable to catch a showing for this film. Not for a lack of trying — “Luther: Never Too Much” (“Luther”) pulled full houses to each of its screenings. But, fear not, I come to you with everything you need to know ahead of the film’s 2025 release, including words from director Dawn Porter herself.
Biopics are all the rage in Hollywood — a wave in the film industry that seems only to crest and never to fall — but they lack the poignance of objectivity and are often only successful if their subjects are already of public interest or obsession. Luther Vandross, eight-time Grammy award winner and 33-time Grammy nominee, is an enduring symbol of Black culture and a figure in music history whose story has faded in human memory but deserves to remain at its forefront. Porter, a seasoned documentary filmmaker, drew from rehearsal footage, archival footage, photography and interviews from Luther’s closest collaborators and friends to bring one man’s extraordinary and historically overlooked legacy to the big screen.
“People have described (“Luther”) almost as a concert film in some ways,” Porter told the audience. “Luther” seems to be just as much a joyous celebration of a star and musical master as it is an honest and heartbreaking portrait of a once-in-a-generation talent who was mistreated by the record industry and longed unavailingly for love and acceptance. Porter urges her audience to “Share in the joy and remembrance of Luther.” In her words, “I cannot wait to share this film with the world and I hope that everyone who watches this can laugh, cry and, of course, sing, in honor of Luther Vandross.” When a 2025 release date is announced for its premiere on CNN, OWN and Max, my calendar will be marked.
And, with that, until next year, Sundance!
Daily Arts Writer Maya Ruder can be reached at mayarud@umich.edu.
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