El Planeta, 2021(Film still)
Futuristic and reflective, AnOther’s picks of this year’s digital festival span Dior Saddle bag-toting grifters and hunted mythical creatures
February 08, 2021
A recent Instagram post from the documentary filmmaker Matt Wolf summed up the current state of attending prestige film festivals globally very well: “I’m alone in a virtual Chinese restaurant at a Dutch documentary film festival,” he wrote, captioning a screenshot of his avatar enjoying “dumplings” and “karaoke” at an empty table. Surreal attempts to replicate physical festival mingling aside, the transferral of festivals like Utah’s
Sundance to the digital space has ushered in a new democratisation of these events, allowing fans everywhere to spot the films most likely to have an impact on culture for themselves. This year, the best storytelling showcased a cinematic landscape both self-reflective and radically future-bound: revealing alternate viewpoints on the past, and