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Human Factors. Klemens Hufnagl/Sundance Institute This year’s Sundance Film Festival was like no other. Thanks to the ongoing pandemic, the usual red-carpet premieres were replaced by at-home streaming supplemented by screenings at a handful of small venues and drive-ins around the country. That’s not the way most attendees preferred to experience the movies, of course. But the festival’s 2021 selections were still true to the spirit of Sundance, which fosters independent cinema and innovative voices: They served up exciting stories from around the world, mostly of the kind that Hollywood often skips over. The fiction films that made it to Sundance in this weird year ranged from thrillers to dramas to heartwarming comedies; soon, many of them will be (or already have been) bought by distributors and streaming services. ....
Courtesy of Sundance Institute Early in 2020, when we still had hope that the spread of Covid-19 would be suppressed in a few weeks or months and we’d be back to our lives in short order, film critics joked about what the 2021 Sundance Film Festival selection would be like. Dramas about parents trapped at home with their kids for a few weeks and having a personal revelation. Quirky romances between quarantined roommates. Zoom-mediated comedies. That sort of thing. Back then, nobody dared think the festival itself would be held online it was too hard to imagine. But by fall the (wise) decision was made to make most of Sundance 2021 a virtual affair, with a little bit of satellite programming at small theaters and drive-ins around the country. I wondered, when I heard that announcement, how much “quarancinema” could really make its way into the lineup or address the situation, given the length of time it takes to write, shoot, and create a film. ....