Users Review: A Pensive, Tech-Wary Doc Where the Pictures Say More Than the Words
Stunning imagery but stunted philosophy mean this beautiful but meandering doc yields less than meets the eye.
Jessica Kiang, provided by
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Courtesy of Sundance Institute
We’ve all been alone inside our heads a lot recently, and the question “why am I having weird dreams” has reportedly surged as a Google search over the past year. Natalia Almada’s “Users,” which won the directing award for U.S. Documentary in Sundance, is perhaps best appreciated as one of those peculiarly vivid dreams. Like them, it is made of uncanny imagery and strange echoey mood. But also like them, it comes apart under the scrutiny of the more logical, waking mind, and dissipates quickly in daylight.
Top row: CODA, Courtesy of Sundance Institute; Summer of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), photo by Mass Distraction Media; Flee, courtesy of Sundance Institute. Bottom row: Hive, photo by Alexander Bloom; Writing With Fire, courtesy of Sundance Institute; Ma Belle, My Beauty, courtesy of Sundance Institute. Park City, UT After six days and 73 feature films, the 2021 Sundance Film Festival’s Awards Ceremony took place tonight, hosted by actor and comedian Patton Oswalt, with jurors presenting 24 prizes for feature filmmaking and seven for Short Films. Honorees, named in total below, represent new achievements in global independent storytelling. Bold, intimate, and humanizing stories prevailed across categories, with Grand Jury Prizes awarded to
Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s
Summer Of Soul (…Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) secured the coveted U.S. Grand Jury Prize: Documentary and Audience Award: U.S. Documentary at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival awards, held last night (Feb. 2).
The festival’s awards ceremony was hosted by actor and comedian Patton Oswalt. Jurors presented 24 prizes for feature filmmaking and seven for short films.
Thompson’s
Summer Of Soul (pictured), produced by David Dinerstein, Robert Fyvolent and Joseph Patel, tells the story of the Harlem Cultural Festival, held during the same summer as Woodstock in 1969. The event drew over 300,000 people to celebrate African American music and culture. The documentary unearths footage from the festival after more than 50 years.
Posted on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021 by Chris Evangelista
Today, the Golden Globe nominations were announced, and the results were pretty bad! So perhaps we should try to cleanse our palates with the 2021 Sundance Film Festival awards. This year’s Sundance was virtual, and while that experience can’t hold a candle to being on the ground in Park City, the festival organizers deserver lots of credit for putting the fest together in any capacity and running it smoothly. While I found a lot of the films I saw this year to be lacking, there were still plenty of noteworthy titles. Lots of attention was paid to
Sundance: Documentary Users Acquired by Film Constellation (EXCLUSIVE)
Elsa Keslassy, provided by
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Film Constellation, the London-based production, finance and sales outfit, has acquired Natalia Almada’s timely documentary “Users,” which will have its world premiere at Sundance.
“Users” is set to unspool as part of Sundance’s U.S. documentary competition section on Jan. 31. Film Constellation is representing the film in international markets, while Endeavor Content is repping North American rights.
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The cinematic documentary explores our relationship to technology and its impact on our planet, as well as ways in which machines we use every day may end up changing us forever. Both intimate in scope and epic in scale, “Users” also features a score performed by the Kronos Quartet.