The 2024 Sundance Film Festival is officially in the books, but we’ve still got thoughts to share on some of the best films we saw at this year’s edition.
Ranging in compelling documentaries about two very strong women to a heartbreaking dramedy from actor/filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg, these seven films join the five we’ve already covered as firm examples of what makes a festival like Sundance unique.
Let’s dive into these films, ones that reach back into our memories and relate to various aspects of the world around us.
You can check out the first edition of our coverage and check back with us next week for our third and final recap of 2024’s Sundance run.
A Real Pain
Jesse Eisenberg’s sophomore is a tidal wave of messy grace, as A Real Pain studies the uncontrollable sorrow of unpacked trauma against the backdrop of strained relationships with those you love and those you barely know.
Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin are both magnificent as a pair of mismatched cousins venturing to Poland to walk in the footsteps of their late grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. The two have their own tensions to settle, and we all know how strange life can get when you leave the confines of your home for a lengthy trip abroad.
Rather than let the film wallow in a sense of self-pity, Eisenberg shrewdly lets the pains of the setting and the underlying dynamics of its leads guide the emotion while finding bits and bobs of matter-of-fact humor in the journey.
Only two films in, Eisenberg is already showing himself to be a wildly capable sojourner of the fraught human condition, one that leaves you laughing one moment and balling your eyes out the next. A Real Pain is a stellar example of compact, humane storytelling, free from frills and dedicated to finding the right answers, even when they’re fractured and frazzled.
As We Speak
A laser-focused study of the criminalization of rap lyrics and a broken system that seeks to indict more for what you say than investigate if you actually did something wrong, As We Speak is a punishing lament.
Rapper Kemba walks viewers through a history of uneven censorship and policing of Black art, going back to the 1800s and stretching right into the now. It’s a fierce thesis, one given proper context and rigorous defense. Whereas some like-minded documentaries can morph into useful-but-static lectures, filmmaker J.M. Harper never forgets the electric style that marks the genre of its study.
It’s a sleek, damning work, one that highlights a level of startling rot in our justice system you might not always think about.
Dìdi (弟弟)
It’s a bit harrowing to think that we’re already on late 2000s nostalgia, a time where you cranked emo pop, went to see The Dark Knight multiple times with your friends, studied online “top friends” lists to see where you stood and Facebook poked your siblings into annoyance submission.
New filmmaker Sean Wang’s feature-length debut is an indelible coming-of-age dramedy, one clearly in conversation with a movie like Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade about the sticky, uncompromising memories of our adolescence that we grow past but always hold onto for their messy, immature glow.
Wang allows his past self to be the twerp most all of us were in that delicate transition from middle to high school, that summer where our friends changed, our interests piqued and we, as 2000s teenagers, lived everything out as poor, wayfaring strangers in the early days of the social media experiment. There’s a sharp sense of time and space to Dìdi (弟弟), one that sets this one apart from its peers.
This is an excellent film that doesn’t just invite you back as much as it pulls you back in, warts and all, of the experiences that we grew past but won’t ever let go of because you can’t.
Never Look Away
Lucy Lawless’ affecting directorial debut shares the life of fearless CNN journalist Margaret Moth, who walked into war zones with a camera and plenty of resolve, shaping the way the world saw itself because of her determination.
While you can’t help but imagine how the narrative version of this story would play in the right hands, Lawless still tells Moth’s story with plenty of care and a deft dilleniation of how to homage such a vibrant life.
Sue Bird: In The Clutch
Sue Bird is perhaps the greatest women’s basketball player of her generation, and the documentary feature Sue Bird: In The Clutch pays respect to her trailblazing career while allowing her a voice to add vital context to the moments that defined a public life on and off the court.
It’s got the same patterns and flow of a good ESPN 30 for 30, and Bird’s journey really is big enough for a project of this magnitude. Not every athlete deserves an entire movie’s worth of document, but Bird’s more than worthy.
Union
A stirring, edifying study of how difficult (and rewarding) the formation of a union is against the backdrop of a major corporation like Amazon, Union excels as a text to teach a new generation.
It’s about what it really takes to unify workers of different backgrounds and opinions in a singular cause of solitude, and how hard it is to even fight for that unison in thought once it’s actually agreed upon.
While the it might not stretch the form past typical beats, it does expand your understanding of this American tradition of workers standing up for themselves in the face of corporate interest.
War Game
Could the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the United States Capitol actually happen again? The riveting War Game asks that very question with the 2024 election underway, as advocates of a free and fair democracy imagine a very plausible scenario where those events repeat themselves with higher stakes.
Filmmakers Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss refuse to let this film play into the trite optics of the rituals of a political simulation, instead heightening the tension of its imagined role playing with real-world ramifications.
It’s not really that hard to believe the events of the war game actually coming true, making this much less Tom Clancy and much more newsworthy. While it’s not fun to actually reckon with the frailty of our systems, War Game does inspire urgency in our state of affairs and confidence in those who actually put politics aside for the well-being of the nation.
It’ll leave knots in your stomach, sure, but also imbue you with steelier resolve that the U.S. can actually do something in the face of dissention.
