It's our favorite time of the year again. The Sundance Film Festival is coming up! Like every year, it’s the most fun to go through the slate and read through the chosen films, shorts, and series. I do believe that the more you can go see, the better. You’ll get the full festival effect and above all, bragging rights. These are the must-see’s. Here are our most anticipated films for this year’s festival.

Hal & Harper

Hal and Harper and Dad chart the evolution of their family.

Director Cooper Raiff (Cha Cha Real Smooth, 2022 Sundance Film Festival), also appearing as the eponymous Hal, presents two siblings who consider their codependence a feature, not a bug. As Harper, Lili Reinhart superbly mirrors Raiff’s sardonic yet wounded nature, while demonstrating an engaging solemnity all her own. Their intimacy is built on a lifetime of inside jokes and shared pains, portrayed via flashbacks where Raiff and Reinhart play the elementary school-aged versions of themselves. Raiff’s familial tone weaves the balance between children on the precipice of damage and adults mired in self-made messes. As their father, Mark Ruffalo brings a wry charm that belies a chasm of guilt, firmly at the root of all that Hal & Harper is trying to uncover.

The Festival is thrilled to share the first four episodes of this outstanding new series with our in-person audience, as well as all eight episodes of the first season via our online platform.— Drea Clark

Bunnylovr

A drifting Chinese American cam girl struggles to navigate an increasingly toxic relationship with one of her clients while rekindling her relationship with her dying estranged father.

In her debut feature, writer-director and star Katarina Zhu crafts a sensitive portrait of Rebecca (Zhu), a rootless online sex worker whose yearning for connection collides with her vigilance for maintaining emotional and physical safety. Rebecca’s unexpected reunion with her father, William (Perry Yung), is bittersweet, with his illness giving them little time to repair before she loses him again. Zhu’s nuanced, nonjudgmental approach to sex work and her vulnerable performance ground Bunnylovr’s vision of a precarious social world, in which intimacy is mediated and commodified, and family is fragmented across blood relations and chosen bonds. Fellow NYU Tisch alum and co-producer Rachel Sennott is abrasively funny as Rebecca’s more grounded BFF, while Austin Amelio is both alluring and unsettling as her mysterious online admirer.—Matt Cornell

Jimpa

Hannah takes her nonbinary teenager, Frances, to Amsterdam to visit their gay grandfather, Jim — lovingly known as Jimpa. But Frances’ desire to stay abroad with Jimpa for a year means Hannah is forced to reconsider her beliefs about parenting and finally confront old stories about the past.

Sophie Hyde, winner of the World Cinema Directing Award Dramatic for 52 Tuesdays (2014 Sundance Film Festival), returns with an expansive family portrait centered on Jimpa (John Lithgow), an aging, hedonistic patriarch living loud and proud in Amsterdam’s vibrant gay community. Reconnecting with Jimpa during a long working holiday, Hannah (Olivia Colman) navigates ambivalence toward her estranged father while Frances (Aud Mason-Hyde) discovers the pleasures and perils of queer life in the big city. Co-written by Hyde and Matthew Cormack (52 Tuesdays), Jimpa is a loving and insightful examination of intergenerational tensions within the LGBTQ+ community and the complex and contradictory attachments that form between family, friends, lovers, and comrades. Lithgow breathes messy life into the mercurial but bighearted Jimpa, complementing Colman’s moving turn as his weary yet loving daughter.—Matt Cornell

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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You

In the second feature film from writer-director Mary Bronstein, life’s responsibilities pile up — parenting alone, house is a construction zone, countless doctors visits, no available parking — all of which grows into an anxiety that overwhelms every aspect of our protagonist’s life. The audience is pushed into a downward spiral of motherhood where there is never any solution or support in sight. But as its title suggests, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is also very funny — very darkly… bizarrely… uncomfortably funny. Rose Byrne’s lead performance brilliantly rides the edge of exhaustion and delirium, bouncing between the pressures of her life that includes two character irritants played by Conan O’Brien and A$AP Rocky, who have memorable supporting roles.—Charlie Sextro

Opus

A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.

Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut is a bold, fun, and flashy pop-horror. Ayo Edebiri delivers as the meek yet hungry journalist Ariel — her unique charm radiating alongside a distinct final-girl prescience. John Malkovich is effervescent and hypnotic as Moretti, a deified global phenomenon making a dramatically malevolent reintroduction. Amidst eye-catching, synthy musical numbers and the enigmatic desert compound, the facade of civility gradually erodes between the pair, revealing the underbelly of a tense, psychosocial game of cat and mouse. Opus offers an electric, clever indictment of the literal cult of celebrity, presenting characters and dangers within a symphonic ambience — giving way to a foreboding ease through which power is generated and embedded within pop culture.—Cameron Asharian

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Twinless

Two young men meet in a twin bereavement support group and form an unlikely bromance.

Writer-director-actor James Sweeney’s bittersweet tale of trauma-bonding friendship is a smart comedy willing to confront themes like loss, loneliness, and codependency head-on. Sweeney scripts a slippery narrative to mirror his emotionally damaged characters as they struggle for connection, revealing painful personal truths along the way. With his Sundance debut, Sweeney shows major promise both in front of and behind the camera. Dylan O’Brien returns to the Festival after starring in the 2024 U.S. Dramatic Competition entry Ponyboi. O’Brien has quickly established himself as one of the great new actors of his generation. With Twinless he continues to impress, showing an acting range not only in characters but also between the film’s comedic voice and tender heart.—Charlie Sextro

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Rabbit Trap

When a musician and her husband move to a remote house in Wales, the music they make disturbs local ancient folk magic, bringing a nameless child to their door who is intent on infiltrating their lives.

Set in 1973, writer and director Bryn Chainey’s extraordinary debut feature invokes the eerie spirit of British folk horror, conjuring supernatural dread in a fecund Welsh forest. Obsessive avant-garde musician Daphne (Rosy McEwen) toils over reel-to-reel tape machines and oscillators in their cottage while her withdrawn husband, Darcy (Dev Patel), collects field recordings in the nearby woods. Their activities draw the attention of a mysterious young rabbit trapper (an unnerving Jade Croot) who beguiles them, disturbing their fragile peace. 

Rabbit Trap casts a spell of haunted sensuality and submerged trauma through cinematographer Andreas Johannessen’s tactile 35mm images and Lucrecia Dalt’s synesthetic soundscape. Patel and McEwen are quietly moving as the young couple, grounding this otherworldly fable with a portrait of a marriage sustained through fraught intimacy and restless creative collaboration.—Matt Cornell

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Oh Hi!

Iris and Isaac’s first romantic weekend getaway goes awry.

This romantic comedy of miscommunication and mismatched expectations basks in the magnetically charged opposites-attract chemistry between Iris (Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman). When their relationship swiftly unravels, Iris’ desperate hope that her beau’s reluctance to commit is merely curable confusion leads her to take increasingly unhinged actions to solidify her hold on Isaac’s heart. Writer-director Sophie Brooks maintains a sense of cheeky, off-kilter whimsy and twisted humor as the couple’s complete inability to read one another leads to an escalating series of potentially perilous misunderstandings.

Oh, Hi! draws us into the pair’s smitten rendezvous at a gorgeous rustic farmhouse amid a picturesque, bucolic landscape, cleverly setting an alluring and refreshing romantic scene before abruptly upending it and sending Iris, Isaac, and the audience hurdling into the emotional chaos that ensues.—Heidi Zwicker 

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Rebuilding

After a wildfire takes the family farm, a rancher seeks a way forward.

Max Walker-Silverman’s sophomore feature is a personal, affecting story of a community’s life and resilience. A follow-up to his captivating debut, A Love Song (2022 Sundance Film Festival), Rebuilding similarly operates as a careful, loving portrait of the American West — this time whispered in the quiet aftermath of environmental and personal disaster. Against the backdrop of charred lands and a struggling small town, scattered lives coalesce in grief, and a uniquely resonant love story emerges.

Josh O’Connor is a subdued and assiduous protagonist, embracing a call to heal his fledgling family and newfound community. Authentic, nuanced performances from Meghann Fahy, Amy Madigan, and Kali Reis quilt a narrative enveloped by the multiplicity of the American experience — legacies of land, labor, and family. Rebuilding is a warm tip of the hat to community building through human tenacity, and the abundance of life and love contained therein.—Cameron Asharian

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Together

With a move to the countryside already testing the limits of a couple’s relationship, a supernatural encounter begins an extreme transformation of their love, their lives, and their flesh.

Writer-director Michael Shanks approaches horror with a devilish exuberance that relishes in creating wildly expressive nightmarish moments. His feature-length directorial debut pulls off an impressive progression of body horror freak-outs as it follows a dysfunctional couple’s big move away from the city to a more isolated existence. As they lose contact with home, friends, and their sense of self beyond their troubled dynamic, Shanks’ clever script grounds their emotional turmoil within its extreme take on the horrors of codependent relationships. With this couple, things will have to get worse — like a lot worse — before they get better. Bringing an unquantifiable chemistry to their roles, Dave Franco and Alison Brie give their all to this freakish world, diving headfirst into a physical and emotional maelstrom.—Charlie Sextro

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The Wedding Banquet

Frustrated with his commitment-phobic boyfriend, Chris, and out of time, Min makes a proposal: a green card marriage with his friend Angela in exchange for expensive in vitro fertilization treatments for her partner, Lee. Plans change when Min’s grandmother surprises them with an elaborate Korean wedding banquet.

Andrew Ahn returns to Sundance (Spa Night, 2016 Sundance Film Festival) with an exuberant romantic comedy that pays tribute to the unexpected ways friendship and community form modern family. Ahn collaborates with James Schamus, co-writer of Ang Lee’s beloved 1993 classic The Wedding Banquet, to create a contemporary reimagining that playfully complicates the original film’s conflict and comedy, updating a romantic triangle into a codependent queer quad of young lovers.

Led by a cast of some of the most acclaimed and funny actors working today, the core four’s charming performances are complemented by the beautifully articulated work of Joan Chen and Academy Award winner Youn Yuh-jung (Minari) as the complex, formidable matriarchs of the bride and groom’s families.—Heidi Zwicker

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All of these descriptions were drawn from the summaries found at Festival.Sundance.org. Grab your tickets for the festival here.

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