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The 15 Best Films of the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Selected by Hollywood Reporter Critics

Dirt Road Salt Taste

Poet-turned-filmmaker Raven Jackson uses elegant vignettes, minimal dialogue, and immersive environment to explore the lives of black women in the rural South. The story follows Mike (Charlene McClure) across decades, bringing together the slices of her life into a risky, beautifully realized film. —Karin James

Cassandro

Gael García Bernal as groundbreaking lucha libre wrestler Saúl Armendáriz, whose performance is filled with cheeky humor, tenacity and aggressive confidence – not to mention some amazing quick moves. Roger Ross Williams’ confident narrative is an exhilarating exploration of fearless queer identity in a machismo environment. — David Rooney

Deepest breath

Laura McGann’s documentary about record-breaking free film is full of mind-blowing Jaw-dropping visuals, thrilling races, and a cleverly presented love story A diver and a heroic safety diver whose lives intertwine. Think of Free Solo drops with shades of Fire of Love and you’ll have a tense and tense feeling to go with it Take this heart-pounding dive with the occasional exhilarating rush. — Daniel Feinberg

Mother Earth

Olympic volleyball player Savannah Leaf makes her first feature-length narrative about a pregnant mother The story of an attempt to regain custody of a child. Starring Tia Nomore as the cinematographer’s assistant, Gia, Leaf digs into the familiar image of a black mother confronting an oppressive legal system and extracts the most meaningful insights from it. The unexpected and the most personal details. It’s a quiet film, but never looses its grip, using an intimate tone that speaks to the characters rather than talking about them. — LOVIA GYARKYE

Eileen

Thrilling Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway Playing, at her most commanding, the complex, darkly impulsive employees of a juvenile prison in Massachusetts, adapted from William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth ) Ottessa Moshfegh novel. This twisty and captivating thriller rips with sly humor and bold use of tropes for classic Hitchcockian suspense. — DR

Eternal memory

In The Mole Agent

, Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Maite Alberdi follows Another slice-of-life study, this time about dementia. This deeply personal documentary is an intimate collaboration with a woman who bravely took part in the battle to keep her husband’s smarts alive as he battled Alzheimer’s. — DR

fancy dance

Erica Tremblay’s stellar directorial debut hides a family drama within crime movie convention about a young woman An urgent search for her and her family from the Oklahoma reservation. Lily Gladstone and newcomer Isabel DeRoy-Olsen give excellent performances as women struggling to keep hope alive. — Justin Lowe

Flora & Sons

Revisiting his winning formula for drive shots, Once, John Carney’s latest work revolves around the inseparable plot of romance and musical creation. In this easy-going delight, a Dublin single mother (Eve Hewson) falls in love with a Los Angeles guitar teacher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), whose understated charm meets her brash energy to create a An energy that attracts opposites. — CJ

It’s just life after all

Filmmaker Alexandria Bombach gently coaxes Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, aka the Indigo Girls, reflect on their experiences with work, politics, and partnerships in this heartfelt rock documentary. The duo’s candor is the movie’s accelerating engine as they explore how the alchemical power of their shared songwriting genius can inspire an entire generation of young listeners to embrace introspection. — ROBYN BAHR

A little prayer

Junebug Written and directed by Angus MacLachlan A low-key drama about a North Carolina family and its patriarch (David Strathairn) as they struggle to resolve their adult children and protect his beloved daughter-in-law (Jane Levy) from brutal truths messy try. The film’s emotional impact unfolds as a series of quiet epiphanies, played to perfection by a cast that includes Celia Weston, Anna Camp and Will Pullen. — SHERI LINDEN

LITTLE RICHARD: I AM Everything

Lisa Cortés is very entertaining The Doctor captures a fiery comet, namely Richard Wayne Penniman, adapting the complexities of a black artist who was unapologetically eccentric and pompous the minute before, Giving up his sex and hedonism as a man of God the next minute. Drawing from extensive archival material, expert interviewers including Mick Jagger and Tom Jones, and a slew of stirring hits, Cortez gives Little Richard the kind of music he was so often denied throughout his life. The kind of all-out recognition. — DR

paragraph

A German film director (Franz Rogowski), his English husband (Ben Whishaw) and a French woman (Adèle Exarchopoulos forms a twisted love triangle in indie director Ira Sachs’ witty, bittersweet and deeply hurtful work. Sharp and masterfully played, this is a searing chronicle of romantic chaos. — JON FROSCH

Past and Present

The multi-layered beauty presented by playwright Celine Song’s exquisite debut novel, besides inspiring It is difficult to express the amazing charm of witnessing and experiencing it. A melancholic triangulation featuring Greta Lee as a woman, viewed at three points in time, and Teo Yoo and John Magaro as men, whose fates parallel hers on two continents connected. — DR

is still Michael J. Fox Movie

Davis Guggenheim ) made his most powerful film to date, a deeply satisfying portrait of an entertaining superstar who has become the world’s most famous advocate for Parkinson’s patients. Cleverly constructed documentation conveys the essence of Fox’s appeal. — DF

still very Little Voice

Luke Lorentzen (Midnight Family) In this challenging and sometimes harrowing documentary, viewers are drawn into the world of hospital chaplains and the counseling they counsel their patients, full of inspirational stories about pain, faith, and the limits of empathy complex issues. — SL

This story first appeared in January The Hollywood Reporter Magazine issue. Click here to subscribe.

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