20 BBest Movies of Sundance 2023: Discover the Latest Indie Gems

Birth/Rebirth

What if Dr. Frankenstein and Igor had a happy ending and had a gorgeous, happy, (reanimated) baby Monster as their only child? With the horror film Birth/Rebirth, director Laura Moss and co-writer Brendan J. O’Brien envisage a sharp, contemporary version of this best-case scenario (at least, until its own issues come to life). Their entry into the zombie subgenre is a lightning strike of dark irreverence, and the two-crisp hander’s script keeps it feeling as new as the day it was buried. Leave the fan fiction alone: The relationship between crazy scientist/forensic pathologist Rose (Marin Ireland) and devoted mother/maternity nurse Celie (Judy Reyes) doesn’t require any prodding. Just Lila, Celie’s small daughter, who died suddenly and then unexpectedly rose from the dead (A.J. Lister). When they’re not working at their hospital, the two are crammed into a single apartment-laboratory and serve as a humorous reminder that any family can look like anything: even two women attempting to revive an elementary school student. More than just a sentient jumble of components covered in fresh gothic makeup, Moss’ creation is: It’s a clever, repulsive, evil-hearted gem with a distinct sense of compassion.

Cassandro

A small wrestler feels the weight of the odds stacked against him in a dark stadium, an empty alleyway, and a damaged and red-washed hotel room. He employs the same strategy, using his opponent as a ladder, whether the subject is homophobia, desertion, or sadness. His ascent is aided by his unwavering ambition to make his own star so bright that others can bask in it as well. The crueller they are, the higher he soars. If he has a strong enough belief in his own independence, perhaps everyone else will as well. Such a celebrity emerges in Cassandro, Roger Ross Williams’ triumphant narrative feature debut, in the form of Gael Garca Bernal, who plays Sal Armendáriz, better known as real-life luchador Cassandro, the exótico who first overturned the heterosexual hierarchy in 1980s lucha libre wrestling. The film is directed in two different ways by Williams, who alternates between a softer approach to Sal’s introspective puzzlement of his inner existence and the violent, hard-hitting humour of the ring. Sal’s more sympathetic side is endearing, but the matches are what really bring the movie to life. The real Cassandro is the subject of one of Academy Award-winning Williams’ earlier documentaries, and while Garca Bernal’s bleach job doesn’t quite capture his billowing mane, the movie uses Williams’ intimate knowledge—as well as an impressive roster of Mexican American film crew members—to pay a sophisticated, considerate, and affectionate homage to Cassandro’s character and the way he shaped the landscape. Yahya Maci Warner

Fair Play

Some people are willing to endure anything, including financial hardship. For the Gordon Gekkos of the world, greed is not only beneficial; it is pervasive. They are unable to envision their existence in any other way. Because they both work for the same investing company, Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich), two of those Wall Streeters, must conceal their relationship. A lot of running around and taking different routes to work has turned into a snowball problem, which is a cute little problem to have. They obviously have their cake and have already made room for it. However, their love has grown to the point where they now live together and, at the start of writer/director Chloe Domont’s Fair Play, have become engaged. What did they have in mind? This will undoubtedly make it more difficult for them to live their daily lives of waking up at 4 AM to be verbally attacked by an Ivy League jackass by 6 AM. Who wants it easy? Emily asks her notoriously cruel employer (Eddie Marsan), who is also one of their employees. But they are the same kind of nasty, power-hungry strivers as the rest of their colleagues. However, Emily should be aware by now that the Financial District magnifies everything, making it more intense—money, stress, drug use, and sexism—half a decade out of Harvard and deep in the weeds of the large businesses. It gets intolerable. People get tired. Our pair doesn’t believe that the lengthy fuse is unsafe (Look at how long it is! Before Emily is given the job over Luke, there is plenty of time to deal with it.

Fancy Dance

Fancy Dance has a pervading dryness. The Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in northeastern Oklahoma is equally as dusty as the rest of the region, but not in terms of climate. People who live there see shocking injustices at a systematic pace that seem predetermined because they are so generationally familiar. Mundane. The only one who feels any urgency when a lady vanishes is her sister, Jax (Lily Gladstone). Even Jax’s niece, Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson), who is now in his care, doesn’t fully understand the ramifications. Filmmaker Erica Tremblay follows the women’s quest with understated charm and an everyday seriousness, navigating their search amid a culture that would prefer they sit down, shut up, and accept that this just Happens Sometimes. The coming-of-age investigation in Fancy Dance is the visual equivalent of a slow-motion chase, closely captured from the shoulder, right next to the wrecked pickup forcing the pursuing police to reevaluate their objectives.

In My Mother’s Skin

A fanciful horror with the spirit of Guillermo del Toro and the violence of Joko Anwar comes from Filipino director Kenneth Dagatan. A child’s unexpected meeting with a cunning fairy, intricate and elegant in her insectile outfit, is combined with a World War II backdrop in In My Mother’s Skin to create a really unsettling midnight story. It is full of subtext and conflicting cultural imagery, as well as body horror, uncertainty about God, and enough luscious flesh to satisfy even the most fervent gorehounds.

Infinity Pool

The beginning and the end of Brandon Cronenberg’s trip to White Lotus hell, where the visitors let their collars down and set their lizard brains wild, are heartbeats and cumshots. Infinity Pool, the filmmaker’s journey into a slimy, sensual, terrible world where death is just another game for the wealthy, is dominated by the limbic system and the most fundamental biological processes of life. It is a hit-and-run parody of Western nonsense that exposes the damage our upper-class, destination-hopping lifestyle causes to other cultures as well as the fake enlightenment peddled by gurus and Goop fools—those who are too wealthy to experience real problems, those who aspire to this status, and those who profit from both. They constantly flow into one another in this tropical trial. Ego death is nothing compared to the delightfully surreal resort from Brandon Cronenberg. The tasty temptation that is being dangled is overt: Trouble always ensues when an apparently regular couple is approached by strange (perhaps swinging) Europeans. When Gabby (Mia Goth) and Al (Jalil Lespert) approach their estranged hotel roommates James (Alexander Skarsgrd) and Em, we’d be fools to not be sceptical of them (Cleopatra Coleman). When one of them is portrayed by Mia Goth, you should turn on the “do not disturb” sign and quickly retreat to your room. However, James is an author who has only produced one subpar book (The Variable Sheath, a fantastically fictitious title), which was only accepted for publication because he married the wealthy publisher’s daughter. The part of his ego that has all but dried up and crumbled to dust is stroked by Gabby’s professed fandom because he is weak, hungry for it, and the ideal mark. Their unprepared isolation in their culture when the white people inevitably do something heinously terrible to the residents of Li Tolqa is horrifyingly funny. They can’t read the documents the police ask them to sign since they don’t speak the language. But it goes beyond that. You are forced into a late-night freakout by excellent production design, location scouting, and cinematography. A thorough analysis of Infinity Pool’s events would be akin to tracing the recirculating edge of its horizon-flouting structure. It won’t diminish its delights, but you won’t really comprehend it until you experience it. Up until Cronenberg takes you on a long enough journey down an isolated backroad that you begin to doubt whether you are awake or dreaming. The existence of its characters, though, is what is most obvious in this gallows comedy. Because death has never seemed genuine to them, those who believe they have figured out reality have the luxury of being horny for death. You won’t need to get out the vacation slideshow to remember Infinity Pool’s amazing indictment of this crowd; it is strong and humorous, its hallucinations are quick and sticky, and its engulfing nightmare is one you’ll remember.

Kokomo City

Four Black transgender workers speak out from a radical, on-the-ground pulpit in one of the most intriguing non-fiction entries to Sundance this year. Kokomo City lifts the curtain to unveil four stars: Daniella Carter, Dominique Silver, Liyah Mitchell, and Koko Da Doll, putting transphobia both within and without Black society on display. Actually, I’ll go with five. We laugh, weep, and commiserate with women whose experiences and perspectives are only outweighed by their personalities as director D. Smith, a trans musician making her feature film debut, keeps the lively chats and righteously angry monologues barreling forward in magnificent black-and-white.

Mamacruz

The beginning of what Mamacruz’s look at a woman’s third-quarter life crisis has to offer is a spectacular performance from Kiti Mánver. All the symbolic dominoes fall into place as a result of a grandmother’s sexual (re)awakening in a close-knit Catholic community, but director Patricia Ortega topples them with her endearing charm, unreserved sensuality, and heartfelt honesty. Mamacruz makes the most of its lusty matriarch and is a lively and charming character study.

Mami Wata

You become completely engrossed in the mystic narrative of Mami Wata as people converse about spirituality in West African Pidgin and lights flash to accentuate a dreamy mid-forest sequence’s striking black-and-white. A video that is poised to sweep you away into its weird universe is made up of stray English words and visuals that almost feel like they were stolen from a postcard or glimpsed late at night while flipping through the channels. The seashore of Iyi, where technology ceases to exist with the tide and a religious leader is in danger, is where filmmaker C.J. “Fiery” Obasi takes us. Obasi’s tale of a hamlet, its water goddess, the women channelling her, and the men striving to reclaim power is a gorgeous, stark dream, shot in a striking, Expressionist style by the Nollywood mainstay.

Mutt

Imagine having the worst day of your life. It wasn’t the worst or the most heartbreaking day, but it was a day that felt endless and aggravating, as if the universe were telling a joke. The thoughtful day-in-the-life drama Mutt may now cover the whole 24 hours by adding a tense family reunion and a run-in with your ex, just for fun. Fea, a sensitive trans man in his twenties, is dropped into the solid feature debut of writer/director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz right into an emotionally turbulent scavenger hunt through New York City where everything and nearly everyone that he’s been hoping to neatly avoid collides. Fea is played by introspective and deft big screen newcomer Lo Mehiel. Mutt creates space for the melancholy, banality, and potential of life in transition through director of photography Matthew Pothier’s lovely compositions that can romanticise even the most ordinary views of NYC and earnest performances from a tiny cast of complicated, sombre individuals. Yahya Maci Warner

Passages

Ira Sachs creates stunning destruction with Passages. His complicated relationships frequently test the limits of monogamy, commitment, and what it means to be with someone and stick by them over the tumultuous years. The pressure he applies to these boundaries—necessarily drawn (though not always willingly accepted) with more wiggle room for queer people, especially homosexual men—the love that ebbs and flows through this adversity, and the boundaries themselves astound us with their realism. Passages is this intimate, agonising, and seductive tightening of the screws at its best, as Sachs and his regular writing partner Mauricio Zacharias watch the destruction caused by a bisexual brat’s most recent liaison. Sachs creates a perfectly punchable narcissist in Tomas (who is beautiful enough to support the bad conduct) by deftly avoiding the cliche of the selfish, have-it-all bisexual (Franz Rogowski). Given to whims and his own ego, Tomas leaves his quiet, bookish husband Martin (Ben Whishaw) behind at the wrap party for his movie in order to hook up with Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), a resumé extra. The singularly concentrated tale of a taker running roughshod over the other people in his life, which is the centre of Passages, skillfully and brusquely blows through the low-key, humiliating, and intriguing questions pervading non-monogamous queerness. Sachs gently prods us with specifics of his boisterous three-way blowup, giving us the respect to apply the themes on our own. It’s a frightening feeling, one that could cause us to reopen old scars. Passages revels in the consequences of playing around and finding out, a bittersweet realisation skillfully depicted by a pair on opposite ends of a relationship’s unpredictable twists and turns.

Pianoforte

I know a lot about musical competitions, but I don’t know much about the Warsaw International Chopin Piano Competition, the subject of Jakub Piatek’s electrifying and moving documentary Pianoforte. Since 2003, I have been playing the trumpet in raucous marching band competitions, among the Fiesta Bowl audience, in hushed concert halls, and in small solo performance spaces. There is always the same pressure, regardless of the setting. You’re being watched. It is your obligation to fill this potential gap in silence effectively. Your body might become rigid if you give it too much thought or if your mind takes over from your instincts. Threatening to overpower the notes is pure adrenaline. Your lips won’t twitch. Your fingers begin to lead. Music? Describe music. Almost miraculously, the young maestros are able to get through the tension, and Piatek is around to witness the passion and sadness. Pianoforte’s comprehension of musical competition and those performers who devote their life to performance is so profound that it instantly transports you to the period when you first encountered your first fixation. It excels in running the event with less effort and little involvement, all the while making us like its rivals. It’s a typical documentary, but if the Chopin Competition has taught us anything, it’s that a song that everyone recognises can convey fresh meaning when played with style and individuality.

Polite Society

It is just impractical to expect teens to handle typical situations with grace and acceptance. A far more sympathetic approach to handle growing pains is to dive headfirst into conspiracy, crazy plotting, and over-the-top genre-hopping pastiche. This angst is sung out in the musical theatre industry. Punk uses comparable methods to kick that world in the ass. However, when writer/director Nida Manzoor, the passionate force behind Peacock’s We Are Lady Parts (a show well-versed in both), encounters this melancholy craziness on the big screen, she strikes back with Polite Society, a foolish, vivacious headrush of action-comedy. With spin-kicks, fake moustaches, and evil plots so absurdly sinister that even the most jaded, monosyllabic teens will have to smile, Manzoor’s feature debut attacks adolescent fears—failing to achieve your dreams, settling for less, fading from loved ones—in the stylish, piss-taking style of Gurinder Chadha and Edgar Wright. The antics of Ria (Priya Kansara) and her band of high school nerds (Seraphina Beh and Ella Bruccoleri, sidekicks who understand all the jokes and weaponize them appropriately) are utterly ridiculous, and in this ridiculousness, they rise above the kung-fu movie parodies and the Bond-villain schemes filling Polite Society to inhabit the Teenage Sublime. Ria looks up to her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya), who has a shag hairdo and is passionate about art school, making her a “cool role model.” She’s a badass who lives by her own standards, and that’s something to appreciate even when she drops out. Ria is so devastated when Lena meets a man, a handsome, wealthy one at that. She would feel as if the world were ending in the actual world. In Polite Society, it seems as though the world is coming to an end. In reflecting how heightened and out-of-control everything feels when you’re young and transferring it to genre clichés and comedic sidequests, Manzoor finds her greatest achievement. One oversized assignment at a time, she must crush their relationship to a pulp. Even the more predictable jokes hurt it somewhat since it is so incredibly cute and razor-sharp.

Shortcomings

Ben (Justin H. Min), complaining to Miko (Ally Maki), his girlfriend, as they leave a movie screening Miko recently organised, says, “There wasn’t a true character in the whole thing. I was looking in vain for a normal, flawed human being.” Despite being unidentified, the film’s conclusion scene, which also serves as Shortcomings’ introductory scene, is hilariously obvious a parody of Crazy Rich Asians. When something more corrosive or irritable enters Ben’s brain, it’s a warning that he won’t consent to saying something kind and encouraging. In adapting Adrian Tomine’s graphic novel of the same name (first released in 2007, following its serialisation in Tomine’s iconic comic book Optic Nerve), actor-turned-director Randall Park and cartoonist-turned-screenwriter Tomine have made only a few minor alterations. While maintaining almost entirely the episodic, conversational framework of his novel, Tomine has updated the book’s pop culture references (basic film bros check Christopher Nolan instead of Fight Club; porn appears on computer tabs rather than DVDs). It’s a testament to the author’s softly uncompromising writing, as well as, occasionally, the modest part his artwork, which is missing from this live-action version, plays in bringing that writing to life. While Shortcomings doesn’t elevate Ben to the status of a misanthropic hero or justify his frequently horrible actions, it does adhere to the principles he champions in the opening scene: This film is filled with real, flawed individuals. — Jesse Hassenger

Smoke Sauna Sisterhood

A cultural curiosity is the Russian spa, now known as Red Square, that was originally owned by the mob and is located across the street from where I had resided in Chicago. In the United States, very few saunas still exist. The sound of the water splashing on the hot rocks, the swelling wooden benches, and the whole “be whacked by some branches” thing (note: I haven’t actually done this) all add to the scene. The communities and dialogues started in the smoke saunas in Vrumaa, an Estonian county in the south that borders Latvia and Russia, are a far cry from that though. Smoke Sauna Sisterhood’s narratives fill your lungs and engulf you until its women’s secrets drip down your body. Filmmaker Anna Hints has recorded its customs in delicate, hot vignettes. Seasons are seen changing over a wood cabin that is left alone in the forest as the year progresses. On some months, the adjacent lake is covered in fog. Others require the woman manning the sauna to break a hole and lower a wooden ladder for her clients’ cooling dip because the ice is so thick. However, regardless of the weather, the building is packed with steam and women who are completely bare. In both the literal and symbolic senses, the Smoke Sauna Sisterhood creates stunning topographies from the relaxed, naked bodies as they release some of their largest stresses.

Sorcery

The largest island in an archipelago off the coast of Chile is called Chile, and it was formed by volcanoes that erupted in the deep southern sea. Indigenous Huilliche people in Sorcery assert that they are also from the water. The creation of the conquering Europeans, heaven, is not for them. They have separate goals and destinies, particularly when Christians oppress them. After her father is killed by their white employer, the teenage Rosa (newcomer Valentina Véliz Caileo) is drawn to the magic practised by shape-shifting warlocks since it is used in tragic situations. Despite the dark, moody coming-of-age drama’s occasionally ponderous and abrasive nature, its magical liberation weaves an enduring spell. A genuine trial that occurred in 1880, where an alleged tribunal of warlocks were tried for allegedly running the island as a form of shadow government, served as the inspiration for Christopher Murray’s fantasy historical work. Murray makes the setting more straightforward by turning it into a revenge story by including a budding mystic as our eyes and ears through the hardship, bigotry, and suffering afflicting her people. Despite the fact that the larger community is reduced to Rosa’s suffering, those responsible for it, and Mateo (Daniel Antivilo), the stern warlock leader who takes her in, we still get a sense of the island’s damp forests, foreboding caves, and abundant beaches as well as the divide between the sheepskinned natives and the dressed intruders.

The Amazing Maurice

The Amazing Maurice, a Discworld adaptation by Terry Pratchett that won the Carnegie Award, puts a British spin on the Shrek-like self-aware fairy tale. The chunky animation, which is stuffed with motormouths and cheap jokes, can be a little off-putting, but its brief uglyness feeds into its delightfully sinister villains, its underdog heroes, and the bizarre plot uniting them all. This is cartoonishness that suits its oddballs rather than impeccable, ground-breaking, photoreal CG—and it might even give a young child a few stray nightmares. That’s a praise coming from a former child who has a strong fondness for the scary cartoons. Turning the Pied Piper story on its head, and then flipping it around again so that it’s right-side up yet hopelessly disoriented, The Amazing Maurice demands plenty of its young audience. They’d better be able to keep up with Malicia’s (Emilia Clarke) rapid sledgehammer blows smashing through the fourth wall, because the narrator finds herself wrapped up in her own story; they’d also better be able to parse the nested myths explaining how some of the tale’s animals came to grasp such intelligence. But it’s entirely doable since the movie has faith in its youthful audience. While it cuts some of Pratchett’s most incisive and dark components (like the intelligent rats navigating relationships with regular rats) in favour of cinematic comprehension, it’s still a faithful enough translation to win fans over—and introduce kids to a welcoming literary world that takes the piss out of everything around it.

Theater Camp

As Theater Camp opens, you may find yourself saying, “Oh look, it’s Evan Hansen.” Instead, you might exclaim, “Oh no, it’s Evan Hansen.” Perhaps even “Look, it’s Tony-winning nepo baby Ben Platt, an ex-Evan Hansen who is now engaged to the actor who succeeded him on Broadway (who is also in this movie)” would be appropriate. If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are sufficiently knowledgeable with musical theatre to enjoy Theater Camp. If you pronounce the last one, a mouthful as it may be, you are precisely obsessed enough to enjoy the affectionate farce’s rapid-fire, exclusive, dweeby humour. Others, your results may differ. However, AdirondACTS will gladly accept you (as well as your prepared monologue—you did prepare a monologue, right?) if you’re up for a light comedy with a very particular audience, positioned somewhere between Wet Hot American Summer and John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch. The tenacious upstate New York theatre camp known as AdirondACTS was formed by the literary team of Platt, Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman, and Noah Galvin. It is now facing bankruptcy and a hostile takeover from the neighbouring, much posher camp (that other Evan Hansen from before). Gordon and Platt have been friends since they were young, and Lieberman, who is Marilu Henner’s son, films Platt’s music videos. It’s clear that they are a close-knit group who were raised in the business, and as they develop their short film, their shared sense of humour and respect for their craft help to maintain consistency. It can stray off in weird places, giving you a hint into the humour that most amused the collective team of creators, like many side projects about beloved subjects do. That has a lot of charm, largely because the crew supports their upbringing in this environment with wit, musical talent that can be used to make jokes, and an unwavering willingness to be the punchline.