The 7 best films from the 2021 Sundance Film Festival

For obvious reasons, the Sundance Film Festival looked a little different this year. Instead of Park City theaters crowded with snow boots and puffer jackets, the films played in front of audiences of one or two on the couch at home. Q&As took place over YouTube, post-screening chatter via tweets and texts. 

But as always, there were the films: buzzy awards hopefuls and out-of-nowhere indies, incisive documentaries and offbeat experiments. Of the more than 70 features and TV episodes on the slate, I caught 21, and of those 21, these seven — listed here in no particular order — were among my favorites. 

1. The consummate crowdpleaser: CODA 

CODA is without a doubt the success story of this year’s fest — and its raves and accolades are well deserved. The dramedy, which revolves around a teenager (Ruby, played by Emilia Jones) who is the only hearing member of a Deaf family, is a crowdpleaser in the most satisfying sense, brimming with heart, equally adept at delivering belly laughs and ugly cries.

Deaf stars Troy Kotsur, Marlee Matlin, and Daniel Durant shine as Ruby’s warmly hilarious family, and writer-director Sian Heder clocks the nuances within their family dynamics as well as in the family’s relationship to the outside (hearing) world. Though the broad outlines of Ruby’s story are familiar (no points for guessing if our heroine will make it to The Big Audition), winning performances and a keen eye for detail keep CODA feeling fresh, honest, and unique.

2. The awards contender: Judas and the Black Messiah 

Judas and the Black Messiah came into Sundance with no small amount of awards buzz already surrounding it, and it’s already racked up a couple of major nominations. But that’s not the only reason to watch it.

Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield burn up the screen as Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton and FBI informant Bill O’Neal, respectively, and they’re supported by a smart script (from Shaka King, who also directed, and Will Benson). The result is a fiery drama that centers the humanity of the real-life figures at its center, without losing sight of the historical gravity of the events that ensued. 

3. The DIY charmer: Strawberry Mansion 

Though it’s set in the near future, Strawberry Mansion looks in almost every regard like a blast from the past: It’s shot in grainy pastels, and its sets are filled with VHS tapes and supposedly high-tech gadgets that look like homemade craft projects. Its whimsical premise involves a lonely “dream auditor” (Kentucker Audley) who is tasked with reviewing the dreams of an elderly eccentric (Penny Fuller).

But all of it works in service of a message that feels as resonant today as ever. What starts as a depressingly believable digital dystopia, in which even our dreams are subject to commercials and taxes, gradually transforms into a shimmering vision of a better way, in which art and love are worthwhile pursuits for their own sakes, liberated from the pressures of a consumerist society. Strawberry Mansion is a true original, and it might inspire you to create something original, too.

4. The hard-hitting doc: In the Same Breath 

Documentaries about the COVID-19 pandemic aren’t exactly difficult to come by at this point, but filmmaker Nanfu Wang finds fresh insight in In the Same Breath, rooted in her personal experience as someone who grew up in China (and indeed happened to be visiting the country shortly before the lockdown of Wuhan), but currently lives in the U.S.

In its first half, Wang focuses on the damage wrought by China’s initial insistence on downplaying and suppressing the information, lest the government appear weak. Then she turns her attention to the U.S., finding uncomfortable echoes in our own disastrous response to the pandemic. COVID-19 may be the virus, but Wang meticulously details how the systems it affected were already rotting from within. In the Same Breath isn’t an easy watch — but it’s one with a message that cannot be ignored.

5. The elegant adaptation: Passing 

Don’t mistake Passing‘s delicate black-and-white aesthetic for a black-and-white story: Like the 1929 novella it’s based on, Rebecca Hall’s directorial debut lingers in the gray areas between the boundaries of race, class, and gender that still define our identities today.

Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson anchor the film as Clare and Irene, two childhood friends who rekindle their friendship as adults, each driven by some desire she’s unable or unwilling to fully articulate. So the story unfolds in gazes and touches, in questions that go unasked and echoes that linger. Despite its literary origins, Passing is an exquisitely cinematic experience.

6. The animated fantasy: Cryptozoo 

Cryptozoo centers on a sanctuary for mythical creatures that is designed as a Disney-ish theme park, in hopes that customers will come from far and wide to ooh and ahh at the unusual monsters on display. And though the film itself has reservations about that concept (is it really the best thing for these rare and endangered beings to be put on display and made to sell merch?), the chance to take in these visual delights is also the best reason to watch Cryptozoo. 

Director Dash Shaw and his team let their imaginations run wild in their depictions of creatures like a pegasus, a kraken, and a baku, and characters like Phoebe, a gorgon who passes for human with some effort, and Pliny, a young boy who has a face on his torso but no head. The story and themes that unfold may be a bit predictable, but by prioritizing boldness and rawness over tidiness and conventional beauty, the art of Cryptozoo delivers a journey into the surreal like nothing you’ve seen before. 

7. The very online horror story: We’re All Going to the World’s Fair 

Initially, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair looks like pure horror: Casey (Anna Cobb) records herself reciting a Bloody Mary-ish incantation and pricking her finger, as part of an initiation into a supernatural “game” that supposedly transforms its players physically in unpredictable, sometimes gruesome ways. And much of what follows is indeed disturbing, just not always in the ways you’d expect.

For all the films out there about the perils of digital life, few I’ve seen do a better job than this one of capturing the strange contradictions of interpersonal connection on the internet. Intense loneliness coexists with the possibility of connection, and within that possibility lies both the intimacy and the distance of relative anonymity. A less patient filmmaker might have reached for clarity where there was none to be found, but first-time feature director Jane Schoenbrun knows enough to let the uncomfortable questions and ambiguities be, and in doing so, gets at even deeper truths.