Sundance 2020: A Complete Guide To What We're Excited To See At This Year's Festival

The jazz is smooth and the air sultry in the New York summer of 1957. Sylvie helps around her father’s record store as she waits for her fiancé to return from war—until sweet saxophonist Robert walks in looking for a day job to subsidize his residency at the Blue Morocco lounge. Starring Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha.

It’s Los Angeles 1989 and Anna Bludso (Elle Lorraine) is a scarred survivor of a scalp burn from a mild relaxer perm. She also has the smarts and ambition to be the next on-air star at Culture, a music video TV show. Directed by Justin Simien and starring Vanessa Williams, Yaani King Mondschein, Elle Lorraine, and Lena Waithe.

Fourteen-year-old Mouse (Jahi Di’Allo Winston) desperately wants to join the Midnight Clique, an infamous group of Baltimore dirt-bike riders who rule the summertime streets. Starring Teyonah Parris, William Catlett and Meek Mill (who’s making his film debut).

“You wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out? It’s kind of long but full of suspense”—That’s how Zola begins, a new work by Bravo and playwright Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play). Zola meets Stefani at a restaurant where Zola waitresses and the two immediately click over pole dancing.

Stanley (Richard Jenkins), an aging fast-food worker, plans to call it quits after 38 years on the graveyard shift at Oscar’s Chicken and Fish. His last weekend takes a turn while training his replacement Jevon (Shane Paul McGhie), a talented but stalled young writer whose provocative politics keep landing him in trouble.

A family history archive as told by matriarch Azalu Mekonnen and her granddaughter Samira Hooks. Shot on Super 8 film in Los Angeles and Gondar, Ethiopia, Bereka captures the Ethiopian coffee ceremony and explores migration, memory and rebirth.

August Wilson’s prolific stage work—Fences, The Piano Lesson, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—has found another life through a national monologue competition for high school drama students. In this documentary, Giving Voice “closely follows the lives of six of these vibrant students as they meticulously develop their individual performances with the hopes of embodying Wilson’s legacy.”

After seeing a boy she likes before church, Amber sneaks out to the Sunday school bathroom during the service and is given her first kiss.

After a devastating breakup, Lance listens to instructional cassette tapes on how to heal his broken heart.

A mother and son’s journey through the exploitative world of tabloid TV.

There’s no stopping the legendary artist Betye Saar, even at age 93.

As a factious mayoral election coincides with the trial of the police officer who killed Laquan McDonald, Chicago becomes a tinderbox and its citizens ready to spark.

Farrah, new to Los Angeles, goes on the mobile styling app Get Glam to find new clients. When she arrives at an appointment, she finds a house of girls pregaming for a party and maybe a new crew of friends.

A dreamlike archive in conversation with the past and the present to reimagine a more nuanced narrative of Latasha Harlins, through excavating intimate and poetic memories shared by her cousin and best friend.

Directed by playwright Radha Blank Radha, a once-promising playwright, is barreling toward the stigma of being single and a struggling artist at the age of 40.

Director Channing Godfrey Peoples’ film draws us deep into a honey-bourbon South that is rich with heart, sincerity and thick, Texan charm.

A black boy learns contradicting lessons of manhood and masculinity on the day of his cousin’s funeral.

What if being born is not the beginning but the goal? In a house distant from the reality we know, a reclusive man named Will interviews prospective candidates—personifications of human souls—for the privilege he once had: to be born. Starring Winston Duke and Zazie Beetz.

Kahlil Joseph’s mesmerizing news-creation machine is a soulful and rousing intervention into the “news-industrial complex” that is presently manifesting an epidemic in our society: news addiction powered by corporate digital platforms on networked devices.

Sam Soko’s documentary about Boniface “Softie” Mwangi a man who fought injustices in his country as a political activist. Now he’s taking the next step by running for office in a regional Kenyan election.

Directed by Sam Feder, Disclosure takes an eye-opening look at transgender depictions in film and television, examining how Hollywood reflects and creates our deepest anxieties about gender.

An immersive experience that manifests both the material world and the spiritual world through the religious celebration of Bembé, a Cuban tradition honoring the souls of dead slaves who come to Earth.

Tanzanian-American filmmaker Ekwa Msangi delves into the life of Walter, who was forced to leave his family, 17 years ago, in Angola. Now he is picking up his wife, Esther, and daughter, Sylvia, from the airport to bring them home to his one-bedroom Brooklyn apartment.

A film crew follows three grieving participants of Miami’s annual “T Ball,” where folks assemble to model RIP T-shirts and innovative costumes designed in honor of their dead.

In the mountains of Lesotho, an 80-year-old widow named Mantoa eagerly awaits her son’s return from working in the South African mines, only to learn of his demise instead. Writer/director Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese.

When Nathi goes on a simple errand, his journey is marked by disturbing interactions with authority. But is he an innocent victim?

Directed by Dee Rees, the film is an adaptation of the novel by Joan Didion and stars Anne Hathaway as a hardened journalist and single mother Elena McMahon who has rigorously investigated Contra activity in Central America for years. The film also features Rosie Perez, Willem Dafoe and Ben Affleck.

In the dense night, when the moon rises, those who live a monotonous daily life without water are hypnotized by the powers of Yemaya, the goddess of the sea.

This immersive multimedia installation brings audiences into a complex understanding of mass incarceration, erasure and gentrification in Harlem.

The ceremony of live performance and the craft of theatrical staging magnificently converge with the musical direction of composer Raffy Bushman.

Director Shalini Kantayya sits her documentary at the intersection of two crucial questions: What does it mean when artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly governs our liberties? When MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini discovers that most facial-recognition software does not accurately identify darker-skinned faces and the faces of women, she delves into an investigation of widespread bias in algorithms.

Maïmouna Doucouré’s look at eleven-year-old Amy’s life. She lives with her mom, Mariam, and younger brother, awaiting her father to rejoin the family from Senegal.

Fox Rich is an entrepreneur, author and mother of six who has spent the last 21 years fighting for the release of her husband, Rob, who is serving a 60-year sentence for an offense they both committed.

From Emmy-winning, Oscar-nominated filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, this currently untitled documentary tells the story of music executive Drew Dixon and how the abuse she faced at the hands of those she admired changed her career and life forever.

Director Terence Nance’s short centers on missed-connection regret at that one late-night spot—the kind you keep playing back in your head but not quite ever remembering right—until it starts to look like something else.

Caught in the throes of a depressive fugue, young Lynn resorts to debauchery to find joy—only to discover that happiness is a much more complicated proposition.

The MACRO Lodge returns, hosted by MACRO’s Stacey Walker King & Charles D. King (Sorry To Bother You, Mudbound, Blast Beat), January 24-27. This marks the media company’s third annual showcase of inclusive panels and parties to champion diversity and people of color. This year’s events include a conversation with Bad Hair‘s cast and director Justin Simien, a fireside chat with Issa Rae and Stella Meghie on their new film The Photograph, and a conversation with Sylvie’s Love stars Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha, writer/director Eugene Ashe, producer Gabrielle Glore.

A Sundance tradition, The Blackhouse Foundation, led by industry veteran Brickson Diamond, will host its immersive programming from January 24-27. Starting with a Meet the Filmmakers Party, Blackhouse will host Issa Rae and Prentice Penny in a candid chat about the return of Insecure; WarnerMedia’s “See Yourself in the Work We Do” conversation, including panelist Gina Yashere, Co-creator, Executive Producer and actor for Bob Hearts Abishola; and more. According to their press release, Blackhouse Foundation “stands out as a bastion for the most influential and impactful Black writers, directors, producers, crew, actors and actresses throughout film, television, digital media, and beyond.”