{"id":20834,"date":"2026-02-05T18:54:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T18:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/02\/05\/celebrating-the-power-of-film-at-park-citys-last-sundance\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T18:54:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T18:54:50","slug":"celebrating-the-power-of-film-at-park-citys-last-sundance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/02\/05\/celebrating-the-power-of-film-at-park-citys-last-sundance\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating the Power of Film at Park City\u2019s Last Sundance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Friend\u2019s House Is Here<\/em> was covertly filmed in the streets of Tehran amidst violent government crackdowns against citizens. Courtesy of Sundance Institute<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There is a scene about halfway through first-time writer-director Stephanie Ahn<\/a>\u2019s romantic drama Bedford Park<\/i>\u2014which premiered in the U.S. Dramatic Competition in last week\u2019s Sundance Film Festival\u2014where the lead characters are stuck in New Jersey traffic, fiddling with the radio. \u201cKeep it here,\u201d says reluctant passenger Eli (South Korean actor Son Suk-ku<\/a>) when he hears Bill Conti<\/a>\u2019s Rocky<\/i> theme Gonna Fly Now.<\/i> While Eli\u2014whose cauliflower ears speak to his high school wrestling days and whose furtive and combative manner suggests he has never stopped fighting\u2014bobs his head and shakes his fists, Irene (a devastating Moon Choi<\/a>), an on-leave physical therapist in an emotional free fall, stares ahead, saying nothing, her eyes silently filling with tears.<\/p>\n

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Sitting in a Press & Industry screening at the Holiday Village Theaters in Park City, so did mine. Of course, it had much to do with the authenticity and masterfully observational patience of Ahn\u2019s film. But the film served as a powerful metaphor for the festival itself, which was also uniting a bunch of broken people around their shared and largely nostalgic love of movies. A dense cloud of wistfulness threatened to overtake the festival every time audiences watched Robert Redford<\/a>, its late founder and spiritual guide, reflect on the power of storytelling in gauzy footage projected onscreen.<\/p>\n

While Bedford Park<\/i> was my favorite film I saw at the festival, it didn\u2019t pick up one of the big awards. (Beth de Ara\u00fajo<\/a>\u2019s Channing Tatum<\/a>\u2013starring drama about an 8-year-old crime witness Josephine<\/i> swept both the Jury and Audience awards, while Bedford Park<\/i> received a Special Jury Award for Debut Feature.)<\/p>\n

What Ahn\u2019s film brought home instead was something even more valuable: a distribution deal. Sony Pictures Classics\u2014whose co-presidents and founders Michael Barker<\/a> and Tom Bernard<\/a> were battling for good movies and ethical distribution against the indie movie dark lord Harvey Weinstein<\/a> back in Sundance\u2019s buy-happy \u201990s heyday\u2014made the film its second acquisition of the festival behind director Josef Kubota Wladyka<\/a>\u2019s crowd-pleasing Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!<\/i> It was an anachronistically bullish stand by the 34-year-old specialty arm in what has been a largely bearish acquisition market.<\/p>\n

The relatively quiet marketplace, Redford\u2019s passing and the immutability of 2026 being the end of the festival\u2019s Utah run (Main Street\u2019s iconic Egyptian Theater being unavailable for festival programming felt like a don\u2019t-let-the-door-hit-you statement from both city and state) combined to give this outing a bit of a Dance of Death feeling. Respite from this sense of gloom came from the most unlikely of places: documentaries on seemingly depressing topics.<\/p>\n

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Joybubbles in his living room. Photo by Bettmann Archive\/Getty Images<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joybubbles,<\/i> the effervescent directorial debut from longtime archival producer Rachael J. Morrison<\/a>, tells the story of Joe Engrassia<\/a>, a man who copes with his blindness and the cruelty he experiences as a result of his visual impairment through his relationship with that great relic of the 20th Century: the telephone. As a child, he found comfort in its steady tone when his parents fought; as a young man, he learned to manipulate its system to make calls across the world with his pitch-perfect whistling; as an adult, he entertains strangers through a prerecorded \u201cfun line,\u201d telling jokes and stories from his life. In one scene, Morrison captures a caller recollecting taking Joe\u2014who late in life legally changed his name to Joybubbles to reflect his commitment to living life as a child\u2014to Penny Marshall<\/a>\u2019s 1988 movie Big,<\/i> and describing it to him in the back of the theater; the moment moved me as deeply as the Rocky<\/i> interlude from Bedford Park.<\/i><\/p>\n

The setup of Sam Green<\/a>\u2019s The Oldest Person in the World<\/i> seems high concept: a globe-spanning chronicle of the various holders of that dubious Guinness World Record title over the course of a decade. But in the hands of Green, a Sundance vet who has premiered a dozen films at the festival dating back to 1997, what would be rote instead blossoms into a consistently surprising, deeply personal and strangely exhilarating exploration of what it means to be alive.<\/p>\n

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Ghost in the Machine<\/em> delivers a thought-provoking takedown of Techno-Fascism. Courtesy of Sundance Institute<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ghost in the Machine,<\/i> Valerie Vatach<\/a>\u2019s exploration of the eugenicist roots and colonial and anti-environmental reality of the A.I. arms race, had the exact opposite effect. It tells the tale of a society that has lost its moral and humanitarian bearing at the behest of techno-oligarchs, amalgamating our own labor to keep us divided. The film\u2019s denouement\u2014showing ways we as a society can still fight back\u2014was the only unconvincing part of Vatach\u2019s film essay.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the miles-deep societal pessimism of Ghost in the Machine<\/i> was being tragically echoed by real events. Indeed, the most shocking and vital clip of the weekend was the footage of the Minneapolis murder of protester and ICU nurse Alex Pretti<\/a> at the hands of federal agents that festivalgoers watched on their phones in stunned silence while waiting in lines. A day earlier, U.S. Congressman Max Frost<\/a> was physically assaulted at the festival in an attack that was both politically and racially motivated.<\/p>\n

It all made for a tense mood for one of the more anxious events of the festival: that Sunday\u2019s premiere of Knife: The Attempted Murder of Salman Rushdie<\/a>,<\/i> from Alex Gibney<\/a>, another longtime Sundance veteran. Culled from footage shot by Rachel Eliza Griffiths<\/a> (Rushdie\u2019s wife) of the novelist\u2019s recovery from the 2022 attack on his life and adapted from his memoir of that event, the film was most effective when Gibney recounted the since-rescinded 1989 fatwa against Rushdie, an example of, as the author told the theater audience, \u201chow violence unleashed by an irresponsible leader can spread out of control.\u201d (Security measures for the event included a full pat-down, metal detectors, and bomb-sniffing dogs.)<\/p>\n

As trenchant as it felt in that moment, Knife<\/i> was also an example of a documentary where the subject may have been a bit too in control of the final product; in addition to providing the footage, Griffiths served as executive producer and Gibney was her and Rushdie\u2019s handpicked director.<\/p>\n

American Pachuco: The Legend of Luis Valdez<\/a>,<\/i> which premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition and took home the Audience Award, also drifted toward hagiography. But in telling the story of Valdez, the Chicano arts trailblazer who founded El Teatro Campesino to inform and entertain newly unionized farmworkers, the film powerfully demonstrates how politically and socially engaged arts serve both as a morale booster and a clarion call in the fight against oppression.<\/p>\n

Nowhere was this idea better expressed than in my second favorite fiction film in the festival: The Friend\u2019s House Is Here.<\/i> Directed by the New York\u2013based husband and wife team of Hossein Keshavarz<\/a> and Maryam Ataei<\/a> and covertly filmed in the streets of Tehran amidst violent government crackdowns against citizens, House<\/i> is at its heart a joyful \u201changout\u201d movie about two close but very different friends pushing the limits of their creative expression in current-day Iran. The film\u2014whose cast includes Iranian Instagram star Hana Mana<\/a>, theater actor Mahshad Bahraminejad<\/a>, and a troupe of actors from a local improvisational theater company\u2014rightfully took home the Special Jury Award for its ensemble cast.<\/p>\n

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Maria Petrova in Myrsini Aristidou\u2019s Hold Onto Me<\/em>. Courtesy of Sundance Institute<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Aside from The Friend\u2019s House Is Here<\/i> crew, the best performances in Sundance films were given by children. This includes Maria Petrova<\/a> as a dour 11-year-old beach rat reconnecting with her estranged conman father in Myrsini Aristidou<\/a>\u2019s Hold Onto Me,<\/i> which won the World Cinema-Dramatic Audience Award. Mason Reeves<\/a>\u2019 complex and nervy turn as an 8-year-old who witnesses a rape in Golden Gate Park during an early morning run with her fitness-obsessed dad (Channing Tatum) is by far the best thing about Josephine,<\/i> writer-director Beth de Ara\u00fajo\u2019s multiple award winner; the film\u2019s narrative and emotional force are deeply undercut by the abject cluelessness shown by the child\u2019s parents, played by Channing Tatum and Eternals<\/i> stunner Gemma Chan<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Not all of the films at this year\u2019s festival were engaged with our fraught political moment. Longtime Sundance mainstay Gregg Araki<\/a>\u2019s I Want Your Sex<\/i> (the programmers\u2019 fixation on inviting old hands felt like a combination of sentimentality and branding) was born of the kind of sassy, candy-colored provocations the director helped pioneer in the 90s in its telling of Cooper Hoffman<\/a>\u2019s art intern embarking on a Dom\/Sub relationship with his boss, played with preening relish by Olivia Wilde<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Cooper Hoffman and Olivia Wilde in Gregg Araki\u2019s I Want Your Sex<\/em>. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Lacey Terrell<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Along with her Sex<\/i> costar Charli XCX<\/a>, whose premiere of her mockumentary The Moment<\/i> created the closest thing the 2026 fest had to a media scrum, Wilde became the celebrity face of the festival. The bidding war to acquire The Invite<\/i>\u2014the middle-age sex comedy she directed and stars in alongside Seth Rogen<\/a>, Edward Norton<\/a> and Pen\u00e9lope Cruz\u2014was eventually won by A24 and provided one of the few pieces of red meat that kept the trade reporters engaged.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, the festival overall seemed much more focused on its past than its present or even its future. (That said, Colorado Governor Jared Polis<\/a> showing up to premieres in his trademark cowboy hat\u2014in anticipation of Sundance\u2019s move next year to Boulder\u2014did feel like the ultimate Rocky Mountain flex.)<\/p>\n

In addition to its reliance on programming new films by filmmakers who had movies in previous festivals, this year\u2019s festival also featured special screenings of films from its illustrious past, among them Barbara Kopple<\/a>\u2019s American Dream,<\/i> Lynn Shelton<\/a>\u2019s Humpday,<\/i> and James Wan<\/a>\u2019s Saw.<\/i> Still, the festival\u2019s most potent dose of uncut nostalgia was Tamra Davis<\/a>\u2019 The Best Summer.<\/i> A stitched-together chronicle of a 1994 Australian indie rock festival that featured the Beastie Boys, Bikini Kill, Pavement, Foo Fighters and Sonic Youth, Davis\u2019 film felt like the ultimate in Gen X hipster home movies.<\/p>\n

But did all of this chronic looking backwards sap the festival of its vitality? Maybe a little. But despite the sentimentality that covered Park City more heartily than the snow, films like The Friend\u2019s House Is Here<\/i> reminded us how remarkable good films can be at discovering and celebrating humanity, even as Ghost in the Machine<\/i> showed us that the moment to do something about it may have passed.<\/p>\n

More from Sundance<\/h3>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Celebrating<\/p><\/div>\n