Curated by: Anna Grigoryan
The 2023 Sundance Film Festival has begun and there's already controversy. Plus reviews of Missing, Alice, Darling, Velma plus an interview with Sean Crampton and Jordan Wiseley, the filmmakers behind the indie action movie The Stalking Fields.
In this episode - fellow Seattle Film Critics Society members Taylor Baker from Drink in the Movies and Thomas Stoneham-Judge from ForReel join the show for a spirited conversation to preview the upcoming Sundance Film Festival which we will all be covering on our respective platforms.
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We discuss Elvis and The Makanai, a film and a series about the people behind the performer.
03:37 Elvis, streaming on HBO Max, is a gaudy, flawed, stirring love letter to the King of Rock and Roll.
17:43 The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, streaming on Netflix, is a comforting series about friendship, life choices, and following one’s dreams.
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This is the first episode of our new podcast season on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the 2023 Sundance podcast season and coverage on the website.
Sundance 2023 runs from January 19-28, and we'll be covering this year's festival in a new podcast season about the films this year and how the programming fits into the festival's history. This is Seventh Row's second podcast season (the first was on Women at Cannes in 2022).
In this episode, we discuss the films we're looking forward to at the 2023 Sundance Film Festivals based on directors we love, actors we love, and films we're hearing buzz about. We talk about the festival's importance in the film year, why we're pleased the festival has continued to offer a virtual option when other festivals are all returning to in-person only, and more.
Because the festival loves to program films by slot and quota, we are also introducing our annual Sundance Bingo Card, which you can download here. Play along during the festival (or look at past festival editions and the films you've caught which screened there). You can find last year's bingo card here.
Click here to read the episode show notes.
00:00 Introduction 05:31 The accessibility of a virtual Sundance 11:13 The films we’re looking forward to at the festival Become a MemberAll of our episodes that are over 6 months old are available to members only.
We also regularly record members only episodes.
To get full access to the podcast, including episodes from past Sundance Film Festivals and past Sundance films, become a member.
How to follow our Sundance 2023 coverageSubscribe to our newsletter for updates on the 2023 Sundance podcast season and coverage on the website.
Follow Seventh Row on Twitter and Instagram @SeventhRow; Alex Heeney @bwestcineaste Twitter and Instagram; and Orla Smith @orlamango on Twitter and @orla_p_smith on Instagram.
Show Notes Links to articles/books related to the 2023 selections Watch Lockdown Film School with Lily Gladstone. Gladstone has a new film, Fancy Dance, at Sundance 2023, and we're excited to see it. Read an excerpt from our interview with Lily Gladstone from the ebook Roads to nowhere: Kelly Reichardt's broken American Dreams. Gladstone talks about learning different languages, which is particularly relevant to Fancy Dance in which she speaks Cherokee. Read Orla Smith's analysis of Thomasin McKenzie's performance in Leave No Trace, which appears in our ebook Leave No Trace: A Special Issue. Leave No Trace premiered at Sundance, and McKenzie returns to Sundance this year as the lead of William Oldroyd's Eileen. Read an excerpt of Alex Heeney's interview with Matthieu Rytz on Anote's Ark, which premiered at Sundance in 2018. The full interview appears in the ebook The 2019 Canadian Cinema Yearbook, which is available to purchase here. Rytz returns to Sundance this year with the documentary Deep Rising, which we're looking forward to. Read Alex Heeney's interview with Sebastian Silva on Magic Magic from 2015. He returns to Sundance 2023 with the film Rotting in the Sun. Get our ebook God's Own Country: A Special Issue, about Francis Lee's film which premiered at Sundance in 2017 and marked the debut of a major filmmaker. Read our interview with Eliza Hittman on Beach Rats, which starred Harris Dickinson in his breakout role. In 2021, we named Dickinson as one of the fifty screen stars of tomorrow. Dickinson appears in Scrapper at Sundance 2023. Discover past Sundance coverage related to this year's selections Read our past reviews of Sundance films starring Ben Whishaw: Lilting and Surge. Whishaw returns to Sundance this year with two films: Passages and Bad Behaviour. Read Orla Smith's review of Fresh from Sundance 2022, which was one of the better Midnight films we've seen at Sundance. On the episode, Orla talks about not being impressed with the Midnight films that tend to screen at Sundance. Discover all of our past podcast episodes on films that screened at Sundance. Download the Sundance 2023 Bingo Card here. Related episodes to the Sundance 2023 previewAll of our podcasts that are more than six months old are only available to members. We also regularly release members only bonus episodes. Many of the episodes listed here are now only available to members (Members Only).
To listen to all of these related episodes, become a member.
Ep. 116: Virtual film festivals: Taking stock of their past, present, and future (Members Only): Sundance is one of the only festivals in 2023 to continue to offer a virtual component. On this episode from 2021, we talked about the advent of virtual film festivals, why we like them, why they may struggle, and what we'd like to see in the future. Ep. 94: HBO's Looking (Members Only): Raúl Castillo first impressed us in Andrew Haigh's TV series Looking. He's finally starting to get more traction as a film actor, almost a decade later, and he stars in Cassandro at Sundance 2023. In this episode, we talk about why Looking was one of the best shows of the 21st century, and why Castillo is such a great actor. Sundance Film Festival episodes Ep. 123: Sundance 2022: Creative nonfiction (Free): At the end of Sundance 2022, we reflect on the creative nonfiction films at the festival. Bonus Episode 23: Sundance 2022: Fiction Films (Members Only): At the end of Sundance 2022, we reflect on the highs, lows, discoveries, and disappointments among the fiction films at the festival, from Sharp Stick to Living. Ep. 78: Sundance 2021 part 1 (Members only): At the end of Sundance 2021, we reflect on the highs and lows of the festival with guests Andrew Kendall and Lena Wilson. Ep. 79: Sundance 2021 part 2 (Members Only): At the end of Sundance 2021, we continue our discussion of the best and worst of the festival. Ben Whishaw episodes Bonus Episode 25: This is Going to Hurt and physician mental health (Members Only): We discuss how Ben Whishaw gave the performance of 2022 as the lead in the miniseries This is Going to Hurt, the best TV series of 2022. Whishaw returns to Sundance 2023 with two films. Ep. 69: Paddington and Paddington 2: We swoon over Ben Whishaw's performance in the Paddington films and in Lilting, which premiered at Sundance almost a decade ago. Ben Whishaw returns to Sundance 2023 with two films.
In the second episode of the Sundance 2023 podcast season, we discuss Sundance's Spotlight Program, its only feature film program dedicated to films that premiered at other festivals. We discuss the program's history of picking great films and giving them the spotlight they needed (but didn't get at other festivals).
We discuss four of the five films programmed in the Spotlight section: Other People's Children, Joyland, L'Immensità, and The Eight Mountains. Since we already talked about Other People's Children in depth on a previous episode, we only discuss it briefly here. Additionally, we go deep on The Eight Mountains, which Alex loved, and briefly discuss the other two films in the program that we've seen which we weren't too keen on.
We've actually written books featuring several of the films that screened in Spotlight, including You Were Never Really Here, Girlhood, and The Worst Person in the World. And several of the films previously programmed in the last decade have made our list of the best films of the 2010s.
Click here to read the episode show notes.
You will also find an AI-generated transcript in the show notes.
About the Sundance 2023 seasonThis is the second episode of our new podcast season on the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Subscribe to our newsletter for updates on the 2023 Sundance podcast season and coverage on the website.
Sundance 2023 runs from January 19-28, and we'll be covering this year's festival in a new podcast season about the films this year and how the programming fits into the festival's history. This is Seventh Row's second podcast season (the first was on Women at Cannes in 2022).
Sundance 2023 Bingo
Because the festival loves to program films by slot and quota, we are also introducing our annual Sundance Bingo Card, which you can download here. Play along during the festival (or look at past festival editions and the films you've caught which screened there). You can find this year's bingo card in the show notes on our website.
In each expisode we'll track our progress on the Bingo card, individuall and as a Seventh Row team.
Become a MemberAll of our episodes that are over 6 months old are available to members only.
We also regularly record members only episodes.
To get full access to the podcast, including episodes from past Sundance Film Festivals and past Sundance films, become a member.
How to follow our Sundance 2023 coverageSubscribe to our newsletter for updates on the 2023 Sundance podcast season and coverage on the website.
Follow Seventh Row on Twitter and Instagram @SeventhRow; Alex Heeney @bwestcineaste Twitter and Instagram; and Orla Smith @orlamango on Twitter and @orla_p_smith on Instagram.
Show Notes Links to articles/books on films that previously screened in Spotlight Read our list of Seventh Row's 50 Favourite Films of the 2010s, which also includes many films that screened in Sundance's Spotlight Program, including Oslo, August 31st (#1), Their Finest, Raw, and You Were Never Really Here. Get our ebook on Lynne Ramsay's most recent Spotlight film: You Were Never Really Here: A Special Issue Get our ebook on the Céline Sciamma, Portraits of resistance: The cinema of Céline Sciamma, which includes an interview with Sciamma on Girlhood conducted in Park City at Sundance in 2015 when the film screened in Spotlight. Read Orla Smith's interview with writer-director Haifaa Al-Mansour on The Perfect Candidate, which previously screened in Spotlight in 2020. Read Alex Heeney's interview with writer-director Rebecca Miller on Maggie’s Plan, which previously screened in Spotlight in 2016. Read Alex Heeney's interview with director Lone Scherfig on Their Finest, which previously screened in Spotlight in 2017. Download the Sundance 2023 bingo card to follow along at home. Related episodes to E2: Sundance 2023 Spotlight programDiscover all of our past podcast episodes on films that screened at Sundance.
To listen to all of these related episodes, become a member.
Ep. 116: Virtual film festivals: Taking stock of their past, present, and future (Members Only). Sundance is one of the only festivals in 2023 still offering a virtual component. On this episode, we talked about the advent of virtual film festivals and what we'd like to see in the future. Ep. 129: Highlights of 2022 Fall Film Festivals (Members Only). We discuss the best films that screened on the festival circuit in fall 2022. This includes a free in-depth discussion of Other People's Children. Episodes on Films featured in the Spotlight section Ep. 112: Joachim Trier's The Worst Person in the World (Free). As the world experts on the films of Joachim Trier (our book on his work will be out later this year), we published an episode on his twice Oscar-nominated film The Worst Person in the World (2021), which screened in Spotlight in 2022. Ep. 73: Explorations of rape culture in Promising Young Woman and The Assistant (Members Only). Although The Assistant premiered at Telluride in 2020, it only really started generating buzz after its 2021 screening in the Spotlight Program at Sundance. In this episode, we discuss its depiction of rape culture alongside a bigger Sundance hit (which was also much less nuanced), Promising Young Woman. Ep. 107: Another Round and Oslo, August 31st: Are men OK? Masculinity, mental health, & addiction(Members Only). Joachim Trier first came to Sundance in 2012 with Oslo, August 31st (which premiered at Cannes in 2011), our #1 film of the 2010s. We talk about how the film addresses masculinity, mental health, & addiction and how this compares with the more recent film, a decade later, Another Round. Episodes on genre films featured in the Sundance Spotlight program Ep. 17: The Nightingale (Members Only): Having launched her career in the World Dramatic Competition at Sundance, Jennifer Kent once again returned to the festival with her second feature, The Nightingale, which premiered at Venice to an underwhelming response. We thought the film was rich and excellent in many ways (if flawed), and went deep on it on the podcast. Ep. 112: Raw and Thelma and modern female monsters (Members Only): After receiving rave reviews (and press about vomiting walkouts) at Cannes and TIFF, Julia Ducournau (who later won the Palme d'Or for Titane) screened her first feature, Raw at Sundance in the Spotlight program. We talk about the film in comparison with Joachim Trier's Thelma. Ep. 38 Australian Westerns: The True History of the Kelly Gang, Sweet Country, and The Dressmaker (Members Only): Warwick Thornton's fantastic feature Sweet Country previously screened in the Sundance Spotlight program after premiering (and winning an award) at Venice and TIFF. In this episode, we discuss how Thornton decolonizes the Australian Western, as well as how this compares to Australian Westerns about settler characters (made by settlers).