This year’s Sundance Film Festival has wrapped in Park City and Salt Lake City, bringing with it the usual slate of buzzy premieres, including The Moment, a mockumentary about Charli xcx featuring Kylie Jenner.  But the season also felt particularly politically charged. During opening weekend, Florida Democrat Maxwell Alejandro Frost recounted being punched in the face by a man who uttered racist remarks and said that Trump was “going to deport” him. It was a sobering reminder of the state of America right now that set the tone for the rest of the festival. On the red carpet, Natalie Portman spoke about the federal government attacking civilians in their own cities, and Giancarlo Esposito described this moment as a “time for revolution”. 

Sundance is notoriously expensive to attend, so many film lovers—myself included—end up following along from home, keeping up with the buzz and streaming premieres online. Even without being there in person, though, it was clear this was a weighty year. Heavy themes were explored with nuance, from a film about creative freedom smuggled out of Iran on a hard drive, to an American thriller-drama following an eight-year-old girl after witnessing an assault. There was also space for joy, albeit bittersweet: a coming-of-age film capturing the intense, fragile closeness of teenage friendships, and a meditation on grief punctuated by bursts of dance and movement.

As the films find their homes with distributors, before being released to the public, here are the ones we can’t stop thinking about from this year’s festival. 

JOSEPHINE

Josephine was one of the most talked-about films at Sundance this year, and it doesn’t take you long to see why. The film immediately throws you into the eyes of an eight-year-old girl, Josephine, who witnesses a horrific rape in Golden Gate Park while out running with her dad, played by Channing Tatum. It’s a hard but captivating watch, based on an actual event from the childhood of the writer and director, Beth de Araújo. Throughout Josephine, you watch those around the girl scramble to deal with what she has witnessed – often in frustrating ways that leave you begging the screen for someone to talk to her – with the understanding that they are ill-equipped and facing their own hidden feelings and experiences. Meanwhile, Josephine attempts to come to terms with a world she now views as dangerous. It’s so rare to watch a movie about sexual assault that captures how it impacts a community and shapes what young women come to expect from society, but Josephine does just that. It’s no surprise that it won one of the festival’s top prizes, the US Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic. 

THE FRIEND’S HOUSE IS HERE

The Friend’s House is Here is a truly unique film, and it’s not exactly what you’d expect from a film set in Tehran right at this moment. The directors, Maryam Ataei and Hossein Keshavarz, smuggled it out of Iran on a hard drive during a near-total internet blackout that the regime enforced to dampen nationwide protests. Shooting the film without government permission, all of the outdoor scenes had to be recorded in one or two takes to avoid arrest. But you wouldn’t know this was happening behind the scenes while watching the performances. While the film is clearly timely, the most defiant element of The Friend’s House is Here is its depiction of Tehran’s lively underground art scene. It’s a story about creativity, freedom and sisterhood despite and alongside political and personal upheaval.

LADY

Lady takes you on a ride through the sprawling African metropolis of Lagos, with the fiercely independent Lady as your cab driver. She’s plotting her escape from Nigeria, stashing money, while taking care of her grandmother. After the government eliminates fuel subsidies for citizens, the streets erupt in protest, but Lady doesn’t join. She starts driving a band of sex workers in the evenings for some extra cash and, through spending time with these vibrant women, is forced to confront her own relationship to intimacy. It’s a debut feature from director Olive Nwosu that will leave you thinking about the dreams shared between people, and what it means to stay and fight. Also, it felt natural and compelling to explore the complex realities in Lagos from the front seat of a taxi. 

HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!

Here me out: I know a film about grief with dance breaks doesn’t sound good. But Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty!, is a refreshingly real depiction of what it looks like to find yourself again after experiencing a loss. It follows Haru and Luis, who love competing in Tokyo’s ballroom dance scene, until tragedy strikes. When Haru finally comes out of isolation, she builds an infatuation with the new instructor. Sparks fly, and there are plenty of breakout dance numbers along the way, along with some tender moments. The director Josef Kubota Wladyka, who won the Directing Award: US Dramatic, has said that Haru’s character is pulled from his mum’s own spirit. You’ll find yourself rooting for Haru throughout this imperfect journey, through the pain, joy, embarrassment and humour that come with the waves of grief.  

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HARLEM

After his death, filmmaker William Greaves left the world with what he considered the most important event he captured on film: a 1972 party he engineered with the living luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. In Once Upon a Time in Harlem, you meet some of the key artists, musicians, librarians, poets, journalists, actors, photographers, teachers, and critics of the Harlem Renaissance at Duke Ellington’s home for a party, which Greaves filmed. The film is a family affair – it is co-directed by his son, David Greaves, who was a cameraman that day, and comes to the world a decade after Greaves's passing. The film serves as a personal and delightful record of one of the most significant artistic movements in American history.  

EXTRA GEOGRAPHY

Extra Geography is a strange film, and I say that as a compliment. So strange, in fact, that it reminded me of just how weird and uncomfortable it is to be a teenage girl. (There’s even an awkward school play involved, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.) Set in an English girls’ boarding school, the film follows two best friends through the challenges of girlhood, as they set about an extracurricular project of falling in love with the first person they see: their geography teacher. But the real love story is their friendship. Director Molly Manners, who you may know from Netflix’s One Day, captures the tragic closeness (and bitterness) of growing up, and eventually apart, from someone who used to be your entire world.