On Monday, Jenkins was onstage at the festival, and the audience was on its feet. He is one of the producers on “Sorry, Baby,” a sometimes bruising, sometimes bitingly funny, impressively assured directorial debut from the comedian Eva Victor, and one of the few U.S. dramatic competition titles to stir up genuine excitement this year. Victor stars as Agnes, a professor at a small college grappling with the aftereffects of a sexual assault she endured as a student. As the story shuffles between past and present, Victor movingly — and with jolting deadpan humor — explores power, depression, retribution and the succor provided by friends, a sweet cat and a horny neighbor. Agnes isn’t all right but she’s also wonderfully human.
One of the pleasures of the neo-western “Rebuilding,” from the writer-director Max Walker-Silverman, is a deeply rooted sense of place that connects it to the festival’s tradition of showcasing regional cinema. Set in Southern Colorado and partly based on his family’s own history, it centers on a rancher (Josh O’Connor) who finds new ground and community in the wake of a catastrophic fire. With a FEMA trailer camp standing in for a wagon train, it offers up a critique of rugged individualism and a vision of the West — and the larger country — that is finally at odds with the ideological thrust of, say, Taylor Sheridan’s “Yellowstone.”
The romance of the West is part of the romance of Sundance, and one reason “Rebuilding” and its neo-western hero fit seamlessly into this event. It’s been a while since Robert Redford, who founded the Sundance Institute in 1981, introduced the festival in person. Now 88, he remains the institute’s president but has stepped away from the event, its biggest public shebang. Even so, in his role as a consummate inside outsider — the Hollywood star who rode into the wilderness in the name of art and independence — he remains inextricably part of the event’s identity. The same holds true of Park City, a former mining town turned destination hot spot where Stagecoach Drive meets Wagon Wheel Way amid old-timey touches and McMansions.
Sundance might have outgrown Park City long ago, but it was still a shock when the festival announced that it was leaving. The news has generated a spectrum of opinions, including from the Republican governor of Utah, Spencer J. Cox. During a recent news conference, he said, “I think that it would be a huge mistake for Sundance themselves to move.” Cox added, “I think it would be really a death knell for Sundance,” but that the state will “be fine.”
Such talk seems baseless and self-serving. Sundance will also be fine. It remains the most important film festival in the United States and among the most vital, and not because of its proximity to Hollywood. Sundance is a brand, but it’s also an ideal, one that cleaves to the belief that there’s more to film than the Oscars and the box office, even if the festival does drone on about storytelling. Through great years and less so — and this year’s event isn’t its best — it has helped introduce a wealth of talented filmmakers. This is where Steven Soderbergh’s “sex, lies and videotape” had its premiere in 1989; it’s also where many first heard the name Ava DuVernay when she won a directing award in 2012 for “Middle of Nowhere.”
