Just as the Sundance Film Festival is in flux, likely soon to leave its longtime home of Park City, Utah, so too is the state of film — and indie film in particular. Yet the industry and its most ardent fans still came to the mountains for America’s most important event in independent cinema to schmooze, ski and see lots of movies, hoping to find this year’s “A Real Pain,” the breakout hit from last year’s slate. Sometimes it can feel like you’re wading through too much muddy snow to find the bright spots, and the 2025 festival, which ended on Sunday, definitely felt less shiny than in years past. But below are some standout moments that might influence the year ahead in culture.
1. One new name to know: Eva Victor
There’s a particular kind of Sundance movie that centers on a young woman who perseveres with wry humor and grit despite something terrible happening to her. Often, it takes place on a college campus. This year’s exemplar was “Sorry, Baby,” which was among the funniest, saddest and most exciting films of the week. Victor, 30, first found success in the Brooklyn comedy scene, but this is her feature directorial debut. She also wrote and stars in the tender project (alongside Naomi Ackie and Lucas Hedges).
2. Queer cinema is still ascendant (but still very male)
Indie film has always been a genre through which teenagers who feel like outsiders learn to discover themselves, but this year’s roster felt especially crowded with L.G.T.B.Q. projects. Although the three with the most buzz were — for better or, mostly, for worse — about handsome white men: “Twinless,” in which two guys (one straight, one gay) meet in a bereavement group for people who’ve lost their siblings; “Plainclothes,” featuring Tom Blythe and Russell Tovey as a duo (one a closeted cop, one his target) grappling with temptation and intimacy; and “Peter Hujar’s Day,” Ira Sachs’s ode to 1970s-era New York, following the titular photographer (Ben Whishaw) as he narrates his quotidian schedule to his friend the writer Linda Rosencrantz (Rebecca Hall), based on Rosencrantz’s 2022 book of the same name.
3. We’ll be seeing denim — and denim on denim — everywhere
Designers have pushed jeans hard on the runways in recent seasons, but it’s always interesting when fashion trends make their way into other visual media. As Hujar, Whishaw is basically a one-man advertisement for the power of a pair of old Levi’s. And in “Rebuilding,” a quietly moving and timely film about a man recreating his life in rural Colorado after his community burns in a wildfire, Josh O’Connor is a rancher whose no-fuss wardrobe (just like the sportier one he wore in Luca Guadagnino’s “Challengers” last year) will likely prove an inspiration as soon as the film’s released.
4. Also everywhere: pop-crossover horror films
Sundance has always welcomed the scary: While it’s tempting to blame the latest crop of frothy-creepy fare on the recent success of “The Substance” (which didn’t debut at the festival), Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” did premiere in Park City in 2017. This year’s schedule included “Opus,” the former GQ editor Mark Anthony Green’s A24 thriller about a journalist (Ayo Edebiri) visiting the compound of a sinister musician (John Malkovich), and “The Ugly Stepsister,” which retells Cinderella from an alternate point of view. But one of the most high-stakes studio bidding wars was for “Together,” in which Dave Franco and Alison Brie — who are married in real life — play a couple who move to the sticks to get closer, only to (you guessed it) come completely undone.
5. And what about the Jennifer Lopez musical?
It exists! And it’s the one thing my most movie-loving friends wanted to ask about once I’d returned from Utah. If you happen to like its source material — the 1992 John Kander, Fred Ebb and Terrence McNally musical, “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” or Héctor Babenco’s 1985 movie rendition or Manuel Puig’s 1976 novel of the same name — or happen to like Jennifer Lopez (who’s a very good dancer), then you might enjoy this dreamlike tale, which follows two men in prison in Argentina in the 1970s, passing the time by telling stories about a famous onscreen diva. However that sounds, it was fascinating to see such a big movie at Sundance, a festival that celebrates the small. But maybe it’s time we cooled it on all the movie musicals.
