High On Film Fumes

The 11 films from Sundance you’ll want to see (or at least pretend you saw) in 2018

- Allen Salkin

AS HOLLYWOOD DRIFTS EVER further from the edges toward the safer middle ground (preferably with a superhero on board), it’s good to know there’s a place that still champions full-on weird. The Sundance Film Festival—which on the surface can seem as slick as every other product-driven entertainment event—wrapped up on January 28, and its slate of 123 films is already producing Oscar 2019 chatter for performances like Carey Mulligan’s in Wildlife. A terse, ’60s drama about a divorce, it’s based on a Richard Ford novel and co-stars Jake Gyllenhaal.

Same goes for Toni Collette in Hereditary, a well-crafted horror film about a grandma who will not rest in peace. That film is set for distribution in June; it comes from A24, the tastemaking company behind Lady Bird. Wildlife is, so far, still searching for a buyer, but a sale is inevitable.

There are nine more Sundance films to look  out for this year.

Zikr: A Sufi Revival The most transcendental offering this year was a virtual reality documentary exploring the nature of faith among followers of Sufism, the mystical Islamic tradition. It was the first VR documentary sold at Sundance, and the buyer, Dogwoof, plans to develop it into an online experience that will allow multiple players around the globe to enter Zikr’s virtual world simultaneously.