Sundance Film Festival: explore the London 2023 line-up
‘You Hurt My Feelings’ starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies will close this year's festival, which runs from July 6 to 9
Sundance Film Festival has unveiled the 2023 line-up for this year’s event at Picturehouse Central in London – check out what’s on this year’s programme below.
Running from July 6 to 9, the festival will present 11 feature films that premiered at Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Salt Lake City and the Sundance Resort in January this year, ranging from indie debuts and romantic dramas to explorations of identity and an A24 thriller.
Opening this year’s festivities is the UK premiere of Scrapper, directed and written by Charlotte Regan, which tells the story of a 12-year-old girl called Georgie (newcomer Lola Campbell) who tries to adjust to a new life when her estranged father (Harris Dickinson) turns up after her mum dies.
The UK premiere of You Hurt My Feelings, directed by Nicole Holofcener, will close the festival. Starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies, it follows a writer who must deal with the upending of her marriage when she overhears her husband’s honest reaction to her latest book.
Other features across the festival explore love and identity, including Ira Sachs’s Passages – starring Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos and Franz Rogowski – about a gay couple of fifteen years whose relationship is thrown into crisis when one has an affair with a younger woman.
Also screening as part of the feature programme is Mutt, which follows a trans man Feña (Lio Mehiel) through an emotional 24 hours in New York City when he attempts to navigate old relationships.
Celine Song’s anticipated debut Past Lives, meanwhile, follows the reunion of two childhood friends (Greta Lee, Teo Yoo) after they were pulled apart when one family emigrated from South Korea, now forced to contemplates their relationship and lives.
Directors Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou’s bring a touch of horror to the festival with Talk To Me, about a group of friends who discover how to conjure up spirits with an embalmed hand.
Elsewhere on the line-up, renowned Dutch photographer and music video director Anton Corbijn (Depeche Mode, U2) is set to make his feature documentary debut with Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), described as a “tribute to the days of analog creativity and artistic risk”. It will explore the duo behind a generation of iconic albums – Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey “Po” Powell, AKA the design studio Hipgnosis – featuring interviews with Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher, and Roger Waters and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd.
Pioneering New Queer Cinema director Gregg Araki will also be attending the festival for a three- film retrospective, The Totally F*cked Up Cinema of Gregg Araki.
Joana Vicente, CEO of Sundance Institute said of the upcoming festival: “We are looking forward to introducing a wonderful selection of films to audiences in London and can’t wait to be back at Picturehouse Central.
“These films are provocative, moving, and entertaining, and created by some truly visionary storytellers. We know that alongside a compelling series of conversations and industry programme, it will be an outstanding 10th edition of the Festival.”
Clare Binns, Managing Director, Picturehouse Cinemas added: “We are delighted to host the tenth Sundance Film Festival: London showcasing the finest independent cinema direct from the 2023 Sundance Film Festival held in January. We look forward to celebrating with the London film community in July for an exciting 4 days filled with bold and thrilling UK premieres on the big screen, inspiring talks and special guest appearances, I am personally thrilled that Gregg Araki will be joining us all at the Festival, whose work exemplifies Sundance and independent film.”
Ticket passes for Sundance Film Festival are on sale now from here. You can find the full London programme for 2023 below.
Fiction feature films:
Fairyland (dir. Andrew Durham)
Mutt (dir. Vuk Lungulov-Klotz)
Past Lives (dir. Celine Song)
Passages (dir. Ira Sachs)
Scrapper (dir. Charlotte Regan)
Talk To Me (dir. Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou)
You Hurt My Feelings (dir. Nicole Holofcener)
Documentary feature films:
Fantastic Machine (dir. Axel Danielson, Maximilien Van Aertryck)
Going Varsity in Mariachi (dir. Alejandra Vasquez, Sam Osborn)
Invisible Beauty (dir. Bethann Hardison, Frédéric Tcheng)
Squaring The Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis) (dir. Anton Corbijn)
UK shorts programme:
Birdsong (dir. Omi Zola Gupta, Sparsh Ahuja)
Christopher at Sea (dir. Tom CJ Brown)
Claudio’s Song (dir. Andreas Nilsson)
Giraffe (dir. Caleb Femi)
My Eyes Are Up Here (dir. Nathan Morris)
She Always Wins (dir. Hazel McKibbin)
The Veiled City (dir. Natalie Cubides-Brady)
White Ant (dir. Shalini Adnani)
Special events:
GREGG ARAKI RETROSPECTIVE – The Totally F*cked Up Cinema of Gregg Araki
The Doom Generation (dir. Gregg Araki)
Three Bewildered People In The Night (dir. Gregg Araki)
Mysterious Skin (dir. Gregg Araki)