The 2025 Sundance Film Festival begins this week! For two weeks starting in January, Park City and Salt Lake City feel culturally relevant in a way we can’t normally achieve without shameless forays into the salacious world of reality television (hello, Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City) or ripped-from-the-headlines true crime series (Murder Among the Mormons, Under the Banner of Heaven, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, etc.).
The Sundance Film Festival is different. It’s when Hollywood comes to us, rather than the other way around. This year’s festival will be as star-studded as ever, with films featuring the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Benedict Cumberbatch, Diego Luna, Conan O’Brien, Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe and many, many more.
For locals, there’s a number of free screenings you can attend. For everyone, here’s what has the editors, critics and contributors at Salt Lake magazine, as well as the festival programmers, excited for the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.
Film highlights at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
Sally Ride was the first American woman in space and a powerful advocate for STEM education. The Sundance documentary SALLY shows a portrait of Ride, incorporating the perspectives from her once secret partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy and rare archival footage of NASA training and missions and Ride’s press appearances.
SALLY also received the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize—an award for a Festival film that incorporates science or technology into the storytelling.
“It’s an incredibly inspirational film about a real-life hero who’s no longer with us,” says Heidi Zwicker, a Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival.
“I’m not at all surprised that the Sloan jury was moved by this detailed accounting of what it meant to be the first woman in space and what it took,” says Zwicker. “It’s incredibly powerful.”
A local filmmaker has his debut film at Sundance this year. Cole Webley directed Omaha, about a family’s unexpected cross-country journey following a tragedy. Some of the film was shot in Utah, and it will be shown among the handful of free screenings for Utah locals.
“I think about this film when I think about films that speak to the current moment in the United States,” says Zwicker. “It’s about a family struggling, houseless, and how they’re going to get by. It’s incredibly heartstring-pulling and definitely a tearjerker.”
Omaha stars actor John Magaro, “who I think is an amazing actor and, after Past Lives, is getting his due. I’m really excited for that one,” adds Zwicker.
Among the international films at Sundance this year, Zwicker draws attention to a film shot in North Macedonia, DJ Ahmet. The filmmaker, Georgi M. Unkovski, previously had an entry in Sundance’s shorts competition, and now he’s back with his first feature.
“This feels like the movie I could recommend to anybody,” says Zwicker. The story follows a teenage boy who was growing up in a very rural shepherding village. He struggles to express his love is music, while navigating his father’s expectations in a conservative community.
“So it’s kind of like Footloose in North Macedonia,” says Zwicker. “But it’s really about this battle between tradition and modernity, and it’s just such a good time.”
When it comes to a star-studded feature premiere, look no further than Kiss of the Spider Woman, a film adaptation of the Tony-winning stage musical and a previous 1985 film. It stars a scene-stealing Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna and is directed by Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls), including showstopping musical and dance numbers.
“It’s just exciting to have big, cool talent come to the festival,” says Zwicker. “So I have to mention Kiss of the Spider Woman with Jennifer Lopez. She is so incredible in this movie. And so I’m really excited for that premiere.”
As far as themes and trends that emerge this year at the Festival, the focus seems pulled in a variety of directions as filmmakers attempt to broach the myriad challenges in the current moment, including the challenges of the economy, the environment and political conflict.
Sundance 2025 Recommendations
From Jaime Winston, Salt Lake magazine contributor:
While Sundance is giving us many worthwhile films this year, the festival program’s description for By Design definitely sticks out: “A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.” The idea alone says dark comedy, but it also offers commentary on social interactions, friendships and self-worth. Juliette Lewis plays Camille, who becomes the chair. Amanda Kramer writes and directs.
Other films to look forward to include Third Act, which tells the story of filmmaker Robert A. Nakamura’s career and battle with Parkinson’s in a documentary by his son, Tadashi, and Dead Lover, Grace Glowicki’s Midnight film about a lonely grave digger resurrecting the man she loves.
If in Park City, Top of Main Brew Pub for lunch and a pint of beer is also recommended.
From Salt Lake magazine contributor Phillip Sevy:
Looking at the Sundance Film Festival from a high-level, the thing I always look forward to the most is discovering something new and great. With no trailers, sparse descriptions, and almost no buzz to go off of, it’s always exciting to pick movies you hope are good and seeing what happens. Often, my favorite films of every festival are unexpected (Freaky Tales 2024, Infinity Pool 2023, Cha Cha Real Smooth 2022). Who knows what I’ll love this year!
On a more specific examination, I’m really looking forward to seeing Didn’t Die—which sounds quirky, smart, and something I haven’t seen before (a podcast during the zombie apocalypse)—and OBEX (which sounds so unique and potentially weird, it could be brilliant). I’ve got a lot of films I’m trying to see this year, so we’ll check back with reviews, but the slate of films this year has a lot of potential for hidden gems.
From Christie Porter, managing editor at Salt Lake magazine:
The writer, director and star of one of my favorite Sundance films in recent years, is returning to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival with an episodic entry. Cooper Raiff surprised the Festival in 2022 with Cha Cha Real Smooth, a painfully authentic romantic dramedy—starring Raiff and Dakota Johnson, with the incomparable Leslie Mann in a supporting role—which also won the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award that year.
This year, Raiff’s entry is Hal & Harper, a series starring Raiff as Hal and Lili Reinhart as Harper, two siblings who share inside jokes, past wounds and co-dependency. Mark Ruffalo plays their father as the siblings explore the “balance between children on the precipice of damage and adults mired in self-made messes.” Raiff has demonstrated his ability to weave wit, charm and humor into a piece without undercutting the film’s heavier themes or emotional resonance. I’m curious to see how he takes on a series. (The first four episodes of Hal & Harper will be screened in-person at the festival, and all eight episodes of the first season will show on Sundance’s online platform.)
Getting to the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
The 2025 Sundance Film Festival will take place from January 23–February 2, 2025, in person at venues in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah. Over half of the projects will be available online from January 30–February 2, 2025.
Single Film Tickets for in-person and online screenings are available for purchase at festival.sundance.org/tickets. If the screenings are sold out for the film you would like to see, be sure to keep checking as more screenings could open up, and get on the eWaitlist for the film by clicking “join waitlist” next to the aforementioned screening. For more information about this year’s Sundance films and Beyond Film programming, there’s the Festival Program Guide.
Need help navigating this year’s festival? Check out our top tips here and our list of where to eat while attending Sundance in Park City!
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