The Sundance Film Festival isn’t just a celebration of cinema: It’s also a storefront, a place where the top streaming services can find the next generation of must-sees for their services.
Netflix has been particularly busy this year, buying the rights to many exciting new films, including heartbreaking documentaries and gleefully gruesome horror films.
Here are five of the top selections we’re most excited to see in Netflix’s 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Keep an eye on our new Netflix movie list to see when they’ll be available.
Skywalkers: A Love Story
Don’t watch this if you’re afraid of heights. Skywalkers: A Love Story is a documentary about daredevil couple Angela Nikolau and Ivan Beerkus who save their ailing relationship by climbing one of the tallest buildings in the world… Just like you.
As the official synopsis puts it: “A daredevil couple travels the world to climb the world’s last super skyscraper and perform a daring acrobatic stunt on its spire.” It took seven years to make, and the climatic climb is the last of the bunch.
According to Varietyit is “full of astonishing, terrifying, gripping real shots of young daredevils climbing the spindly spiers that shoot from the tops of skyscrapers. Yet it is also a tumultuous love story”.
Wil & Harper
Will Ferrell’s friend Harper recently came out as transgender, and in this documentary, Ferrell takes her on a road trip in hopes of understanding what it’s like to be transgender in the US today.
Despite the community’s initial concern that this was one of those “rich old dude spends time with a marginalized person and cries a little, now give me an Oscar” projects, reviews of this have been largely positive.
The film currently has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating out of 14 reviews so far. It’s part Trans 101, part honest documentary, about some of the realities of being trans that fear-mongering headlines and politicians don’t want you to think about.
It’s what’s inside
Although Sundance is known for its documentary section, it’s also a great place for horror fans – and $17 million later, It’s what’s inside brings his low-budget but high-concept horror to Netflix.
According to Variety the film is “a suitably effective genre calling card: glossily shot and spiky cut, brashly played by actors who accept their roles as pretty pawns in an elaborate narrative strategy game.”
Horror buzz says it is “ingenious” and Silver fencing riot says it is “utterly transfixing… (it) combines college reunion comedy, puzzle box thrillers and a Shane Carruth-esque level of sci-fi precision”.
Ibelin
From the director of The painter and the thief, which won the jury prize at Sundance in 2020, Ibelin tells the story of Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who died at the age of 25 from a degenerative muscle disease.
The title comes from the name of his avatar in World of Warcraft, the online community where he made many friends. The film re-enacts some of his online life and features many of the gamers whose lives he influenced.
Daughters
The word ‘Oscar’ is already being used around this heartwarming and heartbreaking documentary, in which four girls are reunited with their incarcerated fathers. The film won the Audience Award for the US Documentary section at Sundance and is widely considered a likely Oscar contender for next year.