The Sundance Film Festival is one of the largest and most influential independent film festivals in the U.S. It usually runs in January, at a time when locals would have to miss some of Carnival to attend screenings in Park City, Utah. But this year, fans across the country can view films at Sundance Satellite Screens locations in 20 cities. Working in conjunction with the New Orleans Film Festival, Sundance will screen a dozen films at the Broadside Jan. 28 to Feb. 2. There also will be a few receptions and Q&A sessions with filmmakers. All Sundance films will be available online this year as well.
The New Orleans Satellite’s closing night features “Ma Belle, My Beauty” by local filmmaker Marion Hill. It stars local actresses Idella Johnson and Hannah Pepper as former polyamorous lovers who are reunited in the idyllic landscapes of southern France. Johnson plays Bertie, a New Orleans native and singer who has gotten married and settled down with her husband in France. Pepper plays Lane, who had been in a three-way relationship including Bertie but abruptly disappeared. When she suddenly reappears in France, they reconsider the passions and entanglements of their past.
The film is Hill’s first feature length project. Her short films have screened in other film festivals, and she’s created music-related content for WWOZ. She was a fellow in the New Orleans Film Festival’s Emerging Voices program in 2018. “Ma Belle, My Beauty” features a score by local composer Mahmoud Chouki. The film screens at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2, and there is a Q&A with Hill, Johnson and Pepper afterward.
Josh Penn was one of the producers behind “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” which premiered at Sundance. He produced two films screening in this festival. “Users” is an exploration of the intrusion of technology into personal spheres. Director Natalia Almada has made several documentaries about her native Mexico, including “El General,” about her great grandfather’s impact as president of the country in the 1920s. In “Users” she focuses on her young son as he stares at computer screens and is rocked to sleep by an electronic device. She questions the ways in which the primacy of a parent’s role and interaction is being supplanted by technological devices. Penn introduces the film at its screening at 8:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1.
Penn also introduces the festival’s final screening, two segments of the eight-part docuseries “Philly D.A.” It follows civil rights attorney Larry Krasner’s 2017 campaign to become Philadelphia’s district attorney on a platform of ending mass incarceration. After filing more than 75 lawsuits against police over the years, he won the election and had to work with cops and other officials he had criticized. The series focuses on his attempt to implement reform. It screens at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 2.
Other narrative and documentary films address a variety of subjects. The festival opens at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 28, with “In the Same Breath,” a documentary about the Chinese government’s control of information about the emergence of the coronavirus in Wuhan. Director Jamila Wignot’s “Ailey” is about legendary dancer and choreographer Alvin Ailey, and there’s a panel discussion organized by local nonprofit Dancing Grounds. It screens at 6:15 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1. In “R#J,” director Carey Williams reworks Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” for the age of social media (8:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 30). Director Sam Hobkinson’s “Misha and the Wolves” is a documentary about a Holocaust memoir that turns out to be fake and the stranger story behind it. It screens at 6:15 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 31.
Visit neworleansfilmsociety.org for schedule and tickets. Go to sundance.org for information on other Sundance Film Festival programs.
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