Sundance Review: Ashley Sabin And David Redmon’s Documentary ‘Kim’s Video’

EXCLUSIVE: Following the global success of Netflix original series D.P. and Hellbound, and the Netflix original film Jung-E, South Korea’s Climax Studio is developing filmmaker Jason Kim’s The Monster Tale along with Andy Serkis and Jonathan Cavendish’s Imaginarium Productions.

Neon and Topic Studios present writer/director Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool at 1,835 theaters in a lively specialty weekend sandwiched between a new crop of Sundance films and noteworthy expansions in the glow of Oscar nominations.

Greenwich Entertainment has picked up all rights excluding TV to the documentary Nam June Paik: Moon Is the Oldest TV, directed and produced by Amanda Kim, which world premiered in U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. 

On September 11, 2020, The New York Times published an obituary for Shere Hite, the renowned sex researcher and author, noting that her work “helped awaken women to their sexual power and advance the Second Wave of feminism.”

Although trans rights are now the subject of a simmering culture war in America and the U.K., that conflict is largely predicated on the increasing visibility of trans women at a time where self-ID is controversially becoming the norm. Stories of trans men, however, tend to go under the radar, and this remarkable New York-set debut from Chilean-Serbian director Vuk Lungulov-Klotz goes some way to redressing that imbalance. Featuring a pitch-perfect performance from Puerto Rican/Greek actor Lío Mehiel, so far mostly known for the Apple show WeCrashed and a number of shorts, U.S. Dramatic Competition entry Mutt feels like an important but — for reasons about to be explained — perhaps interstitial film in the history of LGBTQ+ cinema, being fully cognizant of the fact that it is set and was made in a between-time that reflects the lead character’s existential sense of limbo.

Ira Sachs prefers relationships of the doomed variety — tempestuous passions torn asunder, sometimes by external forces like capitalism, which complicated the search for a home through New York’s cutthroat real estate market in “Love Is Strange” and “Little Men.” His latest film — the sexy, frustrating, loose-yet-compact, altogether irresistible three-hander “Passages” — also concerns property contracts and a homeless protagonist. However, this one’s got nobody but himself to blame for that predicament, fluent as he is in the same toxic strain of amour fou that previously perfumed the air in “Keep the Lights On” and especially Sachs’ debut, “The Delta.” As in that film — also pitched at the admirably humble quotidian scale Sachs hasn’t felt the need to exceed in more than a quarter decade — “Passages” follows a bisexual chaos agent so wrapped up in his own narcissism that he can’t see where his self-exploration ends and insensitivity to those around him begins.

Searchlight has won a fierce bidding war for one of the buzziest Sundance crowd-pleasers. The Disney-owned distributor has closed a deal for the well-reviewed and well-received “Theater Camp,” with distribution rights going for around $10 million.

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Based on one of the most sensational and much-discussed short stories of recent times, which was heralded as the most-read story ever to appear in The New Yorker, Cat Person is a disarmingly creepy film with a disturbing edge that will surely trigger further discussion about contemporary dating and romantic protocols. Years ago, a little film like this would have found a modest but loyal following among young audiences. Now, however, its forthright presentation of the pitfalls of flashing yellow lights where male-female relations are concerned should make this a must-see and a subject of hot discussion at least among teens and young adults.

Working at the opposite end of the spectrum to Baz Luhrmann, Ireland’s John Carney seems content to make low-key, localized musicals that are almost custom-sized for Sundance. True, some fingers were burned when, perhaps emboldened by the slow-burn success of 2007’s Once, he hired a big star (Keira Knightley), filmed in New York, and endured the full horror of a hands-on Harvey Weinstein release for the bigger-budgeted follow-up, Begin Again, in 2013. After whatever went down on that film, however, he returned to Ireland with a bunch of largely unknown actors for his next and arguably best so far: Sing Street (2016), an underrated romantic comedy about a young man (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) trying to find his identity through his love of music.

The word “romantic” doesn’t have much place in cinema these days, serving mostly as a modifier for “comedy”. The term “women’s picture” has also passed out of favor since its ’40s heyday, regardless of the fact that the films that exemplified it usually featured strong female characters and almost always pushed back at the pressures of male-run society. With her feature debut Past Lives, which screened to a double standing ovation this week in the Premieres strand at Sundance, playwright Celine Song has killed two birds with one stone, creating an elegant and unexpectedly mesmerizing character piece that speaks profoundly to the concept of love in the modern age while using an intelligent and ambitious, but still very relatable woman to do so.

EXCLUSIVE: The Sundance acquisitions market is poised to get going with a big sale. The Dish hears that the Chloe Domont-directed Fair Play right now has as many as seven bidders making offers. Traditionally when that happens, the result is an 8-figure deal. That’s where this one seems headed, though it might take until tomorrow to close

A man has spoken of his heartbreak after his partner died just days after his proposal when she used the wrong spoon to stir a cup of tea. Craig McKinnon, 24, had whisked his girlfriend Jess, 24, away to South Africa for a romantic holiday when she suffered a fatal allergic reaction.

EXCLUSIVE: CAA has signed emerging filmmaker D. Smith, whose documentary Kokomo City will world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival later today.

A surprise documentary unveiled at the Sundance Film Festival on Friday night revealed new sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and raised disturbing questions about whether the FBI ever actually investigated his behavior.The most heart-wrenching footage in the documentary by director Doug Liman and producer Amy Herdy involved a classmate of Kavanaugh’s at Yale. Deborah Ramirez went on camera for the first time to detail her story of being sexually harassed by Kavanaugh in front of their friends during a drunken college party in the 1980s.