The Hottest Films for Sale at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival

Jamie Lang The Red Sea Film Festival has announced that its second edition will run Dec. 1-10 this year, after its 2021 inaugural event saw nearly 140 films from 67 countries in 34 languages screen for more than 30,000 ticket holders and over 3,100 accredited industry guests.

Focus Features, Peacock and Jordan Peele’s MonkeyPaw Productions have acquired worldwide rights to the megachurch satire starring Sterling K. Brown and Regina Hall.

previously snagged the rights to the next film by Nikyata Jusu, the director of “Nanny” whose film won the Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance. “Honk for Jesus” is a comedy and satire filmed partially as a faux-documentary, and it follows Pastor Lee-Curtis Childs (Brown) and his wife, First Lady Trinitie Childs (Hall), as the heads of a Southern Baptist mega church as they try and bounce back from a scandal that’s forced them to shut their doors and led their congregation to leave in a mass exodus. The film picks up in the aftermath as the Childs, still insanely wealthy, try and host an Easter service and drum up attention for the community with a feeble attempt telling passers by on the highway to “Honk for Jesus.” The movie satirizes the culture of for-profit religion and the corruption, back biting and ego that goes on behind the scenes.

Chris Willman Music WriterSheryl Crow, Nick Cave, King Crimson, Dio, XXXTentacion, Tanya Tucker, Chumbawamba, Courtney Barnett, Cesária Évora and Mojo Nixon — together again for the first time: These are some of the highly diverse subjects of a slate of music documentaries (or, in the case of Tierra Whack, a fictional film) set to unspool at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin March 11-20.The 16 movies represented in the “24 Beats Per Second” lineup are nearly all world premieres, in a film festival that skews toward SXSW’s original roots as a pure music festival by always carving out a special category for features that chronicle musicians or music scenes.The music doc coming into the festival with probably the highest level of fan anticipation is , which promises to have director Sabaah Folayan offering “a sensitive portrayal” of a precocious, highly controversial, Soundcloud-based rapper “whose acts of violence, raw musical talent and open struggles with mental health left an indelible mark on his generation before his death at the age of 20.” While many of the festival entries are looking for a sale from their exposure at SXSW, “Look at Me!” is already set to stream on Hulu this summer. Joining the artist profiles in the film lineup are documentaries about the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, “Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story,” by co-directors Frank Marshall and Ryan Suffern, and rubber bridge guitars, in “Really Good Rejects,” a film that will have producer Aaron Dessner talking about using them on Taylor Swift’s recent folkier albums.Some of the films promise to be complete life and career chronicles, like those devoted to Crow, Barnett and Dio.

Shalini Dore Features News EditorThe Miami Film Festival returns this year with a hybrid event that includes nine premieres, with three films bowing in special red carpet presentations from March 4-13 in the Florida city. The festival had previously announced that “The Good Boss” would open the event while “Plaza Catedral” would be the closer.

Sundance Film Festival closed its second virtual edition on Sunday, having fielded a few breakout new films and filmmakers, as well as some big sales.With the indie film box office in the doldrums, many of the most aggressive buyers were streaming giants, which have both an insatiable need for content and a desire to generate some awards buzz. While some of the movies received a more muted reception than in past years, when a standing ovation at Park City’s Eccles Theater was enough to trigger an all-night bidding war, there’s been no shortage of headline-making moments.

Dispatches from the Sundance Film Festival are usually accompanied by descriptions of the looming mountains, snowy premieres and frantic bus shuttles. This year's Sundance, which played out entirely virtually due to the COVID-19 surge driven by the omicron variant, meant less evocative screening circumstances: Laptops, digital links and Zooms.But even in reduced form, the films were often hypnotic, thrilling and urgent.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterIn another era, traditional movie studios would have exhaustively battled to buy a Sundance Film Festival crowd-pleaser like “Cha Cha Real Smooth” in the hopes of turning critical raves into the next theatrical hit.“Cha Cha Real Smooth,” writer-director Cooper Raiff’s charming story about a budding friendship between an aimless college grad and a young mother, seemed tailor-made to charm the snow boots off Sundance buyers — and it did. Apple TV Plus outbid competitors and bought the movie for $15 million, the biggest sale at this year’s festival.

Sigh. We were oh-so close to spotting Kanye West stomping around in snow boots on Main Street. But just a few weeks before the Sundance Film Festival was scheduled to kick off in Park City, Utah, plans got scrapped because of you-know-what. Long gone are the days of celebrities popping into random screenings — fun fact: I once caught James Franco dozing off during a documentary about Scientology — and rationalizing a meal of popcorn and diet Coke for breakfast and chatting to strangers on the local bus about the cool new movie you saw.

The Sundance Film Festival is revealing award winners for its 2022 edition on Friday afternoon beginning at 2 p.m. PT. Like the rest of this year’s festival, which was forced to go all-virtual because of the recent Omicron surge, the awards ceremony is playing out on Twitter.

Glasgow Film Festival has unveiled the full line-up for its 2022 edition, which runs March 2-13.

The 72nd Berlin International Film Festival has confirmed its various juries, including who will be joining M. Night Shyamalan to award the International Competition prizes.

Wilson Chapman editorThe Miami Film Festival has announced its opening and closing titles for its upcoming 39th edition.The festival, which showcases works from filmmaker’s in the Ibero-American diaspora, will premiere and end with two films listed on the Oscar shortlist for international feature film. “The Good Boss” (El Buen Patrón), a comedy written and directed by Spain’s Fernando León de Aranoa, will open the festival, which will close with “Plaza Catedral,” the sophomore narrative feature of Panamanian director Abner Benaim.“The Good Boss” stars Javier Bardem as Blanco, the owner of a family business up for consideration for a local award for business excellence. Determined to win the award, Blanco begins meddling in the lives of his employees, setting off a chain of events that leads to shocking repercussions.

$25 million Apple paid for “CODA,” the $15 million Netflix paid for “Passing” or documentary-record $15 million Searchlight/Hulu paid for “Summer of Soul.”  There’s still plenty of time for dealmaking, but not much time for new films to grab the spotlight: All of the festival’s movies were programmed to launch in the first five days, with Monday’s lineup – which included “Emily the Criminal,” “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” “Dos Estaciones,” “The Janes” and “Am I OK?” – scheduled as the last of this year’s premieres.

Nathalie Álvarez Mesén’s Clara Sola was the big winner at the 2022 Swedish Film Awards, known as the Guldbagges, scooping Best Film and Best Director. Scroll down for the full list of winners.

As you’ve hopefully heard by now, and read our review, the Sundance film, “Something In The Dirt” is a big hit. From filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who I like to describe as DIY versions of Christopher Nolan—that is to say ambitious, cerebral, complex sci-fi, horror, and genre films, but done on a lo-fi scale—“Something In The Dirt” is a swirl of all their previous heady, high-concept ideas, but with a big dose of humor and a deep look at the world of phenomenon, conspiracy theories and even pareidolia or apophenia (essentially the phenomenon of seeing patterns, consistencies and correlations of things that just aren’t there).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticHe’s a cha cha real smooth talker. He’s 22, tall and handsome with a beard, but not a scruffy hipster beard — more like a post-millennial, post-ironic traditional beard, which sets off features that are finely chiseled in a Middle American corporate way. (When he grins, he looks like Donny Osmond.) He’s just out of college but has no idea what he wants to do.

Even right down to the title this religious comedy debuting appropriately today on a Sunday  in the Premieres section of the Sundance Film Festival can’t seem to decide what it wants to be. Is it Honk For Jesus.? Or is it Save Our Soul.? OR is it as the credits say both? It is a indication of the main problem with this self-styled satire on scandal-ridden Southern Baptist megachurches. Is it supposed to be a comedy? Or is it aiming to be something deeper and more dramatic?  Or is it both?  Even for the best of satirists trying to keep an even tone without watching the whole souffle fall is a slippery slope, one that writer/director Adamma Ebo hasn’t quite solved, but not for lack of trying. As many have discovered, drama is easy, comedy is hard.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNational Geographic Documentary Films has acquired “The Territory,” a timely look at indigenous-led land defense in the Amazon rainforest, following its premiere at the virtual Sundance Film Festival.The company plans to release “The Territory” theatrically later this year before the film heads to its streaming platforms.Alex Pritz directed “The Territory” in his feature film debut. Using verité-style footage captured over three years, the documentary tells the fight of the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau people against rapidly approaching deforestation brought by illegal loggers and nonnative farmers in the Brazilian Amazon.In Variety’s review of “The Territory,” which screened in the world cinema documentary competition, film critic Guy Lodge described the doc as “riveting and despairing in equal measure.” “Dual forces of climate change and cultural genocide overlap to devastating effect in “The Territory,” threatening not just a native community but a wider ecosystem — and cheered on by the actively hostile powers that be,” Lodge wrote.Darren Aronofsky, the Oscar-winning director of “Black Swan,” “The Wrestler” and “Requiem for a Dream,” served as a producer on “The Territory.” The film has been co-produced by the Indigenous Uru-eu-wau-wau community, with activist Txai Suruí on board as an executive producer.