The Sundance Film Festival returned to Park City after a two-year virtual hiatus and that means the in-person awards ceremony returned as well. Well, sorta.
22.01.2023 - 19:05 / deadline.com
The Persian Version, directed and written by Maryam Keshvarz stars Layla Mohammadi, and Niousha Noor as a mother and daughter at odds with one another.
The Persian Version starts with Lelia (Layla Mohammadi) at a costume party in a self-made Burkini. This is where she meets Maximillian (Tom Byrne), a Broadway actor/singer dressed as Hedwig, and they have sex. When she wakes up the next morning, she starts with expeditionary voice-over about her Persian upbringing, and her countries relationship (Iran), with the United States. She details how she grew up in Brooklyn, but her parents are from Iran, and the country forbid everything with American influence, but on her childhood trips back to the country, she smuggled Cyndi Lauper’s audio cassette, (Cut to a young Lelia dancing with her mother and other family members to Girls Just Want To Have fun in Iran).
Back in modern day, Lelia’s dad Ali Reza (Bijan Daneshmand) is getting a heart transplant and she’s not allowed to visit him in the hospital because her mother Shirin (Niousha Noor) says so. She’s told to look after her grandmother as the young woman and her mother are not on good terms. The reason is because Lelia is a lesbian and was thrown out of her mom’s house on Thanksgiving for bringing her wife as her guest. Being the only girl with eight brothers, she’s considered the black sheep. Lelia carries the pressures of tradition and womanhood on her shoulders, but restoring the relationship with her mother is top priority. In order to do that, Lelia must dig into her mother’s past to determine the future of their family.
Characters often break the fourth wall, especially Lelia because that’s the way she recalls her memories. If the audience were only relying on
The Sundance Film Festival returned to Park City after a two-year virtual hiatus and that means the in-person awards ceremony returned as well. Well, sorta.
The Sundance Film Festival has begun unveiling its Jury and Audience Award winners for 2023.
Three. Frustrating. Years. That’s how much time has passed since the Sundance Film Festival last held an in-person edition in Park City, Utah. (Put it this way: The opening night selection was the Taylor Swift documentary, Miss Americana, which chronicled the making of her 2018 album of Reputation. So, like, ancient history.) Blame the pandemic, of course. Because of safety fears, attendees couldn’t be in the room for the premiere of the eventual Oscar Best Picture winner, Coda, or cheer along for Questlove and the first screening of his own future Oscar pic, Summer of Soul. No sightings of a random Real Housewives star on the bustling Main Street. No napping during 8:30 AM screenings. No huffing and puffing walking in the snow in the frigid weather at high altitudes. No nothing.
Winter runway! Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and more stars took over Sundance Film Festival 2023 — and made the event all about their stylish ensembles.
There is so much to appreciate about A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One. The film chronicles the lives of native New Yorkers from 1994-2005, which was a period of transition in NYC. The atmosphere began to change, as stop and frisk was over-utilized, gentrification was displacing the people of Harlem at rapid speed, and the culture of the city gave way to sterilization. Now there are even fewer resources available, the wage gap is beyond repair and it’s unaffordable. Rockwell drew inspiration from this and created a coming-of-age story about finding an identity and chosen family.
Theater Camp is a hilarious film by first time directors Molly Gordon (Booksmart), and Nick Lieberman. This was a collaborative effort between friends as it’s written by Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Nick Lieberman, and Noah Galvin. You can tell this is a labor of love because while it’s kooky, it’s full of vulnerability and earnestness.
The thorny, complicated history between the United States and Iran is infinitely more complex for those of the Persian diaspora living in America. It’s this nuanced tension trickling down to identity — between being too much this and not enough that in either homeland — that writer-director-producer Maryam Keshavarz (“Circumstance”) explores in her third film, “The Persian Version,” a decades and generation-spanning dramedy.
EXCLUSIVE: Nielsen, the audience measurement, data and analytics organization unveiled today the findings of their case studies on Native content at a panel discussion in the Indigenous House at Sundance Film Festival, presented by , the Native woman-led social justice organization dedicated to building visibility and representation for Native peoples.
Written and directed by Nida Manzoor, Polite Society stars Priya Kansara (Bridgerton), Ritu Arya (Umbrella Academy) and Nimra Bucha (Disney+ Ms. Marvel). The Focus Features movie had its world premiere Friday in the Midnight section of the Sundance Film Festival.
Magazine Dreams is a drama and second feature directed by Elijah Bynum, which stars Jonathan Majors, Haley Bennett, Taylor Paige, and Harrison Page
So far nearly all the films I have been seeing for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival are based on true stories, from a teacher in Radical to a gay single father in San Francisco circa 70’s and 80’s to Michael J. Fox as himself, and now yet another iconic character gets his story told on the big screen. World Premiering at Sundance tonight is Cassandro, a wild story of the first openly gay wrestler in the ultra macho sport of Mexico’s Lucha Libre.
Emilia Jones earned a lot of attention as the star of 2021’s big Sundance winner and eventual Best Picture Oscar winner CODA, and the praise should be continuing this year as she not only stars in Cat People, but also Fairyland, which had its world premiere in Park City today.