All Of Deadline’s Reviews From The Festival So Far

While the Sundance Film Festival mulls a big move for 2027, the 2025 is under way. The event’s 41st edition kicked off January 23 in Utah, and you can look below for all of Deadline’s reviews from the fest so far.

Sundance founder Robert Redford promised that audiences “can expect a 2025 program that showcases varied and vibrant filmmaking globally.” Running through February 2, the lineup includes more than 85 features and six episodic projects set to screen in Park City, Salt Lake City and online.

Below is a compilation of our reviews from the fest, which last year awarded its U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury prize to Alessandra Lacorazza’s In the Summers. Click on the movie’s title to read our full take.

Section: US Dramatic Competition
Director/screenwriter: Evan Twohy
Cast: Himesh Patel, Sarah Goldberg, Steven Yeun, Dave Franco, Matt Berry
Deadline’s Takeaway: If you go with it, it will take you all the way, but for those with a low tolerance for cheerfully madcap bonkersness, its lean 97 minutes may well seem like an eternity.

Section: Sundance (Midnight)
Director & Screenwriter: Bryn Chaney
Cast: Dev Patel, Rosy McEwen and Jade Croot
Deadline’s takeaway: In British writer-director Bryn Chaney’s feature debut, he uses Celtic folklore and the intimacy of sound to unpack a darkness that some might struggle to put in words.

Section: Premieres
Director: Nadia Fall
Screenwriter: Suhayla El-Bushra
Cast: Ebada Hassan, Safiyya Ingar, Yusra Warsama, Cemre Ebuzziya, Aziz Capkurt
Deadline’s takeaway: To those that have already made their mind up about migrants and Muslims, Fall’s film won’t make a jot of difference. But for those inclined to lean in, Brides is an admirable attempt to humanize a difficult subject and go some way towards humanizing the hot-button topic of online radicalization.

Section: Next
Director-screenwriter: Amanda Kramer
Cast: Juliette Lewis, Mamoudou Athie, Melanie Griffith, Samantha Mathis, Robin Tunney, Udo Kier
Deadline’s takeaway: The plot never entirely goes out of the window, but it certainly is not uppermost in the director’s mind. It’s not commercial fare, but festival audiences surely will respond to By Deisgn’s open-ended ideas about consumerism, status and the baggage we accumulate both emotional and physical.

RELATED: In Amanda Kramer’s ‘By Design’ Juliette Lewis Felt Like She Was “Walking The Yellow Brick Road To Oz” – Sundance Studio

Section: Premieres
Director-screenwriter: Mary Bornstein
Cast: Rose Byrne, A$AP Rocky, Conan O’Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Ivy Wolk, Delaney Quinn, Daniel Zolghadri, Delaney Quinn
Deadline’s takeaway: It takes audiences on a tense journey of motherhood that almost never lets up. Although hardly the touchy-feely film you’d go see on Mother’s Day, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You will make you want to call your mom and check in.

Section: Premieres
Director: Sophie Hyde
Screenwriters: Sophie Hyde, Matthew Cormack
Cast: Olivia Colman, John Lithgow, Aud Mason-Hyde, Daniel Henshall, Kate Box, Eamon Farren, Zoe Love Smith, Romana Vrede, Hans Kesting
Deadline’s takeaway: Above all else, Jimpa first and foremost is about family. The film belongs to Lithgow, who gets one of his best outings in recent years as a self-centered man determined to do things his way, no matter the cost, but still with a loving heart.

RELATED: Olivia Colman: ‘Jimpa’ Writer-Director Sophie Hyde Is “More Creative And More Of An Actor’s Director” – Sundance Studio

Section: Dramatic Competition
Director: Cole Webley
Screenwriter: Robert Machoian
Cast: John Magaro, Molly Belle Wright, Wyatt Solis, Talia Balsam
Deadline’s takeaway: In this family road-trip pic set during the 2008 financial crisis, one disturbing sequence after another is played out on the morose face of John Magaro, who is clearly keeping the truth from them — and us — of what this journey is actually all about. 

RELATED: ‘Omaha’s John Magaro Talks “Heartbreaking” Family Drama That “Anyone Who’s A Parent Will Connect Profoundly With” – Sundance Studio

Section: Premieres
Director: Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
Deadline’s takeaway: Sly Lives! has two things going on, the first being a celebration of a genius singer-songwriter-producer who never really made it into the pantheon of greats. The second part of Questlove’s thesis: fame did not sit easily on Sly Stone’s shoulders.

Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Director-screenwriter: James Sweeney
Cast: Dylan O’Brien, James Sweeney, Lauren Graham, Aisling Franciosi, Tasha Smith, Chris Perfetti
Deadline’s takeaway: In James Sweeney‘s sophomore feature, he navigates loneliness, anxiety, depression and other common millennial pastimes through an equally comedic and heartfelt arc … complete with a few “WTF” moments.