IndieWire’s 24 Must-See Movies and Series at Sundance 2025

Another January brings another Sundance Film Festival, where 87 feature films, six episodic projects, and more shorts will enter the fray to hopefully help shape the movie year that will be. A festival of that scope, with many first-time directors, can be tricky to navigate and parse, but IndieWire is here to help with 24 films we’re most anticipating. And a few of these we are lucky to have seen in advance.

Sundance this year is, of course, still in Park City, even as the nearly 50-year-old festival eyes potentially another location beginning in 2027, with Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, and Boulder as the contenders. Back in December when the lineup was unveiled, Sundance’s director Eugene Hernandez and lead programmer Kim Yutani gave us a peek at sales titles and possible breakout features to look out for. It’s ever helpful to have a guide to some of the must-see titles heading into snowy, crowded Park City in January.

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Here, we single out a sampling of narrative features (Ira Sachs returns to Sundance), documentaries (so does Questlove), and episodic titles (hello, Cooper Raiff’s “Hal & Harper”) to watch for, most of which are still on the hook for distribution. And those distributors headed to Utah searching for buys have an eclectic mix on their hands and much to sort through. A24, for one, has a handful of movies already in its pockets heading into the fest (“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You,” “Opus”), but will there be room for one more by the time the festival reveals its winners?

Sundance boasts a slate of starry juries this year, including Celine Song, Daniel Kaluuya, Elijah Wood, and Reinaldo Marcus Green, who will look at narrative and nonfiction films to determine what’s the best from a packed crop. The festival runs from January 23 through February 2, with competition titles going online starting in the festival’s second week.

David Ehrlich, Kate Erbland, Chris O’Falt, Anne Thompson, and Brian Welk contributed to this story.

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