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Veteran filmmakers show off exciting new works at this year’s Sundance Film Festival

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Manchester by the Sea

Unlike the major international festivals—Cannes, Venice, Toronto, etc.—Sundance is intended to be a forum for discovery. Usually, at least half of the films programmed in its various competitive sections are debut features, and most of its notable breakthroughs have arrived from out of the blue. Nobody had heard of Steven Soderbergh or Quentin Tarantino before Sex, Lies and Videotape and Reservoir Dogs premiered in Park City; even today, few people could name the directors of The Blair Witch Project or Beasts of the Southern Wild. So it was something of a surprise that Sundance 2016 turned out to be dominated by well-established filmmakers, many of whom had experienced their breakthroughs at the same festival many years earlier. There were plenty of newcomers on hand, too, of course, but with one exception, none made the sort of splash that will be remembered as a signature Sundance event.

That one exception is pretty major, though. Arriving smack in the middle of the #OscarsSoWhite brouhaha, Nate Parker's pointedly titled The Birth of a Nation, which recounts Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion, quickly became the fest's biggest buzz title, and was snapped up by Fox Searchlight for a record-setting $17.5 million. Those who saw it (yours truly couldn't manage) reported crowds so enthused that the film received a standing ovation before it even started, presumably just out of gratitude that it exists. Subsequent reviews then ranged from impressed to ecstatic, suggesting that Birth of a Nation will likely be a large part of next year's Oscar conversation. Even this film, though, was something of a known quantity: Parker is a well-known actor (Beyond the Lights, Red Tails) whose celebrity would have lent curiosity value to his directorial debut even if it hadn't turned out to be perfectly aligned with the cultural conversation.

Christine

Speaking of curiosity value: The most fortuitous pairing at Sundance '16 involved two unrelated films about Christine Chubbuck, the Sarasota TV-news journalist who famously committed suicide on a live broadcast in 1974. The first, simply titled Christine, is a fictional portrait of Chubbuck's final weeks, featuring a live-wire performance by Rebecca Hall; screenwriter Craig Shilowich and director Antonio Campos (whose Simon Killer premiered at Sundance four years ago) do their best to imagine the pressures and anxieties that inspired such an unprecedented act, while also acknowledging that some people's private pain will always be impossible to know. Those who find their effort unseemly have an ally in Robert Greene (Actress), whose quasi-documentary Kate Plays Christine follows Kate Lyn Sheil as she prepares to play Chubbuck in a different (fictional) movie. As a portrait of an actor's process, this inadvertent companion piece fascinates; even if one agrees with its argument that a film like Christine (about which Greene was reportedly ignorant when he began the project) shouldn't exist, however, it's possible to wish that Kate Plays Christine didn't voice that argument quite so didactically in its closing moments. Ultimately, each film is enriched by the other, to the point where it's hard not to think of them in tandem.

Certain Women

Other notable directors who returned to Sundance this year include Joshua Marston (Maria Full of Grace, 2004), Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, 2006), and Whit Stillman (Metropolitan, way back in 1990). Marston's Complete Unknown stars Rachel Weisz as a mysterious woman who's spent 15 years creating a series of new identities for herself, and now decides to contact an ex-lover (Michael Shannon) in her latest guise; initially intriguing, and gorgeously directed, it runs out of steam once its premise becomes fully clear. By contrast, Reichardt's Certain Women, a mixed-bag triptych of loosely connected tales adapted from short stories by Maile Meloy, ends incredibly strongly, with a quiet powerhouse of a duet between Kristen Stewart and a little-known (but sensational) Native American actor named Lily Gladstone. And Love & Friendship sees Stillman, whose ultra-literate films have always felt like modern-day glosses on Jane Austen's comedies of manners, finally tackle Austen herself, providing a plum role for Kate Beckinsale (Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco) as the title character in Austen's posthumously published novella Lady Susan.

Love & Friendship

And then there was Kenneth Lonergan, back in Park City 16 long years after he wowed audiences with You Can Count on Me (which, among other things, was the film that put Mark Ruffalo on the map). Lonergan's troubled sophomore effort, Margaret, barely got a theatrical release years after it was shot, but that sad fate is unlikely to befall the excellent Manchester by the Sea, which debuted to almost universal raves (and was quickly acquired by Amazon). Starring Casey Affleck as a belligerent, morose handyman dealing with both the recent death of his brother (played in flashbacks by Kyle Chandler) and the lingering, toxic fallout of a past tragedy, it's an emotional wrecking ball that merits the paradoxical phrase "intimate epic." Reminding us that our best filmmakers are still at the top of their game isn't generally Sundance's brand, but who could possibly complain?

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