With a Canadian feature and a coproduction selected for this year’s Sundance Film Festival, plus a strong Canadian presence at the Slamdance fest, Canada’s talent is sure to take Park City, Utah by storm. Grab your mittens and your agenda, and get ready to discover our head-turning projects at both exciting events.
Sundance
Offering in-person and online options, the fest’s 40th edition runs from January 18 to 28, 2024, Canadian highlights include:
Midnight
- Chris Nash’s In A Violent Nature : The debut feature from this Ontario-based filmmaker is a horror film from the masked killer’s point of view, filmed in Sault Ste.Marie. (Alongside Shannon Hanmer, TIFF Midnight Madness programmer Peter Kuplowsky is one of the film’s producers.)
- Haiti’s Bruno Mourral’s Kidnapping Inc. : This Haiti-France-Canada coproduction includes a Canadian producer, Peripheria Films. This dark comedy tells the story of a pair of kidnappers who inadvertently get in the middle of a political scandal and was filmed in Haiti.
Did you know? Canadian playwright and filmmaker Celine Songwill be honoured with The Vanguard Award for Fiction during the festival’s opening night gala. (Her cinematic debut, Past Lives, premiered at last year’s Sundance.)
Slamdance
Moving on to Slamdance, whose 30th edition takes place both in-person and online from January 19 to 25, 2024, Canadian projects include two world premieres, two selections in the fest’s Unstoppable program (for filmmakers with disabilities, both visible and non-visible), eight short films, and one TV series.
Documentary Features
- Stephan Peterson and Sonya Ballantyne’s The Death Tour : Making its world premiere, this documentary feature follows wrestlers on their annual winter “death tour” through Northern Manitoba’s remote Indigenous communities.
Unstoppable Features
- Loveleen Kaur’s Leilani’s Fortune : Get up close and personal with the queer, Ethiopian-Eritrean musical artist, Witch Prophet, on the cusp of commercial success.
- Taylor Olson’s Look at Me : Making its world premiere and filmed in Halifax, this fictional autobiography (based on the filmmaker’s one-man play) is about an actor suffering from an eating disorder and trying to learn to love himself.
P.S. Check out this official Sundance interview with Alexandra Lazarowich, a Cree filmmaker from Northern Alberta who is an advisor for (and alumni of) the SUNDANCE Native Lab Fellowship.
