Sundance Film Festival 2026

Sundance Film Festival 2026

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival was interesting stacked on interesting. It marked the end to the first chapter of a decades-long American movieworld phenomenon, and it did so in the midst of a tumultuous period in American history.

You might expect the energy of such an event to be, well, negative. Tense or manic as we see in other media spaces like the news. This was not the case. For at least for the first few days of the festival (when Stixpicks attended), what one felt in the air was a unique blend of serenity, gratefulness, and excitement.

There was a shared recognition that, in this day and age, it is special for people to take more than 15 seconds to think critically; to leave their homes to celebrate and be challenged and connect. And of course, the past motivated these thoughts. How lucky we were to experience what Sundance has been known for for years. A beginning to the global movie year; a showcase for independent thinkers; a snowy sparkle of energy and expense. Still here, not dead yet.

Of course in the back of the mind, questions about the unknown future simmered. How would our country fare? Would this festival, would the Sundance Film Institute, be different in a bad way in 2027? In January the festival will be held outside of Utah and without its founder Robert Redford for the very first time. What weight. What promise.

As far as the festival goes, the Sundance Film Institute has been sharing several hints about a more inclusive future. (For example, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will now give the winners of the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize, whether Documentary or Dramatic, qualification for Oscar consideration. And discounted and on-campus screenings for University of Colorado Bolder students will be available.) That said, nobody knows how the thing will play out until January 21–31, 2027.

Of course the work of a citizen never ceases. And as far as Sundance movies, what we can consider how to feel about things, including how the organization decided to end its first chapter. So as always, let’s talk movies.

Stixpicks’ Views

Given this moment in movie and U.S. history, Stixpicks focused the majority of its viewing on documentaries. How would the festival approach this moment? Engage? Parrot? Fold/extend/challenge?

Our sample size of views was small, but the vast majority of what we did watch was stunning. These feature-length movies were original, topical, and inspiring.

Some Documentaries

Joybubbles - Stixpicks’ favorite of the festival. Directed by Rachael J. Morrison, a documentary filmmaker and archival producer who “loves digging in archives and conducting deep research to uncover hidden gems.” One was certainly uncovered here, and thereby, another one formed.

The synopsis is that a boy discovers he can manipulate the 1950s telephone system simply by whistling. This creativity and yearning for connection helped him (and others) in a culture then-ill-equipped to value folks like himself.

Stixpicks’ review is here.

It is a dazzling thing, to see how unexpected and interesting the life of a nobody can be. The movie serves as a reminder that looking to connect in a non-violent way—even if in a way considered transgressive to some people—can be salutary for many. Even when the world contains horror; even when horror has its way with us, for a time.

Ghost in the Machine - This one is an overwhelming flood of information about artificial intelligence, its history and future, culled from over 100 hours of conversation with 35 thinkers. Directed, edited, and produced by Valerie Veatch.

Stixpicks’ review is here.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Joybubbles, this movie is about all of humanity (and the technological tsunami that currently confronts it). It is a reminder of, as the director puts it, “what gets erased when we pretend [that] technology is apolitical.” This one serves to inform so we can make informed decisions, though it also reminds us that we as a collective have the power—and the responsibility—to shape the future. We can think; we should think, each day.

Queen of Chess - This is one is less heavy than Joybubbles and especially Ghost in the Machine. It is a refreshingly uplifting, quite unboring movie, not about chess, but about how mindset can change your life. We hear this from the Queen herself, a former world-champion chess player.

Stixpicks’ review is here.

This one is about an individual, but less about noting their abilities and more about focusing on their mindset. It is a reminder that, in the face of all the things decided for us, we can decide to act with determination—daring to believe that they we are enough, even as we work hard to be more. Because we know we can be, regardless of what others might say.

Everybody to Kenmure Street - This is a unique one. With re-enactments and footage from dozens of people’s smartphones who lived the experience, we relive how a U.K. government office dawn raid triggered a spontaneous, living civil resistance on a street in Glasgow, Scotland. It is an example of individuals in any community can acknowledge and then acted peacefully against an unfair government interaction like baseless deportation acts.

Some Fiction

Carousel - With mind-blowingly good direction/writing from Rachel Lambert and acting from Jenny Slate, Chris Pine, and Abby Ryder Fortson, this one acknowledges the carousel that life feels like. Over and over we try, seemingly to get nowhere. Why are we so drawn to this ride? Stixpicks’ review is here.

Filipiñiana - Wit  direction/writing from Rafael Manuel that is somehow both spartan and pregnant, this slow burn follows two young women on a golf course in Manila. It is a melting. A social commentary both personal and cultural. Stixpicks’ review is here.

The Heading

All of this can sound trite or hollow. There is perhaps some truth to that, though more than anything, that would be a cynical interpretation.

Life is not so simple. We always have a choice to frame our perspectives. And from what Stixpicks has seen, the Sundance Film Festival programmers in 2026 focused on the ways in which we can learn and connect and grow in the face of adversity. This is a framing that fits our times.

With any luck, the story will continue with a new chapter themed similarly in 2027.

Filipiñiana

Filipiñiana is a slow, slow burn. But burn it does.

It follows two young women over a day at a golf course. They seem to be opposites (one a guest, one staff) and so we wonder why we’re following just these two, as opposed to anyone else there that day.

Will their stories meet? Who knows. For now, what we’ll do is observe. One of them plays golf, seemingly courted by her uncle to come back to the Philippines and change the country for the better. The other asks questions of the more seasoned staff as she tries to get her bearings. It’s little dialogue and even less action. Mostly, we have nothing to do but consider their faces as they consider the things in front of them.

Through this slow motion, we learn about the culture of this place. The club; the country. And after a while, it begins to feel like that’s precisely what this movie is all about.

There are moments of staff choreography (like sweeping in rhythm, or dancing), equally funny and sad, that break up the monotony and add to what we must consider.

All of it can feel like both too much and too little. It is not an easy watch. But at some point when we feel stuck like our Filipiñianas, at the mercy of a sun that never seems to stop baking, in a place that never seems to change, there is an uncomfortable, powerful clarity. This is impressive moviemaking.

The Oldest Person in the World

Who wouldn’t want to know the secret to becoming the oldest person in the world? A seemingly must-watch documentary.

And yet, even after a decade of following the oldest folks on the planet, The Oldest Person in the World does not enlighten. It feels instead like a drawn-out version of those 60-second news clips that announce the world’s newest oldest person; we hear the news, someone asks a couple of unanswerable questions, we hear unsatisfying answers, we move on.

A funny thing is that the director/narrator recognizes this emptiness relatively early in the movie, and so, tries to be thoughtful about what to do next. Of course, they start thinking about their own mortality.

This is a natural reaction, and it’s hard not to sympathize when the moviemaker shares some of his feelings and life story. But after a while, a question floats to the surface: Is this all there is?

The answer is, unfortunately, yes. Although the journey begins with a good-natured question about how to live a fruitful life, it is above all else a forced montage of musings that are neither original nor poignant.

I hope creating this has helped its makers cherish life a bit more, but the true mystery and wonder and fullness of life would be found better by living and contemplating it ourselves.

Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine may be the most informationally dense documentary we ever see. For 110 furious minutes—without a single slowdown—it pelts us with idea after idea, trying to get us up to speed about the history and future of AI and machine learning. It is sweeping, unsettlingly informative, and completely overstimulating.

So, let’s keep it simple. What actually happens is that the director weaves together video-recorded statements from observant folks like data scientists, philosophers, astrophysicists, linguists, authors, and AI researchers. (We know when they’re talking because “Not AI” is stamped on the screen, and we know when we’re watching soup when “AI” is the stamp.)

The ideas that these people share with us are, well, shocking, and deeply unsettling if true. They include:

(i) AI, AGI, and ASI are marketing gimmicks. Machine learning is just statistics that keeps track of precisely the correlations that humans tell it to. Correlations—not causations—and at our direction, not on the machine’s own. A completely stoppable runaway train. This has meaningful implications for the sorts of values that its creators are consciously (or subconsciously) directing it with, and we should ask the creators to explain these values.

(ii) This statistics stuff was actually created by a racist person, for the purposes of eugenics (aka killing certain people that other people deem are unworthy of living). So when a tech evangelist talks about efficiency and betterment, what they are actually doing is maintaining an unspoken hierarchy of values, perpetuating the idea that there are certain human traits that of course should be minimized and eliminated. Because after all, we’re just robots, and our calling is to be the most efficient, most happy, most smart, most white, most male, all the time, right?

(iii) The amount of resources that it takes to maintain this statistical software is literally earth-shattering. The stuff devours water where the residents already don’t have enough to drink. It eats the hope of struggling people in places like Kenya in exchange for owning—and monetizing for its own purposes—every little bit of data about them.

(iv) There will never be a singularity. No god-like intelligence. Rather, this is all an arms race. Whoever throws the most money and data at it the fastest will have the most powerful statistical tool, a tool that will be very good at making terribly important decisions much faster than the time it would take for a careful person to carefully consider the ramifications of the decision. Military stuff.

Really, it boils down to two questions. (1) Are you ready for this? And more importantly, (2) if you’re not, are you ready to change its trajectory (which you totally can) to a more healthy one? Ready to use your own brain whenever you can, instead of one that a self-interested, untherapized stranger tells you is better for you?

Queen of Chess

The great thing about the documentary Queen of Chess is that it doesn’t even try to make chess fun. Instead, it’s a light and uplifting reminder that mindset can change our lives.

Who says? Our queen, Judit Polgar. Since the age of five she had been forced to train for hours a day to do one thing and one thing only: Become a chess genius champion.

If that sounds terrible, you’ll have no time to think about it; the movie starts fast and loud, throwing information at us—now she’s five now she’s 12 now she’s great now she’s a 15-year-old champion of all women globally who is about to challenge the world #1 of then and all other times before then—a grown man—which has never been done before because how could it because women are not smart enough and wow isn’t this exciting what will happen next? Wow wow right?!

. . . Phew! Too much. Perhaps overcompensating on the assumption that people find chess boring? Luckily after that brief time the movie slows down and really gets good.

Then, we look into Judit’s dad’s eyes as he explains why he made his daughter an experiment. We hear Judit herself speak in detail about games and moves and feelings from years ago as though they are happening right now on a chessboard right in front of us. This is movie gold, folks. We are learning from the great and the strange the how and the why.

It’s also true that there is nothing great or strange about this. We’re watching the story of a normal person, an underdog. Sure we’re following tournaments and life events, but really, we’re following emotions and mindsets.

So what’s the endgame? As with all things, it’s whatever you want it to be. Judit, though, does seem to have thoughts about her life, experiment or not: We can learn from our moves, good and bad; we can react with fear, or respond with determination; we can care what others might think, or we can focus on our own game, daring to believe that we are good enough to do what we love.

Long live the queen (for as long as she wants)!

Joybubbles

Joybubbles may sound silly, but it’s a staggeringly affecting documentary. Wow.

Listen to Joe’s recordings and you’ll see—not like him, of course, because he was born blind ;)—but you’ll begin to understand who he is and why there’s a movie about him.

It turns out that in the past, the world was not so accepting of people like him. That’s rich, because he wanted to help people instead of being helped all the time; to connect with people without them bullying or feeling sorry for him.

And then, as happens in life, something simple but eventually meaningful happens: He encounters a landline phone. What follows is unbelievable, and Joe and his friends/associates tell us all about it. Think whistling, the world’s most powerful company, crime, secret emotion, and more.

That’s it, and that’s plenty. Now some words for our star.

Joe, thank you for sharing your wise technologist explorer linguist poet entertainer self with the world. I hope you felt at least some of the love that others felt from you. You’re a smart guy and already know this, but as a reminder, only the most mature people decide to keep childlike wonder alive while also trying to heal themselves and help others as they make their way through this world. You are a bastion, a beacon, a joybubble; now and forever.

Carousel

Life! So much hard work, over and over again. And where does it get us?

Carousel feels this. In the way it pieces together moments from the lives of two homegrown locals, it brilliantly illuminates where that feeling can come from—and what we can do about it.

From the very beginning we can feel the movie’s gentle charm. The camera sits still, reminding us that in this anytown—where exhaustion and fear and work and debt and heartbreak live—there are other things, too. Potted plants and bees and love can flourish, a gorgeous music that, if you haven’t noticed, we gloss over when dazed by stress.

So what happens? Noah, who is juggling his failing medical practice, the aftermath of a divorce, and raising his smart but sad teenage daughter, goes through the motions. But he stops for just a moment when encountering Rebecca, a gifted politico who is tired of work in D.C. yet tired of coming home too. We wonder why. Then the movie does its thing.

This may sound boring or like it’s been done before, but not even for one second does this movie feel tired. Masterful, glorious writing/directing has even leftovers-for-dinner-again and people’s location in a room surprise our brains. Sure, we’re zoomed in on a hand and not a face, or we’re thinking about napkins once more, but actually, personalities and emotional states are being framed for us. Amazing.

Aside from this writer/director being a revelation, the production design, location scouting, editing, and other technicals are quiet perfection, allowing the outstanding performances from our three leads to throb through the screen into our chests.

Folks, what the moviemakers did here was jolt the carousel for a moment, showing us the beauty that truly exists on it, even as it spins in the same place, over and over and over again.

Weapons

Weapons is masterfully suspenseful and unsettling. Wow.

To give away even basic plot points risks detracting from the watch, but at its simplest, the movie follows a teacher and some of her students after something has gone terrifyingly wrong with their class.

If this is too vague, don’t worry, a voiceover will tell us the background when the movie begins. Not only is it scary to listen, powerless, in this way, but because we learn the problem at the outset, the rest of the movie is pure suspense.

The story unfolds across chapters, each following a different person of interest. One time the teacher, one time a parent. Who else might be implicated? Each of these stories is intriguing and scary in itself, but even better, they merge.

And the movie’s technicals enhance it all. The camera, lighting, and direction somehow create for us, again and again, that chilling, shapeshifting thing that is our vision at night. Often, the camera smoothly floats us through our new nightmare—not to mention the movie’s hauntingly recognizable dream sequences. The moviemakers have created an aesthetic around nighttime (and running) that we won’t soon forget.

The sound is striking too. The designers understand that silence or mutedness can be much more terrifying than a creak or a boom. They’re replicating the moment of quiet before an attack, the calm that is not calm, but that is your whole nervous system slowing the world down for you, on alert for the split second opportunity that could save your life.

Are you ready?

Love Hurts

Love Hurts is offensively bad. It feels as though it was written by a first-generation AI large language model.

The movie follows Clark, a real estate agent who appears to be a real sweetheart. Why does he bake you a cookie and show you a house? Because he genuinely wants you, too, to have something you are proud of. He gives meaning to his job, and in return, gets meaning back from it.

Welcome to the barage of platitudes that is this movie, folks. Really, every single character’s dialogue in this one is unrealistic. For example, in the first ten minutes, Clark’s assistant confesses to being suicidal. That’s right—an unnecessary side character, on a quick work call with her boss, nonchalantly mentions that her life might not be worth living. And the writing glides over this bombshell just as lightly as it had dropped it, by having Clark talk it away in three lines. What?!

If you are like me and like to be patient with movies, your patience will not be rewarded. It turns out that sweet little Clark is a former gangster (unbelievable), brother of the gang boss (unbelievable), in love with a much younger woman (why? we never learn), and that she loves him back (unbelievable).

And so, the movie shows Clark fighting bad guy after bad guy, to keep away his gangster brother away from his love. The fight scenes are just as unrealistic as the rest of it; they are drawn out and in essence violence porn. The AI must’ve enjoyed coming up with gross ways for humans to be hurt.

Still here? At least one of the scenes is a 2-D green screen. Incongruous pop music blasts our ears for every fight scene, trying desperately to tell our brains that what we’re seeing is cool. It’s not.

Overall, this production is a disappointment for the acting talent, fight choreographers, production designers, and many other people working on it who (I assume) must’ve meant well.

Opus

Opus is a truly creepy movie.

It follows Ariel, a young and perhaps boring journalist, as she somehow gets the scoop of her life: She’s been invited to listen to the new album of the most famous pop-music artist of the 1990s—a man who has been a recluse for years.

Amazing, she’s thinking. This guy is famous as all heck, and so what I write will finally get me some recognition!

Sure. But first, Ariel needs to contend with the jam-packed schedule. And each innocuously-named event turns out stranger than the next.

The writing is strong here, moving us from observation to double-take to concern to fear to terror. It captures well that sort of eccentric, borderline charm that certain people can have; how they can tell stories/make music that surprises us and yet resonates with something deep inside.

Surprisingly—and wonderfully—the music in this one lives up to the hype it has generated in its fictional world. So catchy and fun. Other technicals, too, like the location scouting and production design and costuming, place us smack into this scenario right along with Ariel.

The best part of this movie is the writing, though. This is creepy because every word, every pause, every motivation is believable. So well done.

Mickey 17

Mickey 17 is an epic and charming sci-fi masterpiece.

It’s about Mickey Barnes, who in an attempt to escape an unfortunate situation on Earth, encounters an unfortunate situation in space.

You’d think that that would be fine, because, in a way, Mickey can’t die. His thoughts and memories get printed into a new body when the old one craps out.

Sound interesting? Mickey will tell you all about it; for most of the first half of the movie he narrates what’s going on. And as we listen, we watch how this invincible person has become, well, completely expendable. A lab rat for the so-called benefit of humankind.

These scenes are mildly graphic, but mostly they are thought-provoking, and often they are funny. There is something identifiable about this reject on a ship of societal rejects; the way he carries himself, a hunched, soft-spoken good-at-nothing. We can’t help but root for Mickey (and by extension, all those like him who are down on their luck, used, mistreated?) to succeed.

And what is success here? It becomes hard to tell when the ship, run by a childish leader, encounters a new planet.

Mickey’s actor puts on a ranging, powerhouse performance, and (his companion) Nasha’s, a deeply satisfying one. Kudos to the casting director for picking an exceptional cast here.

Watch this one for drama drama drama. Fiction that is in several senses all too real.

Wolf Man

Wolf Man is good and spooky.

We follow Blake as he takes his family to visit his childhood home, an isolated place.

It’s gorgeous there. During the day, vibrant greens ground us as a sort of steady air blankets us, and we just feel like everything is going to be OK. But at night, as the locals and natives know, there are creatures, sicknesses to be careful of. Well, get ready for a long night.

This is a high-quality production all around. The writing and pacing build steadily and believably, and the father’s actor does a great job of portraying his struggles to do right by his family.

The sound and visuals are phenomenal, too; used just enough and used creatively to open our minds. Good and spooky indeed.

Death of a Unicorn

Death of a Unicorn has a premise made to catch our attention. Too bad the movie can’t hold it.

The idea is that a father and daughter accidentally kill a unicorn. They do this on the way to a secluded estate, at which the father will have a sort of job interview with a wealthy family that owns a pharmaceutical company.

If you can believe it, that’s about as believable as the movie gets. The characters are one-dimensional (evil tycoon and spoiled son; emo daughter of over-worked father, etc.). Any time there is about to be a moment of genuine communication, something interrupts; this happens far too much to be realistic. And with landscape visuals that are computer-generated in a bad way, we’re taken out of this story a lot.

The comedic acting does range from good to great, though; kudos to the spoiled son, the calmly conniving mother, the bald butler. And the direction can be smart and subtle (for example, when the camera focuses on the mother walking over a printout of the daughter’s, it’s letting us know how the mom thinks, even if it seems like she was approaching sweetly). But we’re also given too many quick cuts of nothing actions to transition between scenes. It feels like the director knows the writing isn’t great, and is trying desperately to keep our attention.

To reveal any other plot points will spoil the movie, but if you use your imagination, you can make a pretty good guess about where this story will go.

Last Days

Last Days might be about a religious missionary, but it has all the intensity of an international thriller.

The based-on-a-true story follows John as he tries to understand why God made him. It turns out that this is not an easy question for him to answer, and so, the moviemakers whisk us around the planet, trying to keep us up with John’s flurried brain, and revealing surprises about his family, his religion, and the cultures that he encounters.

It really gets interesting when John decides that the best way for his talents to be used is to convert an indigenous tribe to Christianity—a tribe that has, to date, killed every single outsider that it has encountered.

Whatever you think of John’s choice, he is portrayed brilliantly by his actor. It’s hard not to be stung by the flames of brazen naiveté and soul-torturing confusion that radiate off of him; hard not to feel for that entreating smile.

The bad? There’s plenty. The movie spends a bit too much time with John, and when we see his family, the scenes are mostly depthless. Worst of all, the writing is full of cheap one-liners.

Each of those things takes us out of the experience, but thankfully, we are always drawn back in. The thriller-style structure of the thing, John’s acting, and the best part—that the movie asks us to consider pernicious ideas—make up for all the bad.

Have you ever really thought about how love, funneled through an organization, can destroy entire cultures? Do you realize what immigrants must lose, over and over again, to survive in a new reality; and how their kids might feel lost as a consequence?

28 Years Later

28 Years Later follows a young person as they go out into a zombified world for the first time. The movie can be thrilling and scary and hardcore, though what makes it truly engaging is that it has just as much deep drama as that other stuff.

There are rules on the home island—a seemingly safe, communistic place which has survived for 28 years since the zombie virus first infected humans on the mainland. And so Spike, as a right of passage, must now go to that mainland and understand reality. Mom is sick and stays home, but experienced Dad joins.

It’s hard for our heart not to race as we take those first steps . . . or for any of the many firsts we’ll experience. Brilliant moviemaking amplifies this. Is that the wind, or is some thing exhaling? Nighttime cut scenes blast our senses like red seizure dreams, while during the day we march to a different sound—though, maybe, it’s a similar mania.

This one is just fun. It is no marathon of gore, but a compelling blend of past and present, good and bad, seriousness and camp.

Where the Wind Comes From

Where the Wind Comes From has veins of sadness reaching from its head to its toes. You’d think those might weigh it down, but really, they help the movie become the tender, mature thing that it is.

It follows Alyssa and her friend Mehdi, two young adults in economically-(and for them, socially-)depressed Tunisia, each of whom is upset for different reasons. As time passes (i) we learn why and (ii) Alyssa discovers an opportunity for the two to maybe change their lives and rise above this place.

Queue the road trip! The (platonic) chemistry between our leads works its magic, uplifting us often, and reminding us of the exciting, desperate hope that can categorize youth. The writing injects Alyssa—rough around the edges in red, more tricksy and impatient and perhaps ready to give up—and Mehdi—more by the book, cautious in blue—into situations that illustrate problems big and small, but it’s never an overdose.

Very few of the lines do feel forced, as do a couple of pans of the countryside, but most of the movie watches real. You begin to root for these two, for the world to not be so harsh. For the first time in a long time you listen intently to stories that a loved-one tells you about where the wind comes from, for example, the sort of bedtime story that you need to hear in that moment to relax, because sometimes, the bad dream is something that you’re already awake in.

What’s the point? Photo Credit: Frida Marzouk

Bubble & Squeak

Bubble & Squeak is absurd and a total head-scratcher. We might take something from it.

You’ll know within the first five minutes whether this is a movie you’ll want to finish. This first scene has Declan and Delores, on their honeymoon, being interrogated . . . in a country that has outlawed cabbages, because its society has, for several reasons, deemed cabbages an affront to all that is good.

If you’re still with me, there’s more: Most of the dialogue is brief, even hollow-feeling. People talk more about cabbages or the worst desserts ever or job titles than they do about real life problems—for example, the predicament in which they find themselves.

And so we follow Delores and Declan (played brilliantly) as they run from the police (played absurdly) through the forest, with line after line of silly nothingness echoing through our brains. Mix that together with locals and strange events, and we have an intriguing story.

If you enjoyed the first five minutes then you’ll appreciate the movie as a light frolick—until the end, when the snowball has that been growing out of sight is finally revealed. If until then you had laughed at all at the silliness, then now, you just might cry at the beautiful, bittersweet depth.

Maybe Bubble & Squeak is a movie I don’t understand. But maybe, maybe it’s a good-natured wink, a refreshing reminder that although life is absurd, if we stop fighting it, we might have time to hear ourselves, learn something, and create something good on our own terms. Pretty great takeaway from something that watches easy.

DJ Ahmet

DJ Ahmet is the one where a sheep walks into a dance party. What a brilliant, brilliant movie.

It follows Ahmet, a good-natured teen who’s just trying to bring some joy to his currently dull life. This can be hard in his North Macedonian village—a tuft of sheep fuzz laid on one of countless hills, hills so vast that they serve as constant reminders: without each other, we cannot survive.

It’s actually a joyous movie, though there’s plenty that dampens the mood. Ahmet’s mother has passed, leaving a vacuum that his father’s coldness and his younger brother’s traumatized silence cannot fill. Each day Ahmet faces reality, milking the sheep and missing school to support the family.

And yet . . . he finds moments to listen to some bangers—true dance music gold. He’s sure to nurture his younger brother and interact, somehow, with that one girl who also seems to value this music/dance stuff.

At the risk of drowning in superlatives here, every aspect of the moviemaking seems perfect. The writing wisely balances lingering emotion with pops of pure joy or silliness. Editing smoother than silk never gets in the way of the story and the expertly-chosen cast acting expertly. The direction is oh-so subtle and smart, letting the whipping wind do all the talking one time, tantalizing us with the random lighting from fireworks another. And the sound, the music? Driving; wonderful; fun!

DJ Ahmet is the way. Have heart, spend time with your people, and make time to let it all go with some music once in a while.

Big hills big sky small people.

Architecton

This is difficult to say, but Architecton is offensively long and boring. What kind of documentary hides its topic from its audience for most of its (98) minutes?

Well, I won’t hide things from you: For most of the movie you’ll watch rocks. No narration or screen-text will help you understand what you’re looking at, but hey, at least orchestral music will blast your eardrums.

Every so often you’ll hope to be saved by certain in-between scenes, during which an architect supervises the construction of a circle of—you guessed it, rocks—on his lawn. I wish I could tell you why he’s doing that.

Only in the last ten minutes or so do the moviemakers disclose the idea: Modern architecture, what with all its concrete, is short-term and harmful to humans and the planet, and ancient building techniques are not. Got it.

Nothing makes up for the fact that the movie hides this from us. Sure, a few of the scenes are truly gorgeous—I mean, have you ever seen rocks boil like water or coordinate like ants?—but they are not nearly frequent or brief or enlightening enough for this movie to treat us this way.

Maybe, just maybe, the moviemakers want us to feel the enormity of the scale at which we blast mountains to crumble their parts to pour concrete to raise buildings to later knock down buildings? But even if that’s right, we could’ve learned it in a more engaging and efficient way.

Dahomey

Forget the treasure hunt. Dahomey documents a treasure return, and wow does it satisfy the soul.

The backstory is that France is finally returning important cultural artifacts to the land from which France had stolen them during its colonial occupation (now considered Benin).

The main story is that people care about it. The return and the crime. And so the moviemakers very intelligently just set the camera down and let us watch as the people of Benin speak for themselves, one by one.

In differing languages and with differing ideas, the citizens take turns with the mic. This is thoughtful, emotional stuff.

It isn’t how all the people feel, of course—the people and the kingdoms from which these artifacts were stolen are long dead. But the moviemakers create space for them, too, by imagining how they might feel . . . by having an artifact awaken and speak to us . . .

This is a mildly outrageous act of imagination, to pretend that we can imagine how someone from the past feels about their culture being lost. But it stimulates our own imagination, and so, there’s something to it. The voiceover resonating deeply through our chests helps.

Dahomey explores legacy by watching today. For both the colonizers and the colonized, it is something special.