Today, the Sundance Film Festival has revealed its line-up for 2022. For their 2022 edition, the Sundance Film Festival received 3,762 feature-length films, 1,652 from the U.S. and 2,110 international. From this impressive number of subscriptions, the festival selected 82 feature-length films from 28 different countries, with 75 of these films being world premieres.
The feature films of the 2022 Sundance Festivals are organized in different programs, dedicated either to competitions or thematic screenings. For example, in the “U.S. Dramatic Competition,” the festival will premier 892, a drama starring John Boyeta and Michael Kenneth Williams about a desperate veteran who gets involved in a bank heist when he’s faced with homelessness. The same competition will also see the premiere of Cha Cha Real Smooth, starring Dakota Johnson and telling the story of a directionless college graduate who embarks on a relationship with a young mom and her teenage daughter. Another world premiere of this program is Dual, a sci-fi thriller starring Karen Gillan and Aaron Paul about a woman who has to fight to decommission her clone after she makes a miraculous recovery of a terminal diagnosis.
The Festival will also have the world premiere of 2nd Chance, a documentary about how bankrupt pizzeria owner Richard Davis invented the modern-day bulletproof vest and shot himself 192 times to prove that it worked. Other documentaries of note include To the End, which follows a group of women of color fight to stop the climate crisis; We Need to Talk About Cosby, which uses Bill Cosby’s history to question if we can separate the art from the artist; and Lucy and Desi, a tribute to Lucille Ball and her immense influence on the creation of TV syndication.
In the fiction side of things, Dakota Johnson also stars in AM I OK?, a story about a friendship that is thrown into chaos when one woman reveals a long-held secret and announces she's moving to London. There’s also Call Jane, the story of a suburban housewife who seeks to give women access to healthy and safe abortions through an underground collective of women, starring Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver. As for Sharp Stick, directed by Lena Dunham and starring Kristine Froseth and Jon Bernthal, the film follows a naive 26-year-old who begins an affair with her older employer. There’s also When You Finish Saving the World, a mother and son drama written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg, based on his own book and starring Finn Wolfhard and Julianne Moore.
Another highlight of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival is the world premiere of the documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom, based on the popular book about the musical rebirth of rock music that spread in New York City after 9/11. The Festival will also feature After Yang, the story of a family trying to save their beloved robotic family member, starring Colin Farrell and directed by Columbus director Kogonada.
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is set to happen from January 20 to January 30, 2022. The Festival takes place in person in Utah and online as well as at satellite screens around the country. The in-person event will require proof of vaccination for all attendees. Ticket packages go on sale on December 17 and single tickets on January 6. Besides revealing the partial line-up for 2022’s edition, the Festival also released its online film guide and schedule. You can check out the 2022 Sundance Film Festival schedule on their official website.