10 Sundance Festival Films You Should Know About

The 11-day festival will showcase 119 feature films and documentaries that range from a drama based on Oscar Grant's last 24-hours to a short film that follows real life high-rise window washers in Chicago.

By Jorge Rivas Jan 17, 2013

The Sundance Film Festival opens today in Park City, Utah. The 11-day festival will showcase 119 feature films and documentaries that range from a drama based on Oscar Grant’s last 24-hours to a short film that follows real life high-rise window washers in Chicago.

In conjunction with the start of the festival today, the Screening Room YouTube channel will showcase 12 short films from the 2013 Sundance Short Film program.

There are also a number of Q&A sessions and other panel discussions with directors that will be live-streamed on the Sundance website. Visit Sundance.org/live to see the week’s schedule along with an archive of past discussion.

In the meantime take a look at the 10-films below that you’ll undoubtedly hear about throughout the year.

(Film descriptions provided by Sundance.org)


"Linsanity" / (Director: Evan Leong) 

Jeremy Lin came from a humble background to make an unbelievable run in the NBA. State high school champion, all-Ivy League at Harvard, undrafted by the NBA and unwanted there: his story started long before he landed on Broadway.


"FRUITVALE" / (Director: Ryan Coogler) 

Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Bay Area resident who loved his friends, was generous to strangers, and had a hard time telling the truth to the mother of his beautiful daughter. He was scared and courageous and charming and raw, and as human as the community he was part of. That community paid attention to him, shouted on his behalf, and filmed him with their cell phones when BART officers, who were strong, intimidated, and acting in the way they thought they were supposed to behave around people like Oscar, shot him in cold blood at the Fruitvale subway stop on New Year’s Day in 2009.

Director Ryan Coogler makes an extraordinary directorial debut with this soulful account of the real-life event that horrified the nation. Featuring radiant performances by Melonie Diaz and Michael B. Jordan as Grant, a young man whose eyes were an open window into his soul, Fruitvale offers a barometer reading on the state of humanity in American society today.

"PARAISO" / (Director: Nadav Kurtz) 

Three immigrant window cleaners risk their lives every day rappelling down some of Chicago’s tallest sky-scrapers. Paraíso reveals the danger of their job and what they see on the way down.