Sundance Film Festival January 19-29, 2023

[Chris Knipp]

Sundance 2023: award winners


THE PERSIAN VERSIAN

BEYOND UTOPIA (Madeleine Gavin)
US Audience Award (Documentary), this film about five members of a family escaping from North Korea and traveling through numerous countries has an 85% on Metacritic. It uses hidden camera video, archival footage, and interviews to tell the story. Any filming in North Korea that's not propaganda is difficult and dangerous to do. THE PLAYLIST calls this a "staggering achievement" that required "unfathomable guts and skill. Ben Pearson in his review for FILM called this "intense, thrilling, heartbreaking, and vital." SCREEN DAILY called it "a first-class example of bravery and reportage melding into a filmed testament."

SCRAPPER (Charlotte Regan)
World Cinema Grand Jury Prize (Dramatic). Metascore 67. Newcomer Lola Campbell plays a 12-year-old girl who hangs on at her London flat after her mother dies with a fake uncle and making money stealing things till her estranged father (played by Harris Dickinson) shows up with dubious intent. Critics found the script undernourished - or overly whimsical. In his review for DEADLINE Damon Wise describes the movie thus: "It deals with issues such as social care, single parenting, truancy, and grief, but director Charlotte Regan handles these matters with a candy-colored levity that can quite often be charming, in a whimsical, Wes Anderson way, but sometimes just plain baffling (there’s a reason why you don’t see talking spiders in a Ken Loach movie)."

GOING TO MARS: THE NIKKI GIOVANNI PROJECT (Joe Brewster, Michelle Stephenson)
US Grand Jury Prize (Documentary). Metascore 74. Uses archival footage, present-day interviews and vérité material to carry out an imaginative tour of the distinguished 79-year-old African American poet Nikki Giovanni. Critics found the portrait engaging and appreciated its avoidance of the conventional bio-doc template.

THE PERSIAN VERSIAN (Maryam Keshavarz)
U.S. Audience Award (Dramatic) This is a comedy drama about Iranians in the US and has a Metascore of 60. It won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It's a decade- and country-spanning look at the relationship between the queer, pregnant Leila (Layla Mohammadi) and her mother Shireen (Niousha Noor), who emigrated from Iran and became a successful realtor in America. In her VARIETY review Lisa Kennedy appreciated how the film "braids comedy and tragedy, vibrant aplomb and thoughtful soberness." Leslie Felperin in THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER found its "infectious, fizzy energy [is] hard to resist." Flashbacks to Iran fill in the mother's past life.

See Metacritic's article: "2023 Sundance Film Festival: Best and Worst Films" for more awards, ratings, and links to reviews.