Sundance film festival kicks off

Year’s upcoming indie films were presented

The US film industry’s first major gathering since wildfires devastated Los Angeles began on Thursday at Sundance, where Olivia Colman and John Lithgow kicked off the indie movie festival under sombre circumstances.

Hollywood’s annual pilgrimage to the Rocky Mountains to debut the coming year’s top indie films started barely two weeks after blazes killed more than two dozen people and brought the US entertainment capital to a halt.

Festival chiefs spoke at length with filmmakers “who lost homes or were displaced” by the fires before deciding to press ahead, Sundance director Eugene Hernandez told AFP.

Among those were the team behind Didn’t Die, an indie zombie movie about survivors podcasting to an ever-dwindling human population, which was partly shot in the filmmakers’s now-destroyed Altadena homes.

“We turned the film in, and a few days later… our homes were lost,” director Meera Menon told AFP.

The film’s producer and editor, who lived near to Menon and her co-writer husband, also fled their house before it was razed by the fires.

“The four of us really lost everything… our home was our dream home,” added a tearful-sounding Menon, who was nonetheless driving up to Utah on Thursday to attend her film’s premiere next week.

Also among the 88 features being screened in snowy Park City is Rebuilding, starring Josh O’Connor as a rancher who loses everything in a wildfire.

“It takes on an added poignance,” said Hernandez.

“It’s an incredible film, and one that we felt was important to show, based on that spirit of resilience,” said Sundance programming director Kim Yutani.

J-Lo, Cumberbatch

The big opening night film this year was Jimpa, in which Colman plays a mother taking her non-binary teen to visit their gay and highly outspoken activist grandfather – played by Lithgow.

It premiered as new US President Donald Trump said he has made it “official policy of the United States, that there are only two genders, male and female.”

Lithgow said it was “extremely important” to begin Sundance with a film fostering acceptance “at this particular historical moment… when hatred is in the air.”

Among other festival highlights, Jennifer Lopez brings her first film to Sundance this weekend with glitzy musical Kiss of the Spider Woman.