When filmmaker Ryan White went to Kuala Lumpur to follow the trial of the two women charged with the 2017 assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, he believed that he would never be able to talk to Đoàn Thị Huong from Vietnam and Siti Aisyah from Indonesia. “It seemed … Read more
It is notable that a director who won the Oscar for Spotlight’s (2015) original screenplay and a veteran cartoonist with a widely syndicated comic strip have made a seamless transition to making a film that should resonate with the target audience of the Sundance Kids program. The Disney+ premiere of Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made, … Read more
After the 2018 midterm elections and on the first anniversary of the tragic shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University’s research found that “among all youth, 43% percent of 18 to 24-year-olds said that the Parkland shooting … Read more
The exceptional Come Away, the first feature-length live action film directed by Brenda Chapman with first-time screenwriter Marissa Kate Goodhill, has the same extraordinary depth as a masterpiece from nearly 15 years ago, Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Come Away is receiving its world premiere on the Sundance Kids slate, curated by the Utah … Read more
Editor’s Note: This is Part II of The Utah Review curtain raiser feature for Sundance 2020. Part I can be found here. It is a fixture in the annual slate of films for Sundance that the Utah Film Center, its cofounder Geralyn Dreyfous and the group to which she belongs Impact Partners Film will be associated with some of … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I covers a broad overview of the state’s film industry and Part II focuses on 16 films with a significant Utah connection that are in the Sundance 2020 slate. On the eve of the most inclusive and diverse Sundance Film Festival in its history (Jan. 23 – Feb. 2 in Park City, … Read more
Several months before The Brink, Alison Klayman’s documentary about Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News chair who served briefly as President Trump’s chief White House strategist, premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Errol Morris’ American Dharma was seen for the first time at the 2018 Venice Film Festival. Some dismayed critics were flabbergasted that … Read more
Continuing a month of free, public screenings dealing with big issues, two documentary films along with talkback sessions – one on white nationalism and the other about the traumatic impacts of child abuse – will be presented by the Utah Film Center. They are the award-winning White Right: Meeting the Enemy (2017), directed by Deeyah … Read more
Thirty years ago, in an issue of The Lancet medical research journal, the results of a 10-year study by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley were published on the effects of group therapy for patients with metastatic breast cancer in terms of their survival rates. They found that those patients … Read more
When the documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch premiered last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and then was screened last January at the Sundance Film Festival, it attracted much attention for its incredible cinematography capturing the immense scope of what humans have wrought on the planet. Since then the documentary has been picked up … Read more