Our 6 favorite films at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival

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We arrived hopeful, as we do every year, to America’s premier showcase for independent cinema — an event that will always mean much to us, even if the festival itself may be moving to a new town in 2027. And despite some overheated pronouncements declaring Sundance over (as well as some high-profile disappointments), we left with a handful of wonders, movies that would stand tall in any prior year’s lineup. Here are the titles we’ll be talking about in the months ahead.

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‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’

Sometimes amid the chilly climate of the festival, all you really want is a movie that feels like a warm hug. Expanded from a 2007 short film directed by James Griffiths and written by and starring Tom Basden and Tim Key, “The Ballad of Wallis Island” is a sneaky crowd-pleaser with charm and heart to spare. A lonely lottery winner who lives on a remote island hires his favorite musical duo to reunite for a private gig, without giving them quite all the details. Key and Basden have a fantastic comic rapport, playfully exploring the stereotypes of the British eccentric and grumpy artiste. They are grounded by the earthy realness of Carey Mulligan. Featuring music written by Basden and some delicately moving singing by Basden and Mulligan, “Wallis Island” is a story about learning to move on that knows how not to overstay its welcome. — Mark Olsen

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‘BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions’

A woman in a red light looks into the lens.

Briefly pulled from the Sundance lineup over a dispute between director Kahlil Joseph and the project’s financier, the boldly transportive “BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions” was reinstated when a new backer stepped in. Part essay film, part noirish sci-fi-fantasy set aboard an ocean liner, the film is also a chapter of an ongoing project that wraps together the past, present and future of Black history. Structured in movements akin to an album, the film is less intimidatingly rigorous than it may appear, developing a hypnotic momentum and uninhibited energy as it weaves together found imagery with footage created for the project. Particularly in sections where Peter Jay Anderson portrays W.E.B. Du Bois, there is a vivid emotional resonance that ties it all together. At one point art curator Okwui Enwezor describes an exhibition as “a kind of thinking machine” that can be used to examine “the state of things,” and there may be no better description for the fascinating, reflexively idiosyncratic “BLKNWS.” — Mark Olsen

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‘If I Had Legs I’d Kick You’

Already, Linda (Rose Byrne in an absolutely fearless turn, mostly captured mere inches from her face) is having an awful day. The lamentations of her preteen daughter, suffering from some wasting disease, bombard her from the backseat of her car, while her useless husband — another faceless voice on a cellphone — insists that she handle everything. But it’s when the ceiling of her bedroom caves in, with a watery, violent crunch that’s more frightening than any sound in a comedy should be, that you realize this movie is going to an extremely dark place. Call it “Uncut Gems”-adjacent (a Safdie brother serves as co-producer), but writer-director Mary Bronstein arrives in a major way at her own brand of sweaty personal catastrophe, unambiguously on the side of the doomed. I came to Sundance praying for a movie to charm me. This one grabbed me, dragged me down into an abyss and wouldn’t let go for days. David Lynch is gone but his disciples carry on the good work. — Joshua Rothkopf

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‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’

Bill Condon’s passionate adaptation of the Tony Award-winning prison musical is fueled by the power of opposites. In 1983 Argentina, a queer window dresser named Luis (breakout star Tonatiuh) is locked up with a dour political activist, Valentin (Diego Luna). Failing to find common conversational ground, Luis tells Valentin the plot of his favorite classic film — and by the power of imagination, both are soon tangoing with its leading lady, Ingrid (Jennifer Lopez). Romantic and cagey, tender and brutal, frivolous and grim, “Kiss of the Spider Woman” is loaded with small acts of kindness, ones that pack as much of a wallop as its dance spectaculars. Fittingly for a story about fighting inhumanity with full-bodied self-expression, the choreography is shot in long, wide takes that capture every dip, shimmy and spin. Luis insists he can learn everything about a person by asking one question: What’s your favorite movie? At this year’s Sundance, this was definitely one of mine. — Amy Nicholson

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‘Lurker’

“Lurker” is a bleak and funny nail-biter about an L.A.-based emo singer, Oliver (Archie Madekwe), on the ascent from niche fandom to massive success. Chillaxed and impulsive, he subsists on good vibes. Enter the vibe-killer, Matthew (Théodore Pellerin), a Melrose streetwear clerk who wriggles his way into Oliver’s entourage like a parasite. (Real-life rappers Zack Fox and Felix are hilarious as the buddies who set traps to prove that Matthew isn’t cool enough to hang.) First-time filmmaker and merciless cringe comedian Alex Russell (a writer on “The Bear” and “Beef”) burrows into the ambiguities of modern fame, where a celebrity might have more followers on Instagram than dollars in his bank account. Things in Oliver’s orbit are so blurry that in one single day, Matthew promotes himself from taking out the trash to shooting a lo-fi documentary. “I’m just happy to be here,” he beams. So is the audience. — Amy Nicholson

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‘The Wedding Banquet’

After seeing Andrew Ahn’s reboot of “The Wedding Banquet,” I’m willing to pause my ongoing lament about Hollywood ignoring new ideas. The update to the 1993 Ang Lee classic features Han Gi-chan as an adorably naive heir to a major South Korean company. He is hiding his relationship with Bowen Yang from his conservative grandparents and his visa’s about to expire. Their friends and neighbors, Lily Gladstone and Kelly Marie Tran, are a lesbian couple who are going through multiple rounds of IVF and need cash. You can mostly see where this fake-wedding rom-com is going, but it’s peppered with sharp and funny writing as well as standout performances from Joan Chen, playing Tran’s overbearing and finally proud mother, and Youn Yuh-jung, who shines as Gi-chan’s taciturn grandmother. And as LGBTQ+ rights are under attack by the top levels of the U.S. government, the film is particularly poignant with its themes of love and acceptance. — Vanessa Franko