🎥 REBUILDING

After a wildfire takes the family farm, a rancher seeks a way forward.

Max Walker-Silverman’s sophomore feature is a personal, affecting story of a community’s life and resilience. A follow-up to his captivating debut, A Love Song (2022 Sundance Film Festival), Rebuilding similarly operates as a careful, loving portrait of the American West — this time whispered in the quiet aftermath of environmental and personal disaster. Against the backdrop of charred lands and a struggling small town, scattered lives coalesce in grief, and a uniquely resonant love story emerges.

Josh O’Connor is a subdued and assiduous protagonist, embracing a call to heal his fledgling family and newfound community. Authentic, nuanced performances from Meghann Fahy, Amy Madigan, and Kali Reis quilt a narrative enveloped by the multiplicity of the American experience — legacies of land, labor, and family.

Rebuilding is a warm tip of the hat to community building through human tenacity, and the abundance of life and love contained therein.—Cameron Asharian

Windrider Summit Session Kick-Off

• Introduction to Windrider and Sundance

• Award-winning short film screenings

• Filmmaker Q&As
   

⭐️ MPI Luncheon

Enjoy networking with MPI filmmakers and friends at The Nelson Cottage by High West for a private luncheon and whiskey pairing.
 

🎥 THE LEGEND OF OCHI

In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a farm girl named Yuri is raised to fear an animal species known as Ochi. But when Yuri discovers a wounded baby Ochi has been left behind, she escapes on an adventure to bring him home.

Where adventure, wonder, and magic converge, the Ochi reside. Writer-director Isaiah Saxon crafts a world that’s rife with imagination — a paradise for fantastical creatures and humans alike, though not without a little danger. Dense forests and alpine terrain give way to one girl’s culture-shifting bravery that serves to light a fire in the parts of us that are keen to go against the grain. Helena Zengel delivers an impassioned performance of defiance and care, opposite the ever-animated Willem Dafoe, her Ochi-crazed father. 

Ochi is an environmentalist’s tale, a family’s tale, an animal lover’s tale, and more — reminiscent of our favorite (and now seldom-seen) fantastical family adventure films. The Legend of Ochi is an adventure in the purest sense, suitable for and sure to enliven most audiences.—Cameron Asharian

🎥 SERIOUS PEOPLE

A successful music video director and expectant father pushes his work-life balance to the extreme as he hires a doppelgänger to work in his stead.

Pasqual is convinced this idea will solve all his problems. He believes he can finally be more present for his pregnant partner, Christine, without sacrificing the dream project he and his business partner, Raul, were offered. The plan includes mentoring a young man from a similar background, providing an opportunity neither Pasqual nor Raul ever had.

But while Miguel, the doppelgänger, may resemble Pasqual, he certainly doesn’t behave like him, preferring to flex physically more than mentally.

Co-directors Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson deliver a genre-bending trip of a movie that captures the challenges of balancing the anxieties of impending parenthood with the demands of a career in an often absurdly self-important industry. Serious People is a clever and entertaining commentary on the artistic process, capturing both its joys and pretensions.—Ania Trzebiatowska

🎥 MOVE YA BODY: THE BIRTH OF HOUSE

Out of the underground dance clubs on the South Side of Chicago, a group of friends turn a new sound into a global movement.

Vince Lawrence was an eccentric, nerdy Black child growing up in Mayor Daley’s segregated Chicago. One summer when his dad couldn’t afford to send him to summer camp, Lawrence embarked on a personal journey that would lead him to become the first person to record a house song. He catalyzed a force of radical togetherness that would break down his city’s invisible walls of segregation, and fundamentally transform the music world.

Director Elegance Bratton concocts a loving mix of interviews with the lively characters of house music blended together with an archive treasure, creating a definitive history of a cultural revolution rarely told. Move Ya Body: The Birth of House is a road map of how a rebellion against bodily repression can clutch joy and creative expression to sidestep empire.—Shari Frilot

🎥 OPUS

A young writer is invited to the remote compound of a legendary pop star who mysteriously disappeared 30 years ago. Surrounded by the star’s cult of sycophants and intoxicated journalists, she finds herself in the middle of his twisted plan.

Mark Anthony Green’s feature debut is a bold, fun, and flashy pop-horror. Ayo Edebiri delivers as the meek yet hungry journalist Ariel — her unique charm radiating alongside a distinct final-girl prescience. John Malkovich is effervescent and hypnotic as Moretti, a deified global phenomenon making a dramatically malevolent reintroduction. 

Amidst eye-catching, synthy musical numbers and the enigmatic desert compound, the facade of civility gradually erodes between the pair, revealing the underbelly of a tense, psychosocial game of cat and mouse. Opus offers an electric, clever indictment of the literal cult of celebrity, presenting characters and dangers within a symphonic ambience — giving way to a foreboding ease through which power is generated and embedded within pop culture.—Cameron Asharian

⭐️ Windrider Summit’s 2025 Amplify Award Presentation and Panel with MPI

• The award-winning MPI Original, Freedom Hair, will be honored with the prestigious 2025 Amplify Award from Windrider Studios. This accolade celebrates films that amplify the voices and perspectives of the BIPOC community, both on screen and behind the camera. The stories recognized with this award educate people about history, resilience, and the transformative power of storytelling.

  Executive producer and the subject of the film, Melony Armstrong, will accept the award and also participate in an engaging Q&A session, offering audiences deeper insights into the journey behind the film and its message of empowerment.
   

Windrider Daily Summit Sessions

• Sundance filmmaker Q&As

• Award-winning short film screenings

• Sundance x Windrider "Deeper Dive" Conversations

• Panel Discussions

• More!
   

🎥 SHORT FILM PROGRAM 5

Short films may contain mature content and may not be appropriate for all ages.

Hippopotami

Are You Scared To Be Yourself Because You Think That You Might Fail?

Such Good Friends

The Long Valley

AN ALMOST SUCCESSFUL DATING APP LOVE STORY

Suo Jiang

We’re Not Done Yet

🎥 SERIOUS PEOPLE

A successful music video director and expectant father pushes his work-life balance to the extreme as he hires a doppelgänger to work in his stead.

Pasqual is convinced this idea will solve all his problems. He believes he can finally be more present for his pregnant partner, Christine, without sacrificing the dream project he and his business partner, Raul, were offered. The plan includes mentoring a young man from a similar background, providing an opportunity neither Pasqual nor Raul ever had.

But while Miguel, the doppelgänger, may resemble Pasqual, he certainly doesn’t behave like him, preferring to flex physically more than mentally.

Co-directors Pasqual Gutierrez and Ben Mullinkosson deliver a genre-bending trip of a movie that captures the challenges of balancing the anxieties of impending parenthood with the demands of a career in an often absurdly self-important industry. Serious People is a clever and entertaining commentary on the artistic process, capturing both its joys and pretensions.—Ania Trzebiatowska

🎥 EPISODIC PILOT SHOWCASE

Featuring a mix of fiction and nonfiction, our Episodic Pilot Showcase lets viewers experience the premiere episode of three outstanding new series on the big screen. A broad span of comedy, drama, and documentary, each views shared experience through a unique lens. 

Chasers  

At a Los Angeles house party, an aspiring musician pursues her crush through a crowd of hopeful dreamers chasing empty promises.

BULLDOZER

An undermedicated, chronically impassioned young woman lurches from crisis to crisis of her own making.

Never Get Busted!  

Barry Cooper was a highly decorated Texas narcotics officer — until he turned on the police force by busting crooked cops and teaching drug users how to hide their stash.

—Adam Montgomery

⭐️  MPI Filmmaker Dinner

• Join us for an exclusive dinner for MPI filmmakers at Handle. It’s a great opportunity to connect, share experiences, and enjoy a delicious meal with fellow filmmakers. We look forward to seeing you there!
   

Windrider Daily Summit Sessions

• Sundance filmmaker Q&As

• Award-winning short film screenings

• Sundance x Windrider "Deeper Dive" Conversations

• Panel Discussions

• More!
   

🎥 BUCKS COUNTY, USA

Evi and Vanessa, two 14-year-olds living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, are best friends despite their opposing political beliefs. As nationwide disputes over public education explode into vitriol and division in their hometown, the girls and others in the community fight to discover the humanity in “the other side.”

Remarkably important on a national level, Bucks is a swing county within a swing state that boasts a mix of suburbia, rural farmland, and industrial working-class folks. While division has always existed, a global pandemic expanded the nationwide culture war to a new frontier, landing in tight-knit communities and schools. As starkly opposing factions vie for control of the school boards and the policies they create, all in the name of protecting their children, the future generation is watching, listening, and absorbing it all. Through the youthful lens of Evi and Vanessa, can we learn that it’s possible to coexist and love one another despite our differing political views?

The Festival is proud to present the first two episodes of this timely five-part docu-series, along with a preview of what’s to come.—Adam Montgomery

🎥 BY DESIGN

A woman swaps bodies with a chair, and everyone likes her better as a chair.

Writer-director Amanda Kramer brilliantly collages tropes of literature, cinema, and performance art to cleverly take the piss out of common social scripts people use to convince themselves that they have full lives of purpose when they do not.

Fashioned as an epic fable featuring diminutive characters, By Design recounts the story of Camille (exceptionally played by Juliette Lewis), a woman sustained by friendships with women who use her to talk about themselves. When Camille falls in love with a chair she can’t afford, she becomes the chair, which gets gifted to a beautiful piano player-for-hire, Olivier (Mamoudou Athie), by his ex.

Camille and Olivier are intriguing people with rich interior character landscapes. But in a society that refuses to acknowledge their existence, is it better to be a chair?—Shari Frilot

Windrider Daily Summit Sessions

• Sundance filmmaker Q&As

• Award-winning short film screenings

• Sundance x Windrider "Deeper Dive" Conversations

• Panel Discussions

• More!
   

🎥 ZODIAC KILLER PROJECT

Against the backdrop of sunbaked parking lots, deserted courthouses, and empty suburban homes — the familiar spaces of true crime, stripped of all action and spectacle — a filmmaker describes his abandoned Zodiac Killer documentary and probes the inner workings of a genre at saturation point.

The true crime genre’s ubiquity is driven by people’s endless fascination, disgust, and — bizarrely — search for comfort in genre conventions that still have the ability to generate complex emotions despite their predictability and familiarity. Filmmaker and multimedia artist Charlie Shackleton’s projects have used his uniquely funny, intellectually engaging style to examine how popular culture, mass media, and storytelling create meaning. In this wholly original, self-aware cinematic work, Shackleton dissects the true crime genre by recreating it. Using Bay Area landscapes, archival material, reenactments, film and TV clips, and voice-over to walk the viewer through what his film would have been like and why, Zodiac Killer Project is a captivating and entertaining experience that will forever change how you watch your next murder program.—Sudeep Sharma

🎥 OBEX

Conor Marsh lives a secluded life with his dog, Sandy, until one day he begins playing OBEX, a new, state-of-the-art computer game. When Sandy goes missing, the line between reality and game blurs and Conor must venture into the strange world of OBEX to bring her home.

Baltimore-based writer-director Albert Birney (Strawberry Mansion, 2021 Sundance Film Festival) returns with another delightfully skewed and surreal lo-fi fantasy. Set in pre-internet 1987 and strikingly shot in monochromatic black and white, the film depicts Conor’s (Birney) lonely existence of solitary screen time, transfixed by early Macs with slowly rendering graphics and TVs aglow with the horror movie late show. Matching these hypnotic images, Birney immerses us in a dense soundscape of warm droning synths, clacking keyboards, malevolent static, chirping cicadas, and the click and whine of dot matrix printers. The film’s dreamy nostalgia soon becomes an analog nightmare as Conor finds himself trapped in a low-tech but high-stakes video game. Audacious and uncanny, OBEX revisits the dawn of personal computing to reflect on the loneliness of our always-online present.—Matt Cornell

🎥 SUNFISH (& OTHER STORIES ON GREEN LAKE)

Lives intertwine around Green Lake as a girl learns to sail, a boy fights for first chair, two sisters operate a bed-and-breakfast, and a fisherman is after the catch of his life.

Sierra Falconer’s perceptive debut feature immerses us in the rhythms of life on Green Lake, drawing us into distinct slices of life unfolding. Each chapter introduces new lives and relationships portrayed with subtlety and nuance, capturing the quiet beauty of human connection. Against the backdrop of the lake, the characters experience a profound yearning for something different while discovering new facets of themselves — independence, joy, excitement, and heartache.

Falconer’s impressive sensitivity to both people and place shines through, with cinematography that feels both alluring and deeply introspective. The film leaves a vivid impression of this place — the sounds, colors, and textures of the lake echo — and the characters linger long after our encounter with them ends, sparking curiosity about the lives they continue to lead beyond the frame.—Stephanie Owens

🎥 PRIME MINISTER

A view inside the life of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, capturing her through five tumultuous years in power and beyond as she redefined leadership on the world stage.

Jacinda Ardern’s outlook is summarized by a quote from her childhood hero, Sir Ernest Shackleton: “Optimism is true moral courage.” She reluctantly took on what she called “the worst job in politics” as Leader of the Opposition. Then as prime minister, Ardern went on to lead with humanity, compassion, and common sense. She didn’t hesitate to implement nationwide gun law reforms following a devastating mass shooting and guided her country through the pandemic by relying on science — even at the expense of her own popularity. Co-directors Lindsay Utz and Michelle Walshe craft an intimate portrait of Ardern’s journey, featuring footage shot by her husband and never-before heard audio interviews recorded while she was prime minister. As only the second head of state in the world to give birth while in office, she was relentlessly challenged to prove her competence as a leader, which is why stepping down earlier than expected was an act of confidence, not a sign of defeat.

Prime Minister is much like Ardern herself: eloquent, compassionate, funny, and inspiring.—Ania Trzebiatowska

🎥 SUKKWAN ISLAND

On the remote Sukkwan Island, 13-year-old Roy agrees to spend a formative year of adventure with his father deep in the Norwegian fjords. What starts as a chance to reconnect descends into a test of survival as they face the harsh realities of their environment and confront their unresolved turmoil.

Based on the story “Sukkwan Island” from David Vann’s book Legend of a Suicide, the second feature from Vladimir de Fontenay (Mobile Homes, 2017 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight) is a taut psychological thriller that blends elements of a survival film and father-son drama before reaching a surprising, poignant conclusion that artfully reorients the story. Although its striking photography captures the foreboding, desolate beauty of the wilderness, the film is propelled by phenomenal performances from three-time César Award winner Swann Arlaud (Bloody Milk, Anatomy of a Fall) and brilliant newcomer Woody Norman. Together they create a spellbinding depth and complexity to the gradually unfolding relationship: its tentative rapprochement, vulnerability, and the exchange that occurs as Tom tries to usher Roy into manhood. But as the situation intensifies, so too do Tom’s tangled emotions around the painfully unresolved breakup of his family.—John Nein

🎥 TWINLESS

Two young men meet in a twin bereavement support group and form an unlikely bromance.

Writer-director-actor James Sweeney’s bittersweet tale of trauma-bonding friendship is a smart comedy willing to confront themes like loss, loneliness, and codependency head-on. Sweeney scripts a slippery narrative to mirror his emotionally damaged characters as they struggle for connection, revealing painful personal truths along the way. With his Sundance debut, Sweeney shows major promise both in front of and behind the camera. Dylan O’Brien returns to the Festival after starring in the 2024 U.S. Dramatic Competition entry Ponyboi. O’Brien has quickly established himself as one of the great new actors of his generation. With Twinless he continues to impress, showing an acting range not only in characters but also between the film’s comedic voice and tender heart.—Charlie Sextro

🎥 MIDNIGHT SHORT FILM PROGRAM

Short films may contain mature content and may not be appropriate for all ages.

Some films in this short film program contain strobe effects.

The Things We Keep

Bunnyhood

Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting

Swollen

Jesus 2

Platanero

Windrider Daily Summit Sessions

• Sundance filmmaker Q&As

• Award-winning short film screenings

• Sundance x Windrider "Deeper Dive" Conversations

• Panel Discussions

• More!
   

🎥 SUGAR BABIES

Autumn is an enterprising college scholarship recipient and burgeoning TikTok influencer. Part of a close circle of friends growing up poor in rural Louisiana, she is determined to overcome the struggles and barriers defining them. Faced with limited minimum wage job options, Autumn devises an online sugar baby operation.

The key to her business strategy: no sugar — just talking, flirting, and sharing photos and videos to get what she wants from her followers, all without meeting the men who give her money. Autumn refuses to be defined by her economic status, using this online enterprise to reclaim control and assert power.

Director Rachel Fleit, known for her nuanced exploration of identity and belonging through female protagonists, skillfully and empathetically illuminates Autumn’s life and tight-knit community while drawing attention to pervasive economic challenges across the country. Sugar Babies stands out for its intimate, judgment-free portrayal of an impressively self-aware and ambitious young woman. Fleit’s film is both deeply personal and broadly resonant, offering a poignant commentary on poverty and dignity in modern America.—Ania Trzebiatowska