Wrap-Up | Sundance 2021
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Looking back at Day Zero of Sundance, I can’t help but feel quite proud of my first-ever coverage of an international festival, let alone such an important and impactful one. Out of the twenty feature film reviews I had planned, I was able to tackle nineteen (sorry, Night of the Kings) while enduring the time constraints, sleep deprivation, and overall fatigue. I must praise Sundance’s team for their excellent organization, well-planned schedule, and quick response to the rare issues that inevitably came up. I sincerely hope upcoming festivals look up to Sundance as an example of how to do an online event of this magnitude.
“First times are always memorable”, people say, and I’ll never forget these last few days. My daily routine consisted of waking up, eating breakfast, rewriting a few reviews from the previous day, preparing the current day’s articles, and then enter a cycle of watch-review movies until it’s time to go to sleep. Even though I loved every second of the festival, I admit that it does get a bit stressful, and I began to feel the exhaustion in the last couple of days. From noon until 2 a.m., my life was reduced to a tiresome yet fulfilling, entertaining sequence of watching and reviewing films from all over the world created by incredibly talented filmmakers.
My coverage is defined by its variety. From black-and-white to foreign language movies, passing through several distinct genres, I tried my best to organize a diverse schedule. Analyzing everything now, it’s a bit funny that the very first film of the festival ends up being one of my absolute favorites, CODA. I still remember, on the first day, people joking about how we were raising the bar too high with the movie that ultimately swept the awards. Nevertheless, I don’t regret a single viewing, even the ones I didn’t enjoy as much as I’d have wanted to.
I want to thank the Sundance Institute for giving me the chance to cover their festival, which I hope to come back to in-person once the global pandemic finally disappears. In the end, as much as I loved watching so many films, I feel extremely lucky to have met some extraordinary people online through this event. Hopefully, I’ll be able to meet you all at an actual festival one day. That was Sundance for me! I’ll leave my favorite movies from the festival below, as well as every other review I wrote during these fantastic days. See you at the next festival!
