The Sundance Film Festival is settling into its second half after a ferocious opening weekend that included ovations for actor Marlee Matlin and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, a dazzling red-carpet look for Jennifer Lopez and a blissfully car-free Old Main Street in Park City.
Starting Thursday and running through Sunday, 52 of the festival’s feature films will be available online through the Sundance streaming portal. This gives movie lovers at home — anywhere in the U.S. — a chance to see all of the festival’s competition films, as well as a few choice selections.
It won’t be cheap, though. Individual tickets for Sundance’s online films are $35 each, the same price festivalgoers in Park City and Salt Lake City venues are paying to see the movies in person. Of course, watching at home helps one avoid the hassles of parking, shuttle buses and standing in line.
Here are seven films worth the time and expense, in alphabetical order, that are screening on Sundance’s online portal:
(Sundance Institute) Andre Ricciardi is the subject of director Anthony Benna's documentary "Andre Is an Idiot," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, in the U.S. Documentary competition.
“Andre Is an Idiot” • Many documentaries follow people fighting cancer, but it’s rare to see one as raucous, irreverent and as funny as this one. That’s because André Ricciardi, a San Francisco advertising writer and iconoclast, is determined to find the humor in his stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis, and keep his wife-turned-caretaker and their two daughters smiling through chemotherapy and thoughts of his impending death.
Director Tony Benna follows Ricciardi’s nonconformist lead, depicting medical procedures through stop-motion animation and letting his subject’s attitude and humanity shine through.
(Neon Films/Rosamont) Safiyya Ingar and Ebada Hassan play teen girls who run away from home with a plan to go to Syria, in director Nadia Fall's "Brides," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, in the World Cinema Dramatic competition.
“Brides” • In director Nadia Fall’s tender and harrowing road movie, two Muslim teen girls — Doe (Ebada Hassan) and Muna (Safiyya Ingar) — have had enough of the racism at their school and bad family situations, so they conspire to run away from Wales to Syria, where they’ve been told an Islamic paradise awaits.
It’s a lie, of course, but Fall and screenwriter Suhayla El-Bushra sympathetically relate how determined these girls are to escape their harsh home lives for an appealing fantasy.
(Roberto Drilea | Sundance Institute) Activist Julie Farrar is shown protesting a "medical assistance in dying" bill in the New York Legislature, in director Reid Davenport's "Life After," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, in the U.S. Documentary competition.
“Life After” • Director Reid Davenport digs into the case of Elizabeth Bouvia, a 26-year-old with cerebral palsy who in 1983 asked a California court to order her doctors to assist her choice to die. Davenport, who also has cerebral palsy and sometimes uses his wheelchair as his camera stand, uses Bouvia’s story as a springboard for a conversation about laws allowing “medical assistance in dying.”
That’s what it’s called in Canada, where a loosening of the qualifications for such treatment has prompted a spike in applications. Davenport makes a strong argument that Canada’s law (and others like it in some U.S. states) has become a cheap substitute for giving disabled people the treatment and equipment they would need to live a dignified life.
(Sundance Institute) Wyatt Solis, rear, and Molly Belle Wright, left, play children on a cross-country trip with their dad (John Magaro, right), in director Cole Webley's "Omaha," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, in the U.S. Dramatic competition.
“Omaha” • A frazzled dad (John Magaro) wakes up his kids — Charlie (Wyatt Solis), age 6, and Ella (Molly Belle Wright), age 9 — early one morning and tells them they’re going on a road trip from Nevada to Nebraska. Charlie sees it as an adventure, but Ella senses something else is happening.
That’s the start of director Cole Webley’s powerful drama, in which he and screenwriter Robert Machoian capture the tiny moments of this family’s love and heartbreak, all with an inevitable sense that something bad is waiting at the end of the road. Magaro’s performance is gripping, but it’s the two child actors who carry the movie’s emotional weight. (By the way, Webley and Machoian are from Utah, and most of the movie was filmed here.)
“Plainclothes” • Tom Blyth plays Lucas, a young cop in upstate New York in 1997 whose assignment is to lure men seeking a gay hookup into a mall restroom and then bust them for indecent exposure. Lucas himself is having questions about his sexuality — questions that get more urgent when finds himself attracted to a man, Andrew (Russell Tovey), he’s about to arrest.
Writer-director Carmen Emmi’s drama, deploying VHS-style camerawork for period authenticity, carefully explores Lucas’ conflicted feelings and the secrecy in which gay men were forced to operate in the “don’t ask, don’t tell” era.
(Sundance Institute) A man in Kentucky is arrested after a sting filmed for the TV series "To Catch a Predator," a moment replayed in director David Osit's documentary "Predators," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, in the U.S. Documentary competition.
“Predators” • The NBC series “To Catch a Predator,” where anchor Chris Hansen would confront men lured to a house for a sexual encounter with an underage person, wouldn’t seem to be the most promising topic for a thoughtful examination of true-crime media and the audience’s complicity in rubbernecking.
But that’s what director David Osit has done, recounting the show’s history — which aired from 2004 to 2007, but lives forever in reruns and YouTube, and made Hansen a star and a meme — and tagging along with one of Hansen’s not-so-savory imitators. Osit’s interview with Hansen today is more even-handed than “To Catch a Predator” ever was — and it’s better television.
(Marcus Patterson | Sundance Institute) Maren Heary plays Lu, a 14-year-old who finds independence by learning to sail, in writer-director Sierra Falconer's "Sunfish (& Other Stories On Green Lake)," an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, in the U.S. Dramatic competition.
“Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake)” • Writer-director Sierra Falconer crystalizes the relaxed vibe of a summer vacation, and the tension that something big is around the corner, in this anthology of short stories — all set on a lake in Michigan.
A 14-year-old (Maren Heary) who was left with her grandparents finds independence by learning to sail. A 12-year-old violin prodigy (Jim Kaplan) feels the pressure while auditioning for first chair at a prestigious music camp. A bartender (Karsen Liotta) impulsively seeks adventure when one of her customers (Dominic Bogart) needs help making a discovery in the lake. And two sisters (Emily Hall and Tenley Kellogg), running their family’s B&B, share a final summer before the older one leaves for college. Falconer’s stories, like a good vacation yarn, will stay in the memory for a long time.
