Les festivals de cinéma sont de formidables marchés pour les diffuseurs à la recherche de la prochaine perle. C’est aussi le cas à Sundance, dont la 38^e édition se termine dimanche. Mais cette année, l’évènement de Park City a été plus que jamais une plateforme de lancement pour des œuvres ayant déjà un distributeur. Constat.

Netflix presented the first episode of the Jeen-Yuhs series: A Kanye Trilogy dedicated to Kanye West.Showtime did the headlines with his miniseries We need to talk about Cosby returning to the Bill Cosby affair.And HBO attracted looks with another) documentary on Princess Diana.

Like all major film festivals around the world, Sundance is a market where producers are trying to sell their projects to attentive distributors.This is still the case this year, where, according to an Indiewire article, one fifth of the 82 feature films presented already have a distributor.All the others are looking for one!

Mais ce sont les projets dont la distribution est déjà assurée, et souvent avec une date de sortie, qui ont suscité une grande attention médiatique au cours de cette 38^e édition du festival.

Thus, the series on Bill Cosby, accused of repeated sexual assault, begins this Sunday in Showtime while the one devoted to Kanye West will arrive on February 16 on Netflix.CNN and HBO released a bomb on Monday with the documentary by Toronto filmmaker Daniel Roher on the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Other examples?The film Phoenix rising on the case involving Marilyn Manson that Evan Rachel Wood accuses of sexual assault will be broadcast in March on HBO.The actress and filmmaker Eva Longoria presented the Documentary La Guerra Civil on the rivalry between boxers Julio César Chavez and Oscar de la Hoya, who will be broadcast by Dazn.And humorist Amy Poehler signs Lucy and Desi, a documentary on Lucille Ball that Amazon will broadcast shortly.

Obviously, in this containment period, all these launches are very visible and attractive.The quality ?Variable.

Hyper documented, the series on Bill Cosby is worth listening to it.The actor's victims look straight into the camera and confide.Long.It’s painful to listen to.But it’s impactful.

Even if it is about boxing, the film La Guerra Civil is just less, impactful.The director borrows a formatted formula in which extracts from the time and testimonies (Mièvres) of today follow one another in cadence.As we have known the results of the matches for more than 20 years, it takes a better angle to be convincing.Let us remember this point of interest: the difficulty of the Hoya, born in Los Angeles, to be recognized by the Mexicans.

Fire of Love turns heads

That said, what about the traditional buyers market in Sundance 2022?What was the most coveted film during this edition?Sara Dosa's Fire of Love documentary is one of the lucky ones.

This film tells the story of love and science uniting Katia and Maurice Krafft, two French volcanologists who have spent their lives crisscrossing the earth to study eruption volcanoes.They died at the foot of one of them, in Japan, in 1991. The filmmaker Miranda JULY ensures the narration of this film whose images, even if they date from the 1970s and 1980s, are unique.

According to Variety, the Netflix, Amazon, Sony Pictures and Paramount broadcasters, among others, were on the ranks to buy this film finally acquired by National Geographic.

Now, surprise!In the credits, we discover that Quebec has greatly left its mark on the film.The producer, Ina Fileman, is Montreal.The post-modern company has signed colorization, "online assembly" and "packaging", says Alexandre Domingue, boss of the company.Gavin Fernandes was a sound mixer and Patrice Leblanc, sound designer.This list is not exhaustive.

A few favorites

Fire of Love is undoubtedly one of our big favorites of the festival.We therefore hope for a distribution in Quebec.

Elsewhere, the Bolivian feature film Utama literally capsized us.For his first film, the director Alejandro Loayza Grisi tells, through the story of a couple of lamas of lamas living at the gates of a desert region of Bolivia, the agony of the Quechua people.The documentary approach is marked by a breathtaking photo direction and some elements of magical realism.

Julianne Moore is one of those actors who do not hesitate to get out of the codes of Hollywood cinema to serve independent and modest budget works.She did it wonderful for When You Finish Saving The World, the first feature by actor Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network), of which Emma Stone is one of the producers.

The film tells the story of Evelyn, director of a violence center for women, who sees her son Ziggy (Canadian Finn Wolfhard) get away from her and have more mercantile aims.Both try to find themselves through other characters around them.A completely successful psychological quest.

While the debate on abortion resumes more beautiful in the United States, two films presented in Sundance, a documentary and a fiction, evoke the history of the Jane collective, a women's movement in Chicago which, in 1968, helped11,000 women to have an abortion when it was illegal.

The fiction film is called Call Jane and features Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver.Intense without ever paying excess, this film signed Phyllis Nagy and very inspired by real history will be distributed in Quebec by MK2 |Mile End.

Comme celle de 2021, cette 38^e édition de Sundance a été présentée uniquement en ligne en raison de la situation sanitaire. À notre connaissance, un seul film important, Final Cut de Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), a été retiré de la programmation. Souhaitons un retour à la normalité en 2023.