Our coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival continues with reviews of four films making their world premiere at the festival.
Folktales
Documentarians Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are a well-established and reliable filmmaking duo, from the Oscar-nominated Jesus Camp to Detropia and more. In their latest joint effort, Folktales, the pair trek to the arctic to chronicle a particular type of gap year for teens uncertain of their way forward as they approach young adulthood. At the Pasvik High School in Finnmark, an outpost far north in Norway, lost and unmotivated youth voluntarily attend the experiential school designed to instill confidence, life skills and more over the course of the year. This is not a scared-straight program; the instructors are insistent but compassionate, and the program is rigorous but not torturous.
The filmmakers wisely zoom in on three students going through the program together, two young men (Bjørn Tore and Romain) and a young woman (Hege). These three are our conduit for this unique experience, and their journeys through the program could not be more different. Each arrives with more than a little trepidation, but each in their own way finds a path to committing to the experience, some with more ease than others. Over the course of the film, we witness incredible personal growth and come to cheer for these young people just trying so hard to find their way. As they learn to harness and pilot a dog sled or rely on their own wits during a two-day outdoor camping assignment (in the frigid, snowy nordic weather), each of the teens faces their own inner struggles and, in an ultimately safe and supportive environment, develops the skills necessary to work through them.
Beyond the film's inspiring chronicle of its subjects' growth, Ewing and Grady (along with cinematographer Lars Erlend Tubaas Øymo) capture the vast expanse and beautiful details of Finnmark and the school in remarkable fashion, weaving throughout the story the Nordic legend of Odin. From sweeping drone footage overhead as the teens and their teams of dog sleds cut through the snowy fields amidst the forest to thoughtful closeups that bring the viewer right into the world of energetic huskies lapping up belly rubs or a campfire's flames licking the cold air above, it's all downright transportive. (Lisa Trifone)
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
One of the more memorable and impactful films at Sundance this year comes from writer/director Mary Bronstein (Yeast), and it concerns a woman named Linda (Rose Byrne), who is effectively raising her ailing child by herself (I’m not sure we’re ever told what is wrong with said child, whose face is never shown, but she’s severely underweight). Linda’s husband is in the military and travels for weeks at a time, leaving her to deal with their child’s affliction as well as an unexpected, catastrophic home repair involving a massive hole in her bedroom ceiling. These events are negatively impacting Linda’s day job as a therapist, and her attitude toward her patients (I especially like Danielle MacDonald's performance as a paranoid mother), as well as her sessions with her own therapist (Conan O’Brien). Linda and her daughter are forced to move in to a shady motel, where she meets a local eccentric, played by musician A$AP Rocky, whom she befriends.
Byrne finds ways to inject her dramatic roots and comedic flair into the character of Linda, making If I Had Legs I’d Kick You both darkly funny and a pressure cooker of a character drama. On its surface, the film is about the perils and pressures of motherhood, but in a broader context, it’s about being supported. It might take a village to raise a child, but Linda’s village has abandoned her, with rare exceptions. Linda frequently leaves her daughter alone in their room so she can simply get out and feel connected with grown people, and we’re allowed to dive deep into her troubled and fractured mind as Byrne takes us from fantastical delusions to pure panic attacks.
The film is certainly not for everyone, and some may even find it grating beyond words at times. But when it works, Bronstein and her team give us something that Nightbitch simply didn’t, because If I Had Legs I’d Kick You doesn’t presuppose that we’ll like Linda by the time things fade out. (Steve Prokopy)
Rebuilding
The timing could not have been more difficult for a film like Rebuilding to premiere at Sundance. Writer/director Max Walker-Silverman returns to the festival with a film set in the aftermath of a Colorado wildfire that leaves several families seeking a way forward from the ashes. Starring Josh O'Connor as Dusty, a rancher who loses his family's generational home, barn and land in the severe burn, this quiet but moving film places its audience directly in the path of tragedy. It's likely that anyone impacted by the recent fires in LA will find the film quite difficult to watch, but if they do give it a chance, Walker-Silverman will reward them (and everyone else) with a rumination on moving forward and finding new life in a space where it feels like nothing could ever thrive.
Evoking a similar sense of place to the likes of Nomadland or its ilk, Rebuilding is deeply connected to its location, from the singed forests surrounding Dusty's now-destroyed home to the long open roads through Colorado's dry valleys to the small trailer park where Dusty and his fellow fire victims are set up with support from FEMA. He's spent the first couple of months after the fire bouncing between places but as the film begins, he heads to his still-empty trailer to sort out his way forward. He's still in close touch with his ex, Ruby (Meghann Fahy), but struggles to connect with daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre). O'Connor delivers a striking performance as a man who's always kept his emotions quite close to the vest, allowing the intensity of his circumstances to bubble to the surface in the most nuanced yet undeniable ways.
Though Walker-Silverman is adept at infusing his script with emotional weight, as the film progresses it begins to feel a bit as though he's prioritizing style of substance. There's no denying that what Dusty is going through is tragic, but there's also the sense that we're being kept at arm's length from much of what he's experiencing. He reluctantly connects with the others living in the small trailer park for fire survivors, including single mother Mali (Kali Reis), and does his best to be present for Callie Rose, but aside from mentions of his great-grandparents building the ranch and glimpses of the burial plot on the land, we learn very little about Dusty's past or how he became who he is. Fortunately, Rebuilding's emotional center and O'Connors impressive performance are both strong enough to carry us through its shortcomings. (Lisa Trifone)
The Stringer
Investigative journalists going after other journalists is a tricky and messy premise, but the latest documentary from Bao Nguyen (The Greatest Night in Pop, Be Water) focuses on investigator Gary Knight, who is approached by someone who worked for the Associated Press during the Vietnam War. Knight alleges that the world-famous photograph of young girl Phan Thi Kim Phuc (frequently referred to as the “napalm girl”) running naked through the streets after being severely burned by napalm was not taken by AP photographer Nick Ut; he claims it was instead taken by one of the many local stringers working for AP, whose work was usually purchased cheap and given the byline of one of the four staff photographers working in Vietnam at the time.
What follows is a tireless and frustrating search for the name of this stringer and any evidence that he took the photo, as well as a painstaking re-creation of the second-by-second timeline, using other photos and film elements of the same event, in the hopes of proving who did and did not take the Pulitzer Price-winning shot. The practice of reassigning credit seems to have been part of the way AP did business at the time, and Ut certainly isn’t to blame for that. But he’s spent decades not only taking credit for the photo, but giving detailed accounts of the taking of said photo in hundreds of interviews and speeches. According to Knight’s two-year investigation, Ut (who is now retired and refused to give an interview for The Stringer) took the lie and ran with it.
The movie goes from and exposé to a story about a Vietnamese photographer finally getting authorship of his work—one of the most significant photos about the ugliness of war ever taken. And it turns out, among certain circles in Vietnam, the true credit of this photo was the worst kept secret in the land. Did the antiwar movement benefit greatly from having the photo attributed to Ut? Absolutely. But does that justify outright (alleged) theft? Of course not. The Stringer is a call for truth and credit, both of which are fully deserved for such an iconic image. The film will likely shock you, piss you off, and make you take into consideration where all news stories come from, something that should also be front of mind when it comes to the news. (Steve Prokopy)
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