17 Indie Films You Must See in 2024
Navigating the Sundance Film Festival can be a tricky endeavor. The stacked screening schedule is practically made to send cinephiles into a tailspin: If the line for the new Steven Soderbergh movie starts forming at 9 p.m., but a nifty-sounding documentary is playing across town at six, can you make it to both? Is it better to go for the crowd-pleaser or for the polarizing experience? Which of the 91 films selected will become this year’s Past Lives?
As always, Sundance’s slate of independent films from emerging artists and established auteurs alike made any stress worthwhile. The festival’s 2024 edition—its 40th—offered both in-person and online screenings, but many of its most noteworthy selections could be seen only in Park City, Utah. As a result, every theater seemed to vibrate with an anticipatory energy—and whenever a film connected with the audience, that energy crescendoed into a collective, can-you-believe-we’re-back awe. Of the dozens of movies my colleague David Sims and I watched, the following 17 stood out the most. (We’ve noted which films have secured a distributor and announced release dates.)
— Shirley Li
Love Lies Bleeding (A24, in theaters March 8)
Kristen Stewart in a mullet. Ed Harris in, um, whatever you want to call . The writer-director Rose Glass’s new film isn’t all about the actors’ wonky haircuts, yet it does offer an audaciously shaggy vision of ’80s Americana. Set in a seedy New Mexico town in 1989, the movie follows the courtship of the gym manager Lou (played by Stewart) and Jackie (Katy O’Brian), a bodybuilder. Their relationship leads to a gruesome
