The most important North American festival for independent films is celebrating a small anniversary in 2024: the Sundance Film Festival is entering its 40th edition. The film festival will take place from January 18 to 28, 2024 in Park City and Salt Lake City. A total of 82 films in 12 categories will be screened, including two German productions and one German co-production.
This year, the Sundance Film Festival has once again set itself the goal of creating a space in which risk-taking artists can present their unique visions to an audience. For the fourth time, the Berlin-based production company Gebrueder Beetz Filmproduktion has been invited to Utah to present one of its extraordinary projects. The German documentary ETERNAL YOU by directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck will be screened in the World Cinema Documentary Competition program. The film is about the use of artificial intelligence in the form of digital avatars that enable mourners to communicate with their deceased loved ones. It deals with questions about algorithmic immortality and the need to scrutinize and examine our "digital remains" more closely.
BAIGAL NUUR - LAKE BAIGAL (Alisi Telengut) by Alisi Telengut will be screened in the Animation Short Films section. The short film has already screened in Annecy, Toronto and Tallinn in 2023 and will now celebrate its US premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. In the film, the formation of Lake Baikal in Siberia is reimagined, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat language (a Mongolian dialect).
The German co-production THE OUTRUN (Weydemann Bros.) by Nora Fingscheidt will be screened in the Premieres section. The British-German drama is adapted from the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot.
German productions and co-productions at Sundance at a glance:
World Cinema Documentary Competition
ETERNAL YOU (DE/USA, Gebrüder Beetz Filmproduktion) by Hans Block, Moritz Riesewieck
Premiers
THE OUTRUN (UK/DE, Weydemann Bros.) by Nora Fingscheidt
Animation Short Films
BAIGAL NUUR – LAKE BAIGAL by Alisi Telengut (DE/CA, Alisi Telengut)
Contact:
Sylva Häutle (Head of Festival Relations & Producers Liaison)
Angela Sonntag (Head of Press & Public Relations)
