Films - Sundance film Festival 2022

This year's Sundance Film Festival has gone fully virtual again this year and has added two new documentary World Premieres to its packed online programme of films and events...

Press Release

The Sundance Film Festival is the flagship public program of the non-profit Sundance Institute. Throughout the year, the majority of the Institute's resources support independent artists around the world as they make and develop new work through access to Labs, direct grants, fellowships, residencies, and other strategic and tactical support.

Added to the program in the Special Screenings section are The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales directed by Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes and Phoenix Rising directed by Amy Berg.

"We’re so pleased to welcome these two dynamic films into our program,” said Kim Yutani, the Festival’s Director of Programming. “These bold, compelling, provocative documentaries tell indelible stories each from a searing first person perspective that we know will spark critical dialogue.”

Today’s additions mean that, on the 2022 Festival slate, 83 feature-length films will screen representing 28 countries, and 39 of 94 (41%) feature film directors are first-time feature filmmakers. Fifteen of the feature films and projects were supported by Sundance Institute in development through direct granting or residency labs and seventy-eight, or 91%, of the Festival’s feature films, including these two, will be world premieres. 

The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales / U.S.A. (Directors: Abigail E. Disney, Kathleen Hughes, Producers: Abigail E. Disney, Kathleen Hughes, Aideen Kane)

Abigail Disney looks at America's dysfunctional and unequal economy and asks why the American Dream has worked for the wealthy, yet is a nightmare for people born with less. As a way to imagine a more equitable future, Disney uses her family's story to explore how this systemic injustice took hold. World Premiere.

Phoenix Rising / U.S.A. (Director: Amy Berg, Producers: Kirsten Sheridan, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller)

Actress and activist Evan Rachel Wood takes her experience as a survivor of domestic violence to pursue justice, heal generational trauma, and reclaim her story in a culture that instinctively blames women. The film intimately charts her journey as she moves toward naming her infamous abuser for the first time. World Premiere. (Phoenix Rising is a two part documentary, part one will be premiering.)

The Festival will take place online at Festival.Sundance.org from January 20th–30th 2022; visit the website for more information and to book tickets for any of this year's films.