A stepsister tells her side of the story. Two friends talk of nothing at all. And the Grim Reaper holds court at a legendary dive bar. These are just some of the literary calling cards from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which concluded in Park City, Utah this Sunday.
As usual, the famous fest played host to some of the year’s biggest indie film contenders. And also as usual, there was lots of literary inspiration happening behind the scenes. Here are all the brand new, book-inspired adaptations hopefully coming straight from Sundance to a screen near you.
Kaneza Schaal in ‘BLKNWS.’
Kahlil Joseph’s Afrofuturist essay film BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions is anchored by an encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia Africana Project, to be precise—brainchild of the late, great thinker W.E.B. DuBois.
A sweeping compendium designed to spotlight “the greatness and glory of the African and Afro-American, past and present,” DuBois’ four volume project sought to collect biography, essays, facts, and figures enough to rival the Encyclopedia Britannica and unite the diaspora. Though it was unrealized at the time of his death, three volumes were partially finished by successors.
Joseph’s ambitious and hard to categorize vision promises to be a thought-provoking feast on the strength of that inspiration alone. But if you needed another literary push, academic Saidiya Hartman is one of the film’s screenwriters.
Saray Rebolledo as La Flaca.
Rains Over Babel is ostensibly a queer retelling of Dante’s Inferno. But as Robert Daniels put it in a review for RogerEbert.com, “Spanish Colombian director Gala del Sol’s inventive feature debut is a bacchanalian fever dream” that often resists interpretation.
Featuring “talking lizards, sex dungeons, drag shows,” and other vibrant flourishes, this film evokes a few of those famous circles.
Lea Myren as Elvira.
I bet you can guess what The Ugly Stepsister is based on. Talladega Nights, anyone?
Hilarious jokes aside, know this Norwegian horror spin on the overproduced fable spins out an alternate history. As told by the under-loved stepsister, Elvira, we get a very different version of Cinderella’s big night out.
Dolores Oliverio, Luisa Merelas and Fernanda Echevarría.
Laura Casabé’s The Virgin of the Quarry Lake is an uneasy portrait of a “young woman who learns to embrace her primal, powerful anger.” And the Spanish language entry is adapted from two stories by Argentinian author Mariana Enríquez.
“El Carrito,” one of the source texts, is published in Enríquez’s Booker Prize winning 2021 collection, The Dangers of Smoking in Bed.
Ben Whishaw as Peter Hujar.
Peter Hujar’s Day, helmed by Ira Sachs and starring Rebecca Hall and Ben Whishaw, is almost exactly what it sounds like—a conversation in which the late photographer describes his previous day.
Adapted from a transcript-turned-book by the author Linda Rosenkrantz, Bilge Ebiri praised the quiet talkie in Vulture. Despite its mundane premise, “we’re witnessing the arc of time within this quiet hour.”
Benedict Cumberbatch, grieving.
A film loosely based on Max Porter’s novel Grief is the Thing With Feathers stars Benedict Cumberbatch as a grieving widower. But filmmaker Dylan Southern apparently took many liberties with the source material. This grief is short on the Emily Dickinson referents and long on horror.
Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton, dreaming.
One of the weirder literary properties to hit Park City was an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella Train Dreams. Following a Westbound logger in the early 20th century as he falls down something of a metaphysical rabbit hole, this book was frantically quoted in my circle for several years for having one of the most perfect ending passages ever. But this is to emphasize its dyed-in-the-wool literariness.
It’s not easy to imagine how Johnson’s poetic rumination will land on celluloid, but we’ll get to find out soon. This film, brought to you by the team behind current Oscar contender Sing Sing, just landed a sweet distribution deal at Netflix.
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