Awards Daily tracks four captivating documentaries to come out of the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
Sundance loves a good doc. Two years ago, Fire of Love premiered on opening night of the Park City festival and started its journey to a 2023 Oscar nomination. From covering R&B icons to indictments of the Japanese government, here are some documentaries from Sundance 2024 to keep an eye on this upcoming year.
Luther: Never Too Much
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 20 years since Luther Vandross passed away at the age of 54. Dawn Porter’s documentary celebrates his incredible genius and tracks his journey from background singer to one of the most respected voices in the industry. While we frequently chatter online about deceased artists like Prince and Bowie, Vandross isn’t always in the conversation, and he should be, as one lost way too soon with a voice like no other.
The most interesting aspect of Porter’s doc is also one of its limitations. She uses great restraint in covering Vandross’s personal life and rumors about his sexuality, and yet one can’t help but wonder what he was searching for in a mate, as he mentions in interviews the desire to love and be loved in return. While it delves deep into his musical inspirations and aspirations, Luther: Never Too Much never cracks beneath the surface of his personal life, with friends even refusing to speak on the topic out of respect for Vandross. It’s beautiful camaraderie that also leaves a lot of mystery, perhaps just the way he’d like to be remembered.
Skywalkers: A Love Story
You’ve probably come across their photos or videos on Instagram—they’re rooftoppers who take insanely death-defying drone photos from the tops of spires and skyscrapers. Jeff Zimbalist’s documentary follows Angela Nikolau and Vanya Kuznetsov as two such Russian “skywalkers” who partner together on a sponsored post and fall in love. With stakes as high as war, COVID, and falling to your death for social media likes, this doc is truly a romance for our times and often feels like a narrative feature with too-the-extreme intimacy, watching Angela and Vanya fall in and out of love in real-time, sometimes a thousand feet up in the air.
Skywalkers gives total Fire of Love vibes in its depiction of two people endangering their lives for the sake of a passion no one seems to understand other than each other. It also has some interesting commentary on the gambles that come with entering such a tight-rope relationship, with two people individually willing to risk their lives for their art suddenly having to contend with the idea of the other’s death. When Angela’s friend tells her that she and Vanya “balance each other,” you realize that this is more than just a movie about trying to get a really bitchin’ photo. At times, it’s a mix of The Cutting Edge (will they be able to do the move?), Ocean’s 11 (how are they going to get into the building to climb to the top of the spire?), and The Fault in Our Stars (these two could die at any moment).
Look Into My Eyes
In the opening moments of Lana Wilson’s Look Into My Eyes, the camera focuses on a doctor as she recalls a patient she lost 20 years prior—a little girl with a gunshot wound to the head who was dead on arrival. At the end of her description of that day, she asks whether the little girl is okay—as in okay in her next spiritual plane.
Look Into My Eyes is an incredibly moving documentary that destigmatizes what it is to be a psychic and to visit one. You feel like you’re being dropped into a therapy session, with paranormal specialists and their “patients” revealing vulnerabilities and fears when asking questions about the deceased or possibly deceased (including missing animals). When you witness the client’s tears in response to a reading, you realize the extent of the therapeutic work these paranormal specialists are doing, whether you believe it’s complete bullshit or not. There’s something hopeful and human in this doc about talking to the dead.
Black Box Diaries
In 2015, Shiori Ito became the face of the #MeToo movement in Japan when she alleged that Noriyuki Yamaguchi, friend of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, drugged and raped her at a hotel. Japanese authorities were reluctant to believe her because she had “no proof” other than her word. Except she did have proof, in the form of surveillance footage showing Yamaguchi carrying a resistant Ito out of his car and practically dragging her into the hotel. She also had proof in the form of the doorman who alerted the authorities about this “incident” and was ignored.
Ito herself directs this documentary that not only puts a prominent figure on trial for rape, but the Japanese government for the attempted cover-up. One of the most devastating moments comes when Ito asks the doorman over the phone if he would be willing to risk his job to speak about this incident at her civil trial against Yamaguchi. He wholeheartedly agrees, and she weeps as he says he’s glad he was on duty that night to be of help to her. Black Box Diaries shows that when it comes to sexual assault against women, there’s typically more than one villain—there’s a band of them working together to silence good people trying to do the right thing.
