I participated and attended my first Sundance Film Festival this year. They cancelled in person attendance last minute so although everyone was looking forward to finally communing in person we had no choice but to attend the festival virtually over nine days. I focused mostly on shorts and panel discussions this year being that 2022 is my film project year. Before I forget, here are some of the standouts I saw this year (stylistically, artistic, thematically, technical) + links to artist talks and processes behind their creations.
Chilly and Milly
Exploring the director’s father’s chronic health problems, as a diabetic with kidney failure, and his mother’s role as his eternal caretaker, Chilly and Milly is a combination of 3D-modeled/composited characters, with cinéma vérité scenes from an autobiographical documentary shot over 13 years ago.
Socrates’ Adventures in the Under Ground
A Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revision of the Allegory of the Cave, Socrates’ Adventures in the Under Ground is filled with talking animals who shall be late, and bourgeois queens who would like to see you without a head, exactly as Plato intended.
Kicking the Clouds
An experimental documentary, Kicking the Clouds is centered on a 50-year-old cassette tape of a Pechanga language lesson between the director’s grandmother and great-grandmother, and contextualized by an interview with his mother in his Pacific Northwest hometown.
Bestia
Bestia portrays the life of a secret police agent during the Chilean military dictatorship. Her relationship with her dog, her body, her fears, and frustrations all reveal grim fractures in her mind and in the country.
Au Revoir Jérôme!
Having just arrived in paradise, Jerome sets out to find his wife Maryline. In the course of his search, he sinks into a surreal and colorful world in which no one seems to be able to help him.
Swallow the Universe
Swallow the Universe is a blood-and-thunder saga of a young child lost in Manchuria’s deep jungles. His sudden presence creates complete anarchy in the fauna’s primitive world, which was until then perfectly organized.
Butter Lamp
A photographer weaves unique links among nomadic families.
Night Bus
On a late-night bus, a panic scream shatters the night’s calm, a necklace is stolen, followed by a tragic and fatal road accident. The series of intriguing events that follows reveals love, hatred, and vengeance.
Zoon
Residing in a dark swamp at the bottom of a nocturnal forest, a group of gleaming axolotls pursue lustful games. The creatures relish nuzzling one another and nibbling their companions’ limbs.
hilitehead 
elaborate?