“Once Upon a Time in Harlem” transports us back to 1972, when William Greaves orchestrated an afternoon gathering of the architects of the Harlem Renaissance at Duke Ellington’s apartment.

Using archival footage and reenactments interspersed with film and photos shot in Vietnam by the young men comprising the “soul patrol,” J.M. Harper crafts a backdrop of a country that was readily sending Black men to risk their lives in the jungle even as their civil rights were being disputed back home.

By Jessica Herndon
Sundance Institute and the Sundance Film Festival have always had a look and energy that signal something new is about to break through. From the modest yet integral

Even though The Weight is a period piece, don’t be surprised if the echoes of history start to get louder and more familiar as you watch the film.

For documentary storytellers Janay Boulos and Abd Alkader Habak, the sweet message behind their film, “Birds of War,” set amid the perils of the Syrian civil war, is that against all odds, love wins.

When it came to depicting the lives of misfit runaway teens in the twisted drama “BURN,” writer-director Makoto Nagahisa was determined to shoot in Tokyo locations that felt unmistakably authentic to the world he was building.

In “Rock Springs,” a woman relocates to a new town with her family following the death of her daughter’s father. While settling into their remote home, they discover something lurks amid the town’s nearby woods.

In “Kikuyu Land,” Andrew H. Brown explores a land battle in Kenya, shedding light on the legacy of the Indigenous people and the decades of mistreatment they’ve endured at the hands of a corporation profiting from their labor.