Sundance London Film Festival 2012 Highlights

This year Sundance came to London with resounding success. Frost went along and has picked out some highlights.

Extranjero by Daniel Lumb & Crinan Campbell. This won the first ever Sundance London short film award, and rightly so. Well worth a watch.

The Return (Kthimi)

An amazing short film set in Kosovo. Everyone thought he died during the war but a man returns from being a prisoner of war and his wife, who he hasn’t seen in four years along with their son, has to tell him that she kept her rapists baby. Powerful and haunting.

Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.

Weird but kind of wonderful.

Tooty’s Wedding

This short film is hilarious. Especially when the lead actress tells her husband “Yesterday a man said my breasts were a 7, which is actually quite high”.

Under African Skies by Joel Berlinger

Highly acclaimed at the festival. Paul Simon’s historic Graceland album sold millions of copies and united cultures, yet divided world opinion on the boundaries of art, politics, and commerce. On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Graceland’s release, Simon returns to South Africa for a reunion concert that unearths the turbulent birth of the album. Despite its huge success as a popular fusion of American and African musical styles, Graceland spawned intense political crossfire. Simon was accused of breaking the United Nations’ cultural boycott of South Africa, which was designed to end apartheid.

I really liked this film. Very well-made and interesting story.

The Queen of Versailles
The Queen of Versailles premiered in the U.S. Documentary Competition at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and received the U.S. Directing Award for Documentary. Sundance Institute  provided creative support for the film at the 2011 Creative Producing Summit.

A very good documentary. Worth watching.

Did you go to Sundance London? What did you think?