Sun Valley Film Festival to Celebrate First-Time Helmers and Industry Icons
variety.comNick Clement The 13th annual Sun Valley Film Festival, kicking off Feb. 28, will aim to once again to capture the spirit of storytelling by celebrating poignant films at the Idaho ski resort town.
This year’s festival kicks off with “Ezra,” directed by Tony Goldwyn and starring Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne and Robert De Niro, and concludes March 3 with a screening of “Sugarcane,” a documentary about missing children at a Native residential school that recently won a directing trophy for Emily Kassie and Julian Brave NoiseCat at Sundance.
The programming team also chose multiple films from first-time feature filmmakers, including Sophia Sabello and Pablo Feldman’s “Edge of Everything,” Annie Baker’s “Janet Planet,” Marc Marriott’s “Tokyo Cowboy,” Caroline Lindy’s “Your Monster,” while the documentary line-up includes Maggie Contreras’ “Maestra” and Lisa D’Apolito’s “Shari & Lamb Chop.” Panels and starry tributes are planned at the fest, with movies screening at the Argyros Theater in the Sun Valley Performing Arts Center. “We’re very much an extension of the community, and over the last few years, the area has given back in ways we couldn’t have expected, which has really strengthened the overall strategy of the festival,” says Teddy Grennan, executive director and SVFF co-founder, who praises the fest’s “wildly curious and educated audience.” Filmmaker Alice Gu, whose 2020 doc “The Donut King” won trophies at SXSW and Sun Valley, is back at the festival with a dynamic new short that’s based on true events. “Shimmer (Inspired by Eva Chen)” tells the story of a man who leads a double life as a doctor by day and drag performer by night.
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