The 16 Best Movies of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival
variety.comVariety’s picks for the best films we saw there. A singularly powerful exposé of the inhumanity of the American prison system.
Directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman, the film looks at life inside several Alabama facilities, where it captures not just a culture of chronic abuse but of sanctified lawlessness.
The incarcerated men deliver their eyewitness accounts through contraband cellphones, revealing the cover-up of one prisoner’s hideous murder at the hands of a guard.
We’re confronted at every turn by the prisoners’ stubborn humanity, as the nightmare they’re caught up in gathers the force of a thriller. (Read the full review by Owen Gleiberman.) Tim Key affably plays a two-time lottery winner who would do anything to bring together his favorite band, McGwyer-Mortimer, a folksy duo who have long since split up, both as musical and romantic partners — including spending a good chunk of his winnings on a private concert.
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