Sundance 2026 diaries

Everything television-related I watched at my first Sundance Film Festival.

Charli XCX in Overcompensating (Prime Video, S1) but also me at Sundance.

As I finished writing up this newsletter, devastating news broke that legendary actress Catherine O’Hara has passed away. A Canadian national treasure and icon, I was lucky enough to have interviewed her last year. Unsurprisingly, I found her to be the warmest, funniest, most wonderful human. I’m thinking (heartbreakingly) of her on- and off-screen families and all of the lives she’s touched with her work. A deeply upsetting piece of news on the same day as a national general strike in the United States against f*cking ICE. Stay safe and protect your hearts out there.

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It’s the Friday night kickoff of the Sundance Film Festival and I somehow find myself standing on a “red carpet” press line in Park City, Utah. I’m wearing a cow print jacket I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on (to my delight), a white tank top (festival screenings are way too warm!), sturdy brown corduroy pants, and my precious Jacques Solovière dress shoes that I kept crossing my fingers no one would step on as they squished past me through the tightly crowded rows in the Eccles Theatre where all the big Sundance premieres happen.

To my left is Rachel Sennott in some kind of indescribable iconic fluffy jacket. Alexander Skarsgård is stomping around in Valentino flip flops a few feet away from me. I’m probably still slightly blushed from speaking with Isaac Powell. I can’t remember what Kate Berlant responded to my questions with but I’m sure it was fab. I have to snap into focus, though, because I’m handing a microphone to Charli fucking XCX minutes from The Moment’s world premiere.

I can hardly really remember the blur of that day, except that I have material evidence it happened. Faced with charli xcx in a hot Saint Laurent suit, I moved through my moment of disembodiment quickly: I shoved the Is this actually happening? How did I find myself here? thoughts quickly in the recesses of my mind. There’s no point dwelling, and there’s no time to sit in fear or anxiety. There is only do, there is only snap into interviewer mode. I have had the absolute pleasure of interviewing a lot of people thus far in my writing career, actors I never thought I’d speak to, some even for this newsletter. But it never even crossed my mind that I would have a few moments with someone of Charli’s pedigree, an artist I’ve been listening to since high school (and The Moment is so good, by the way—anyone who Gets Brat will really enjoy it).

Just like that moment, Sundance was a feast of the unimaginable, an experience I won’t forget any time soon, nestled in the chilly (but very dry) snow-dusted mountains of Utah. In a moving speech at the press welcome on my first day, Amy Redford (the late Robert Redford’s daughter) told us: “I invite you to look out and up when you can. These mountains have a funny way of adding perspective.” I thought about that a lot during my time at the festival, the contrast between the grand vastness of Utah’s mountains and plains and the small, indie stories on-screen made with low budgets, capturing slice-of-life moments, with hopes and dreams that they will resonate with buyers and audiences.

I waited in many, many lines, went to roughly a dozen screenings, I reunited with Karley Sciortino who I used to write for a decade ago, I met Meredith Marks (iconic…), and as always, approached the festival in the only way I know how: As a telephile, keeping a keen eye out for anything episodic and television-related. Here are my thoughts on what I got to watch. (My interview in the Here & Queer series for CBC from my time at TIFF is up now btw if you want to watch me talk queer TV with the wonderful Peter Knegt).

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Sundance’s television premieres

Worried (Sundance Pilot Showcase)

Worried (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - This may actually be the new iteration of Girls I expected when I Love LA first premiered, directed with empathy and heart by Nicole Holofcener and written by Lesley Arfin (a former Girls staff writer) and Alexandra Tanner. We follow Jules (Gideon Adlon), a 20-something writer for a corny astrology app living in New York when her somewhat chaotic sister Poppy (Rachel Kaly) moves in unexpectedly. They have a strained but codependent relationship; Poppy is covered in anxiety hives and carries a lot of prescription medication, Jules can’t find the capacity to deal with her armchair activism.

Humming in the background and brought up often: Gaza, Ukraine, and interestingly, 9/11. Poppy bringing up Gaza and Israel multiple times in this episode caught me by such surprise that my first instinct was to feel it was being trivialized, only to realize I was probably feeling that way because Gaza is very rarely mentioned on television. I kept feeling, generally, that the American films I watched at Sundance were bizarrely apolitical considering how politically-charged our last few years have been. Worried is the first time I felt writers were actually acknowledging the impact of the world’s Horrors on our individual psyches. Leave it up to television to take that challenging charge. I am totally sold on this and hope this gets picked up for a full series order somewhere; I can see it on HBO.

Freelance (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - A friend group of creatives/aspiring content creator roommates run a scrappy production company together, with the protagonist Lance (Spence Moore II) trying to save from odd jobs to fund his movie-making aspirations. They shoot a wedding together which doesn’t go as planned. I love the way this is shot, in a square aspect ratio and a filmic soft focus, and there aren’t many TV comedies out there that specifically follow a friend group of Black men. We don’t get too much interiority on each character and the narration was a bit distracting but would love to see more.

Soft Boil (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Lulu (Camille Wormser) is an aspiring actress who gets a nannying job to keep herself afloat between self-tapes when she catches her live-in boyfriend having kinky sex with another woman. With some encouragement from her friend (The Lake’s Madison Shamoun!) she pursues new avenues after kicking him out by hooking up with a random guy at the bar—which ends up coming full circle by the end of the episode. Soft Boil is funny and goofy—Wormser’s theatre-kid energy wins you over by the end of the episode and I always welcome an off-beat existential zillennial comedy series.

Bait (Prime Video)

Bait (3 episodes) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - Riz Ahmed plays Shah Latif, an actor who’s auditioning for James Bond in this comedy that is something like I Hate Suzie meets Ramy. What’s obviously of interest is the deconstruction of how an actor of colour would be considered for the role, but it’s really Ahmed’s interiority that gives the show dimension—digging into what he’s trying to validate by pursuing this role, and the roots he has with his family. Weruche Opia is also great as his agent. Great cameos throughout that maybe I won’t spoil if you want to jump into the series when it premieres on Prime Video on March 25. Ahmed is absolutely fantastic (and also creates/writes the series).

The Story of Documentary Film (Pilot) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 - Another 15-episode docu-series arrives from Mark Cousins and his team behind The Story of Film, this time tackling the history of documentary as a medium. I really appreciated the careful art historical approach to this series, which jumps between a few different perspectives while also zooming in to perform a textual analysis of a single frame and its significance to the medium. The first episode, a broad introduction, is totally worth watching, although I didn’t leave with any urgency to see more. I was craving a punchy ending to the episode, something to pull us into the present with urgency.

The Screener (3 episodes) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Absolutely gagged me. This satirical dramedy kicks off with a heart-thumping first episode that follows a filmmaker whose indie film screener leaks, and the talent agents who may be responsible. The Screener treats the leak like an actual crime—as it should be! Extremely cathartic to watch art’s intellectual property get treated with this level of seriousness. I have a lot more to say about this series created by Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe but I will save it for something I’m writing that should be out next week. I would be shocked if this didn’t get snatched up expeditiously.

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Sundance films I watched

The Moment (dir. Aidan Zamiri)

• Bedford Park (dir. Stephanie Ahn) ⭐️⭐️1/2

• Tuner (dir. Daniel Roher) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Carousel (dir. Rachel Lambert) ⭐️⭐️

• I Want Your Sex (dir. Gregg Araki) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Moment (dir. Aidan Zamiri) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Invite (dir. Olivia Wilde) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Gallerist (dir. Cathy Yan) ⭐️⭐️

• Wicker (dir. Alex Huston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The Only Living Pickpocket in New York (dir. Noah Segan) ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• Frank & Louis (dir. Petra Volpe) ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Still on the docket via Sundance’s online offerings through to Sunday, if I have time: ROCK SPRINGS (dir. Vera Miao; Kelly Marie Tran, Benedict Wong), JOSEPHINE (dir. Beth de Araújo; Gemma Chan, Channing Tatum), HA-CHAN, SHAKE YOUR BOOTY! (dir. Josef Kubota Wladyka; Rinko Kikuchi), ARIPEO (dir. Efraín Mojica & Rebecca Zweig), PUBLIC ACCESS (dir. David Shadrack Smith)

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February television preview

⭐️ = shows I’m keen to check out

Feb 1: Vanished (MGM+, S1) ⭐️
Feb 3: Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History (PBS, S1)
Feb 8: THE ‘BURBS (Peacock, S1) ⭐️
Feb 7: Engineering Europe (Disney+, S1)
Feb 8: Lord of the Flies (BBC, S1) *no North American distribution as of yet
Feb 10: The Artful Dodger (Hulu, S2)
Feb 11: Cross (Prime Video, S2)
Feb 12: Can You Keep a Secret? (Paramount+, S1)
Feb 12: Love Story: John Kennedy (FX, S1)
Feb 12: How to Get to Heaven from Belfast (Netflix, S1) *from the creators of Derry Girls ⭐️
Feb 13: Neighbors (HBO Max, S1)
Feb 14: Dark Winds (AMC, S4)
Feb 16: Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model (Netflix, S1) ⭐️
Feb 18: 56 Days (Prime Video, S1) ⭐️
Feb 20: Dreaming Whilst Black (Paramount+, S2) ⭐️
Feb 20: Strip Law (Netflix, S1)
Feb 23: Paradise (Hulu, S2) ⭐️
Feb 23: The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (Paramount+, S1)
Feb 26: Matlock (CBS, S2B) ⭐️
Feb 26: Elsbeth (CBS, S3B)
Feb 26: Ghosts (CBS, S5B) ⭐️