This year Local Lens is offering nine different screenings spread across venues in Park City, Salt Lake City and West Valley City from July 17-21.
Sundance Senior Festival Programmer Basil Tsiokos said they aim to offer a slate of movies that provide a broad look at the 2024 festival program.
“Local Lens is kind of our ability to sort of give a taste of the overall festival,” Tsiokos said. “There’s only so much you can do with nine of 10 slots, right? But we want big films. We want sort of intimate films. We want docs. We want fiction, comedies, dramas, etc.”
Sundance will be opening up Park City’s Ray Theatre twice in July for Local Lens screenings.
This year’s festival favorite, the documentary “Daughters,” will play at the Ray Thursday July 18 at 7 p.m. Distributed by Netflix, the film centers on four young girls preparing for a special Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, as part of a program in a Washington D.C. jail.
The following night the Ray will show “Your Monster,” which is a romantic comedy with elements of horror as well as a musical.
“It got a great response at the festival, and it’s just a really fun story that showcases a really fantastic actress, Melissa Berrera, and we just really fell in love with this film during the programming process,” Tsiokos said. “It adds something different to the overall lineup of Local Lens that the other films don’t necessarily have.”
The final Park City screening will be outside at City Park on Saturday, July 20 at 9 p.m. That’ll showcase the documentary “Eno,” which tells the story of musician Brian Eno.
Tsiokos said the film uses a generative engine to produce a different plot structure each showing.
“What really ends up happening is that a different version of the film will be output each time it is planned to be played somewhere,” he said.
So even if festival goers saw “Eno” in January, Tsiokos said it’ll look different at City Park.
To see the full Local Lens slate, and to register for free tickets, click here.
