Sundance Standouts 2017

“I must say, this year has put us to the test,” Sundance Film Festival director John Cooper confessed during the annual Park City event’s awards ceremony on January 28. “From a new government, to a women’s march that hit numbers of 8,000 — that’s in a very small town in the mountains — to power outages, to cyber attacks, to snow at record levels, we’ve all been challenged and changed these last 10 days.”

It was one for the memory books. While there was no obvious commercial break-out to emerge from this year’s Sundance screenings, there was an extremely strong slate of films, especially in the documentary categories. Submissions hit 14,000 this year, showing once again how vital Sundance exposure remains to independent filmmakers, who vied for the 187 coveted programming slots.

Pat Thomson profiles her stand-outs: Machines, Last Men in Aleppo, Strong Island (pictured), Frantz, and Their Finest. [...]