Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes is the only Indian film to premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. It will also compete in the World Cinema Documentary category, according to the lineup announcement on Friday by the Sundance Institute, curator of the US film festival.
The 82-film lineup includes 75 world premieres. The 37th edition of the Sundance festival is scheduled to be held from January 20 to January 30, 2022.
“Brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have made it their life’s work to care for the injured black kites,” reads the festival’s official synopsis of All That Breathes. “The social unrest that begins to materialise in the streets is seen through the perspectives of the brothers and their family, as well as the insects and animals that share the urban landscape.”
Delhi-based filmmaker Sen’s first feature-length documentary was Cities of Sleep (2016), which was also shown at various major film festivals and won six international documentary awards.
Sen is the recipient of the IDFA Bertha Fund (2019), the Sundance Documentary Grant (2019), the Catapult Film Fund (2020), and the Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund (2020).
The 82 films showing at Sundance 2022 were selected from 14,849 submissions, including 3,762 feature-length films. Of the 3,762 feature film submissions, 1,652 were from the US and 2,110 were from around the world.
The festival will open with Sam Green’s 32 Sounds, while eight feature films will play over the closing weekend. Some eagerly anticipated movies at the festival include The Worst Person In the World, which is also Norway’s official entry for the Oscars, and Amy Poehler’s Lucy and Desi.
As announced in August, the 2022 edition of the festival will follow a hybrid model, that is, it will take place both in-person and online. Virtual screenings were introduced during the pandemic in 2021.
The Sundance institute has also partnered with seven satellite screens, independent arthouse theatres across the US that will screen the 82 films. Each satellite screen will show selections from the festival’s official program during the closing weekend, January 28 to 30.
Meanwhile, in-person screenings will be held at the Sundance Mountain Resort in addition to Park City, in Utah.
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In September, the Sundance institute announced that all attendees will have to be fully vaccinated at least two weeks prior to travelling to the festival. Masks will also be mandatory in both interior and outdoor spaces, as part of the Covid-19 protocol.
The previous edition of Sundance had two Indian films, Fire in the Mountains and Writing with Fire, entered into competition. Writing with Fire won the Audience Award in the World Cinema Documentary category and the World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award (Impact for Change), and it is currently in the run for Oscars 2022 as well.