There was comedy to be found at Sundance as well. Oh, Hi!, starring Molly Gordon, who also cowrote the film, premiered to big laughs, with Gordon praising costar Logan Lerman for enduring an uncomfortable shoot: “It takes an incredible man to do this role and be tied up for an entire film.” The body-horror film Together premiered on Sunday night to screams and laughter, as real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie physically become one in filmmaker Michael Shanks’s feature directorial debut. “We were going to the bathroom together,” Franco joked. “We have some photos of that that we would send to friends,” Brie added. At the very sweet premiere of The Wedding Banquet, actor Joan Chen championed the cast’s camaraderie. “These great young people…were having so much fun on set…. They were having gummies,” she said. “They were Haribo packaged gummies,” costar Bowen Yang chimed in. “Joan heard us laugh. She assumed they were edibles!”
One of the most anticipated movies at the festival, Opus, drew a packed house for its premiere on Monday night. The film, directed by former GQ editor Mark Anthony Green and set to be released in March, is part of the A24 pantheon of “new horror.” Star Ayo Edebiri plays Ariel, who wears a Radiohead shirt in the movie; when an audience member asked her to name her favorite Radiohead song, the Emmy winner, after much thought, went with “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.”
The festival hosted its annual fundraising gala for the Sundance Institute on Friday, with honors given to Michelle Satter, founding senior director of artist programs at the Sundance Institute, and recent Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo, among others. “So many of us artists only have the drive of a wish, or a dream, to point us in the right direction,” Erivo said at the event. “The rest is sheer will to keep following those wishes and dreams, as though they were the North Stars of our personal skies—and if that makes me a visionary, then I have been, and am, surrounded by visionaries constantly, and I’m lucky and grateful for it.”
John Malkovich and Ayo Edebiri attend the Opus premiere, January 27, 2025 in Park City, Utah.Arturo Holmes/Getty Images.