Artificial intelligence, as a technology and as a theme, will be the center of attention in January at the Sundance film festival in the US Rockies, alongside Hollywood stars like Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg. The program of this independent film festival, unveiled on Wednesday, includes a “generative” musical film offering a different version each time it is broadcast and documentaries about people wanting to use artificial intelligence (AI) to communicate with loved ones after death .
“AI is going to be an interesting part of the festival this year,” its programming director Kim Yutani assured AFP. “In preparing for the festival, it was striking how she kept coming up in the films and our discussions.” Already very present in the film industry, this technology and its consequences were at the heart of the demands of the screenwriters’ and actors’ unions during their respective strikes, which seized up the Hollywood machine for several months this year.
Among the films that will be screened in Park City, in the mountains of Utah, Eno explores the career of musician Brian Eno thanks to a “generative engine” which offers an almost infinite number of versions of the film by making assemblages from hundreds of possible scenes. “A film that is never the same twice… It’s something new,” said new festival director Eugene Hernandez.
Still in the vein of AI, Love Machina is a documentary that follows the efforts of a couple to perpetuate the love that binds them beyond their death, by transferring their consciousness to a humanoid called Bina48, while Eternal You follows start-ups that want to create avatars that people would use, for a fee, to stay in touch with their loved ones after their death.
Some 90 programs have been selected for this 2024 edition, from January 18 to 28, of the festival co-founded by Robert Redford, including 85 world premieres. Among them, two feature films with Kristen Stewart, which Kim Yutani predicts will be “two of the most talked about films during the festival”. In Love Lies Bleeding, the former Twilight star plays a gym manager whose relationship with a bisexual bodybuilder goes awry. She is also starring in Love me, a film mysteriously presented as a love story “between a buoy and a satellite” in a post-human world. “I won’t say any more,” said the programming director. “That’s all we knew about this movie before we pressed play.”
Jesse Eisenberg also stars twice: as director and actor in A Real Pain and as actor in Sasquatch Sunset, two films with family ties as a backdrop. In The Outrun, Irish-American actress Saoirse Ronan plays an alcoholic who leaves London for the wild beauty of the Scottish archipelago of Orkney.
Director Richard Linklater will present Hit Man, the story of a somewhat staid professor who turns into a fake assassin, and the documentary series God Save Texas, a portrait of his hometown, Huntsville, where there is a huge penitentiary.
A few months before the presidential election in the United States, and a few days after the first Republican primaries in Iowa, the documentary War Game will bring to the screen an unscripted role-playing game involving real American officials having to react to a coup after a disputed election. “It’s definitely disturbing to know that these games can be very close to reality,” remarked Eugene Hernandez. “In this election year, this type of subject will allow for more in-depth debates.”