Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg on the program for the next Sundance festival with artificial intelligence in their sights

The film festival created by Robert Redford will take place from January 18 to 28, 2024 in the Utah resort more than 2,000 meters above sea level. On the program, 90 independent films and documentaries.

Artificial intelligence, as a technology and 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 traditional independent film festival, unveiled Wednesday December 6, 2023, includes a musical film “generative” 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.

Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg

Some 90 programs have been selected for this 2024 edition, from January 18 to 28, 2024, 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 films that will be the most talked about during the festival”.

In Love Lies Bleedingthe former star of Twilight plays a gym manager whose relationship with a bisexual bodybuilder goes awry. She is also featured in Love me, film mysteriously presented as a love story “between a buoy and a satellite” in a post-human world.“I won’t say any more,” quipped the director of programming at AFP. “That’s all we knew about this movie before we pressed play.” Jesse Eisenberg is also starring twice: as director and actor in A Real Pain and as an actor in Sasquatch Sunsettwo films with family ties as a backdrop.

Avatars and Brian Eno multiplied

Among the films that will be shown in Park City, in the mountains of Utah, Eno explores the career of musician Brian Eno through a “generative engine” which offers an almost infinite number of versions of the film by assembling from hundreds of possible scenes.“A film that is never the same twice… It’s something new”, emphasized new festival director Eugene Hernandez. This innovative bio-doc also elevates the documentary form to make it a permanent algorithmic performance.

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.

Wild and political beauty

In The OutrunIrish-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 Hitman, the story of a somewhat prim professor who turns into a fake assassin, and the documentary series God Save Texasportrait 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 who must respond to a coup d’état after a disputed election. “It’s clearly 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.”