Creative Commons
With eighty-two features, the 2022 Sundance Film Festival is the largest since 2018, and many of
this year’s films are worth a watch. Here are three standout films with a political bent:
Emergency, directed by Carey Williams, starts out like any other college hangout flick: with drinking, smoking, and partying. The main characters, Sean (RJ Cyler) and Kunle (Donald Elise Watkins), are two Black students at a predominantly white university. On their way home to get ready for a night of frat hopping, the two find an unconscious white girl on the floor. As two Black men, they are afraid to call the police, but they decide to help her, so they put her in their car and try to find help.
A perfect blend of comedy and drama, Emergency is a classic college party movie interwoven with references to the Black Lives Matter movement and racism in the United States.
Riotsville, USA, by director Sierra Pettengill, offers an in-depth look at racism by centering on the military’s riot management program of the late 1960s. As the story unfolds through archival footage, Pettengill gives us a curated tour through the artificial homes, streets, and shops that were used to “prepare” members of the military for actions like the Watts Rebellion and the march through Alabama from Selma to Montgomery.
Creative Commons
The military held its training in artificial towns, constructed diorama-style to allow the soldiers to play-act as rioting civilians. One notable scene depicts two officers dragging a Black person across rocks. Though it’s a simulation, the film feels real, especially when compared to the Black Lives Matter protests of today, during which tear gas is deployed, shots are fired, and protesters are met with violence from police officers.
Alice, the debut film from director Krystin Ver Linden, includes an immensely talented cast. The title refers to Keke Palmer’s lead character, a young woman who is enslaved along with her husband, Joseph (Gaius Charles), on a Georgia plantation and brutally tortured. On a hot summer day, Alice’s husband draws up an escape plan for them both, but she is forced to flee alone. Once she makes it past the forest, she doesn’t stop running until she reaches the highway. Wait, the what?
Creative Commons
Keke Palmer in "Alice"
That’s right: the film takes place in 1972, and once Alice escapes slavery, she befriends a young man named Frank (Common) who shows her how things work in Nixon-era United States. She learns how to read, studies the work of Fred Hampton and Malcolm X, and grows enough courage to return to her plantation gun in hand. The ending is great: a powerful riff on Django: Unchained in which slave owners must answer for what they’ve done.