The Sundance Institute has unveiled the slate of feature films, indie episodic and New Frontier selections that will screen at the 2022 edition of the Park City festival from Jan. 20-30 – and several music-related documentaries are in the mix, including films centered around controversial pop icons Kanye West and Sinead O’Connor.
Perhaps the most attention-grabbing of the newly announced selections is jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy, a documentary described as “an intimate and empathetic chronicle featuring never-before-seen footage from 21 years in the life of a captivating figure.” Directed by Clarence “Coodie” Simmons and Chike Ozah – who have jointly directed multiple music videos for the star now known as Ye – the film will make its world premiere at the next year’s festival before debuting on Netflix at an unspecified date.
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In an era when the careers and controversies of stars including Britney Spears and Janet Jackson are being reevaluated, a new Sinead O’Connor documentary, Nothing Compares, will also screen at Sundance 2022. Directed by Kathryn Ferguson and world-premiering in the World Cinema Documentary competition, the film will shed new perspective on the career of the Irish singer-songwriter by charting her brief rise to global mega-fame “and subsequent exile from the pop mainstream” between 1987 and 1993 while considering her legacy “through a contemporary feminist lens.”
World-premiering in the U.S. Documentary competition, the film TikTok, Boom will bring festivalgoers the “personal stories of a cultural phenomenon, told through an ensemble cast of Gen-Z natives, journalists and experts alike” in considering the vide-sharing app’s brief but controversial history. Meet Me In the Bathroom, meanwhile, is described as “an immersive journey” through the New York music scene of the early 2000s. Directed by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, it’s based on the book of the same name by Lizzy Goodman and will have its world premiere as part of Sundance’s Midnight section.
Other music documentary world premieres slated for next year’s festival include Sirens directed by Rita Baghdadi (World Cinema Documentary competition), which will center its lens on “the Middle East’s first all-female metal band” as they pursue stardom; and Mija (NEXT section) directed by Isabel Castro, which documents an ambitious young music manager “whose undocumented family depends on her ability to launch pop stars.”
The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is a hybrid event that will take place in-person in Park City, Utah, online and through “satellite screens” at seven arthouse cinemas across the U.S. that will showcase a curated selection of films during the festival’s closing weekend (Jan. 28-30).
See the Sundance 2022 online film guide and schedule here. Ticket packages go on sale Dec. 17 and single tickets will be available for purchase on Jan. 6.
