Sundance Film Festival has kick-started the global string of film festivals. Showcasing independent films, this year, it features eight German co-productions, as well as movies directed by stars Ethan Hawke and Idris Elba.

Sundance Film Festival in Utah, held this year from January 18 to January 28, is renowned for offering a platform for “bold, independent storytelling,” as the Sundance Institute says on its website.

This year, Germany also boasts a selection of works selected by the largest independent film festival in the US. The advisory centre for the promotion of the country’s films worldwide lists eight German-funded films showing at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Very recently, Fatih Akin’s Golden Globe-winning and Oscar-nominated film In the Fade put a fresh spotlight on German cinema; now, lesser-known German directors are set to premiere their works at the career-launching festival.

Cleaning out the internet

The Cleaners, by directors Moritz Riesewieck and Hans Block, is running up at the World Cinema Documentary section. It is a film about people with the unusual job of scouring the internet for pornographic content and content that glorifies violence and deleting it. The documentary should interest Germans following the debate surrounding a new law that imposes fines on social networks if they do not delete illegal content.

Syrian-born Talal Derki, a director who lives in Berlin, is also set to present his work, Of Fathers and Sons, in the documentary section. The film offers a rare glimpse into the life of an Islamist fighter’s family in Syria. Derki returned to his native country to make the documentary.

A third German co-production in the documentary category, Bernadette Tuza-Ritter’s A Woman Captured, takes a look at a shocking chapter of modern slavery, presenting a portrait of a woman exploited for years without pay.

The German-US co-production The Tale by director Jennifer Fox is in contention for the US Dramatic Competition category. It’s a mother-daughter story featuring Laura Dern and Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn.

Ethan Hawke, director

The Tale is in competition with Ethan Hawke’s film, Blaze. Hawke is director and lead actor in the biographical drama about the life of Michael David Fuller, the American country singer better known by the stage name Blaze Foley, who was murdered in 1989.

Awards are handed out in two other categories at the Sundance festival: US Documentary Competition and World Cinema Dramatic Competition.

Idris Elba’s Yardie is competing in the latter category, adding yet another film directed by an internationally renowned actor. Yardie is the British actor’s directorial debut, a film about crime and drugs taking place between Jamaica and Britain.

Also competing is Holiday, the Scandinavian-Dutch co-production directed by Isabella Eklöf is a gangster tale set in Turkey.

Prestigious film festival

Now in its 34th edition, about 120 films will be showing at the Sundance Film Festival, in addition to numerous documentaries in 15 categories and about 70 short films.

Held annually in Utah’s Park City and Salt Lake City, the famous festival originally began in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival with the aim of making Utah more popular as a film location. In 1981, Hollywood star Robert Redford took over, which gave it a huge amount of publicity.

Redford, a big name in the US movie industry in the 1980s, concentrated on independent films rather than Hollywood productions—a concept that has made the festival very popular.

Since 1991, it has officially been known as the Sundance Film Festival and recognised as an international platform for international film that does not need to fall back on Hollywood glamour. Perhaps some of the German co-productions will benefit from it this year. After all, a premiere at the Sundance Film Festival is the best advertisement for a successful release at the box office.