Festival Predictions

2021 Sundance Film Festival Predictions: Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins

Published on November 20, 2020

You won’t find a better Sundance ambassador than New Zealand’s Taika Waititi who has unveiled several films from his filmography in Park City. His latest Next Goal Wins would have been a sure bet for the upcoming edition but who knows what the Searchlight folks have in store. Starring Michael Fassbender, Elisabeth Moss, Kaimana, Rachel House, Rhys Darby and Armie Hammer, principal photography began in November of 2019 on a project that is based on a 2014 documentary of the same name by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison.

Gist: Written by Iain Morris and Taika Waititi, this is about Dutch-American football coach Thomas Rongen (Fassbender) who is tasked with turning the American Samoa national team, considered one of the weakest football teams in the world, into an elite squad.

Production Co./Producers: Garrett Basch, Jonathan Cavendish, Taika Waititi.

Prediction: PREMIERES

U.S. Distributor: Searchlight.

Eric Lavallée

Eric Lavallée is the founder, CEO, editor-in-chief, film journalist and critic at IONCINEMA.com (founded in 2000). Eric is a regular at Sundance, Cannes and TIFF. He has a BFA in Film Studies at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema. In 2013 he served as a Narrative Competition Jury Member at the SXSW Film Festival. He was an associate producer on Mark Jackson's This Teacher (2018 LA Film Festival, 2018 BFI London). In 2022 he served as a New Flesh Comp for Best First Feature at the 2022 Fantasia Intl. Film Festival. Current top films for 2022 include 1976 (Manuela Martelli), Godland (Hlynur Pálmason), Corsage (Marie Kreutzer), All That Breathes (Shaunak Sen).