With only two films selections it looks like Sundance’s Spotlight section is about to be snuffed out but among the pair of films programmed here we find perhaps the best sophomore feature of 2024 in Dea Kulumbegashvili‘s Venice Film Festival competition premiered April — which lands another U.S premiere after showcasing at the New York Film Festival last October. Metrograph Pictures grabbed the rights on this one.
One to One: John & Yoko by Kevin Macdonald is the other offering here. In the solo Family Matinee offering – Isaiah Saxon long-anticipated The Legend of Ochi will also go to Park City while Eugene Jarecki returns with a hot-topic The Six Billion Dollar Man for the Special Screenings offering.
One to One: John & Yoko / U.K. (Director and Producer: Kevin Macdonald, Producers: Peter Worsley, Alice Webb) –– An exploration of the seminal and transformative 18 months that one of music’s most famous couples — John Lennon and Yoko Ono — spent living in Greenwich Village, New York City, in the early 1970s. Documentary.
FAMILY MATINEE
The Legend of Ochi / U.S.A. (Director, Screenwriter, and Producer: Isaiah Saxon, Producers: Richard Peete, Traci Carlson, Jonathan Wang) — In a remote village on the island of Carpathia, a farm girl named Yuri is raised to fear an animal species known as Ochi. But when Yuri discovers a wounded baby Ochi has been left behind, she escapes on an adventure to bring him home. Cast: Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, Willem Dafoe. World Premiere. Fiction.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
The Six Billion Dollar Man / U.S.A. (Director: Eugene Jarecki, Producer: Kathleen Fournier) — Julian Assange faced a possible 175 years in prison for exposing U.S. war crimes until events took a turn in this landmark case. World Premiere. Documentary. Available online for Public.
