Phoenix Rising | Courtesy of Sundance

Sundance Adds Docs By Berg, Disney

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Two more documentaries are heading to the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Park City fest, which is going all-virtual amid spikes of the Omicron variant, announced today that new films by Amy Berg and Abigail E. Disney and Kathleen Hughes will join the Special Screenings selections. Berg’s Phoenix Rising features actress and activist Evan Rachel Wood (Westworld, Into the Forest) in a timely portrait of survivors’ rights. Wood, a survivor of domestic abuse, puts her story at the centre of the doc as she works towards naming her abuser. Sundance will screen part one of the two-parter.

Disney and Hughes, meanwhile, explore the fallacy of the American Dream in The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales. The doc looks at systemic inequality in the USA. Both additions to the Sundance line-up are world premieres.

The new additions to the Sundance roster bring the line-up beyond gender parity, as the festival reports that 55% of features screening this year credit at least one female director. 77% of the U.S. doc competition, notably, credits female directors.

 

More info on the new additions is below:

The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales / U.S.A. (Directors: Abigail E. Disney, Kathleen Hughes, Producers: Abigail E. Disney, Kathleen Hughes, Aideen Kane) — Abigail Disney looks at America’s dysfunctional and unequal economy and asks why the American Dream has worked for the wealthy, yet is a nightmare for people born with less. As a way to imagine a more equitable future, Disney uses her family’s story to explore how this systemic injustice took hold. World Premiere.

Phoenix Rising / U.S.A. (Director: Amy Berg, Producers: Kirsten Sheridan, Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller) — Actress and activist Evan Rachel Wood takes her experience as a survivor of domestic violence to pursue justice, heal generational trauma, and reclaim her story in a culture that instinctively blames women. The film intimately charts her journey as she moves toward naming her infamous abuser for the first time. World Premiere. Phoenix Rising is a two part documentary, part one will be premiering.

Pat Mullen is the publisher of POV Magazine. He holds a Master’s in Film Studies from Carleton University where his research focused on adaptation and Canadian cinema. Pat has also contributed to outlets including The Canadian Encyclopedia, Paste, That Shelf, Sharp, Xtra, and Complex. He is the vice president of the Toronto Film Critics Association and an international voter for the Golden Globe Awards.

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