Belcourt Theatre is an official Satellite Screen partner for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Hurry and get your tickets! How It Ends, Jockey, The Blazing World, Together Together and Judas and the Black Messiah have already sold out. The others will soon follow!

Wednesday, January 27th at 7pm – Join the Belcourt Theatre and Nashville Filmmakers Guild for a casual virtual mixer to kick off Sundance 2021. We’ll talk about how we worked and what we learned during the challenging days of 2020, and how we’re approaching work and life in the new year. A panel of guests will start and we’ll follow with small-group speed networking. It’s festival party talk with purpose and a time limit! Open to anyone working in any capacity in the film industry. Guest speakers include filmmakers Max Butler, Lesa Dowdy, Clarke Gallivan and Jama Mohamed.

Thursday, January 28th – Wednesday, February 3rd – Sundance Beyond Film: Ekprhastic Sundance: Poetic Responses to Film – Ekphrastic poems are those that respond to other works of art. Whether they’re odes, tributes or conversations, they can reveal new dimensions of the original work. To celebrate Sundance 2021, Nashville poets Tiana Clark and Ciona Rouse wrote poems responding to favorite films from Sundance’s past. This will be available Thu-Wed, Jan 28-Feb 3 on their YouTube channel.

Thursday, January 28th – Wednesday, February 3rd – Sundance Beyond Film: Shop Talk: Diversifying Your Film Crew – discussion with Nashville-based filmmakers Christin Baker, Meleisha Edwards, Mark D. Jackson and Gabby Woodland. A pre-recorded event from October 2020, in conjunction with Nashville Filmmakers Guild. In a tight-knit film community, filmmakers often hire the same crew again and again, perpetuating significant racial and gender inequities in the industry. Four Nashville filmmakers share their experiences with hiring and getting hired, noting that a variety of backgrounds and perspectives is a film project’s secret to success. This will be available Thu-Wed, Jan 28-Feb 3 on their YouTube channel.

Friday, January 29th at 6pm – How It Ends – On the day an asteroid is scheduled to obliterate Earth, freewheeling Liza (Zoe Lister-Jones) scores an invite to one last wild gathering before it all goes down. Making it to the party won’t be easy, though, after her car is unceremoniously stolen, and the clock is ticking on her plan to tie up loose ends with friends and family. With a little help from her whimsical younger self (Cailee Spaeny), Liza embarks on a journey by foot across Los Angeles as she seeks to make peace with her regrets—and find the right company for those last few hours.

Alum writer/directors Daryl Wein (White Rabbit) and Zoe Lister-Jones (Band Aid) assemble an impressive all-star cast—including Helen Hunt, Olivia Wilde, Fred Armisen, Lamorne Morris, and Nick Kroll—for this uproarious and charming pre-apocalyptic comedy. Both playful and empowering, How It Ends channels the kind of optimistic nihilism we could all use more of right now. The end of the world may be coming, but no one anticipated it could be this much fun.

Friday, January 29th at 8:45pm – The Most Beautiful Boy in the World – Björn Andrésen was 15 when he starred as Tadzio opposite Dirk Bogarde in Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Death in Venice. A year later, during the film’s Cannes premiere, Visconti proclaimed Andrésen to be “the world’s most beautiful boy.” A comment that might have seemed flattering at the time became a burden that tainted Andrésen’s life.

Through a fascinating mix of archival footage and contemporary interactions with Andrésen, co-directors Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri explore the nature of overnight stardom and the objectification that sometimes comes with it. Andrésen, now in his 60s, bravely opens up about the irresponsible treatment he was subjected to and how the “curse of beauty” distorted his formative years. Being immortalized as an iconic boy meant that Andrésen spent most of his adult life trying to be invisible, refusing to have his identity shaped by a shallow fantasy about who he was. The Most Beautiful Boy in the World is a thoughtful and quietly devastating meditation on obsession, trauma, and the cost of fame.

Saturday, January 30th at 6pm – Mass –Imagine the most dreaded, tense, and emotionally draining interaction you could find yourself in and multiply it by 10. That is exactly what two sets of parents—Richard (Reed Birney), Linda (Ann Dowd), Jay (Jason Isaacs), and Gail (Martha Plimpton)—are facing. Years after a tragedy caused by Richard and Linda’s son tore all their lives apart, Jay and Gail are finally ready to talk in an attempt to move forward.

In his impressive screenwriting and directorial debut, acclaimed actor Fran Kranz ponders ways in which people process grief, look for answers, and find the strength to persevere. Kranz uses the formal confines of this chamber piece to his advantage, creating tension and ambience filled with awkwardness from the outset. Much of this film’s emotional impact lies in its rigor, impeccable direction, and stunning performances from all members of the cast. Mass is a thoughtful, beautifully executed ode to humanity—in all its flawed and messy glory.

Saturday, January 30th at 9pm – Bring Your Own Brigade –Raging, out-of-control wildfires have become part of the new normal around the globe, leaving heartbreaking devastation and death in their wake. In California, this harsh reality was underscored on November 8, 2018, when several parts of the state were ablaze—the Camp Fire destroying most of the Northern California town of Paradise and the Woolsey Fire roaring through Malibu in the south. In the aftermath, residents face unthinkable loss. As they struggle to rebuild, they debate what could be done to prevent further tragedy.

Filmmaker Lucy Walker (The Crash Reel, 2013 Sundance Film Festival) wonders if it has to be this way. She digs into the surprising history and complex range of causes of uncontrolled fires—from climate change and ill-considered fire suppression policies to the influence of wealthy corporate interests. Her film reveals how responsibility continually gets shifted, with ordinary people left suffering the dangerous consequences. Bring Your Own Brigade cogently exposes our out-of-balance relationship with nature and explores what it will take to restore this delicate equilibrium.

Sunday, January 31st at 6pm – Jockey – Seasoned horse jockey Jackson (Clifton Collins Jr.) has weathered decades of races on the riding circuit, but he now finds himself facing what could be his last season as his health deteriorates. With the help of Ruth (Molly Parker) and a promising new horse, Jackson starts to prepare for the upcoming championship. His plans take a left turn when a budding young jockey (Moisés Arias) shows up and claims to be his son. Caught between yearning for a connection and uncertainty about his own future, Jackson confronts difficult questions regarding his legacy.

Shot at a live racetrack and with a keen eye for veracity, Jockey gives us an achingly personal window into a world we’ve never seen up close before, where fortunes are flipped upside down from one moment to the next and the freedom of riding comes at a grueling physical price. Collins delivers an intimately layered performance guided by director Clint Bentley, whose own experiences imbue authenticity and naturalism into this moving portrait of a sport unlike any other.

Sunday, January 31st at 9pm – The Blazing World – Ever since Margaret (Carlson Young) was six years old, she has been haunted by the memory of watching her sister drown during an explosive fight between her parents. As a young woman, she slides further into her twisted inner life, ultimately finding herself on the brink of suicide. Through an epic journey down the smokiest and scariest corridors of her imagination, she tries to exorcise the demons pushing her closer and closer to the edge.

The Blazing World is Carlson Young’s debut feature; it is based on her short of the same name, which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Young brings to life in striking vibrancy an internality that is at once darkly beautiful and entirely terrifying. Blending horror and fantasy, this film is imaginative and gutsy, painting Margaret’s inner life as at once an alien realm and a devastatingly familiar emotional landscape. Manifesting her trauma through a series of lusciously unnerving locations and moving, bizarre interactions, Young unearths something often quietly, privately buried in our struggles toward the light.

Monday, February 1st at 6pm – Judas and the Black MessiahFred Hampton’s cathartic words “I am a revolutionary” became a rallying call in 1969. As chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, Hampton demanded all power to the people and inspired a growing movement of solidarity, prompting the FBI to consider him a threat and to plant informant William O’Neal to infiltrate the party. Judas and the Black Messiah not only recounts Hampton’s legacy and the FBI’s conspiring but also gives equal footing to the man who became infamous for his betrayal—highlighting the systems of inequality and oppression that fed both of their roles.

Director Shaka King returns to the Sundance Film Festival with an incredible cast of Sundance alums led by Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield. Kaluuya channels Hampton’s ability to energize and unite communities, while Stanfield taps into the anguish of a man with conflicting allegiances. Dominique Fishback also stands out in her reserved yet confronting performance as Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s life partner. King’s magnetic film carries themes that continue to resonate today and serves as a reminder of the potent power of the people.

Tuesday, February 2nd at 7pm –Calling all Belcourt Drive-In and virtual Sundance attendees! Join them via Zoom for a casual download of the films we saw at Sundance 2021. Pour a warm beverage and share your favorites. RSVP to this event here.