Sundance London 2024: Our picks of the festival, from an Irish rap comedy to Margot Robbie’s coming-of-age weepie

Other highlights from the four-day festival include Jesse Eisenberg as a sasquatch and a documentary from ‘Xena: Warrior Princess’ star Lucy Lawless

The Sundance Film Festival is returning to London in June, with a dazzling selection of what could be your new favourite movies – including a fictionalised biopic about a non-fictionalised Irish rap trio, a buzzy A24 horror about a supernatural TV show, and a coming-of-age comedy from producer Margot Robbie.

Taking place between 6 to 9 June at London’s Picturehouse Central, Sundance London will screen a curated selection of titles that previously premiered at Utah’s Sundance Film Festival in January.

The 11-film line-up is a particularly strong one this year, with films including the surreal comedy Sasquatch Sunset, with Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough in full Harry and the Hendersons drag, and Scream’s Melissa Barrera in the horror musical Your Monster. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s anticipated Robert Peace is also screening – it’s an adaptation of a book about a real-life Yale University graduate killed in an act of drug-related violence. A bonus “surprise film” is also scheduled for the fest, but won’t be revealed until the minute it begins.

Ahead of the festival, we’ve selected six films in the line-up that everyone will likely be talking about by the end of 2024 – so we’d recommend getting tickets now and making your friends very jealous.

Dìdi

There are shades of Bo Burnham’s gorgeous Eighth Grade to this pre-teen comedy-drama, which follows the funny, mortifying and occasionally heartbreaking adolescence of Chris Wang (Izaac Wang), a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American. Dìdi takes place in 2008, and the year is essential here: think instant messages, casual homophobia, Paramore on everyone’s iPods, and teenagers snooping around each other’s MySpace pages for ways to impress their crushes.

I Saw the TV Glow

Few filmmakers seem as attuned to the isolating menace of the modern internet than Jane Schoenbrun, who has followed up their 2021 cult hit We’re All Going to the World’s Fair with I Saw the TV Glow, a surreal coming-of-age horror that’s earned rapturous reviews in the US. The film – distributed by the ubiquitous A24 – revolves around two teenagers drawn together by their love of a cancelled TV show, who discover fantasy and reality blurring into one.

‘I Saw the TV Glow’, ‘Dìdi’ and ‘Kneecap’ are among the highlights of this year’s Sundance London (A24/Focus Features/Sony Pictures Classics)

Girls Will Be Girls

This Indian drama puts a unique spin on traditional coming-of-age stories, with a blossoming love affair between 16-year-olds Mira and Sri being upended by the presence of Mira’s mother Anila. Sri wishes to get into Anila’s good books in order to convince her he’s right for Mira, but his attempts to connect with her go slightly haywire. From there, an unusual emotional love triangle unfolds between mother, daughter and daughter’s boyfriend. Girls Will Be Girls has already picked up numerous accolades on the festival circuit, praised for its sensitively drawn characters and nuance – don’t be surprised to see it pop up throughout awards season next year, either.

Kneecap

The festival’s opening night film is reportedly one of the most raucous of 2024: an energetic comedy-drama inspired by the Irish rap trio Kneecap, who play lightly fictionalised versions of themselves. The film tells the story of two working-class dealers who team up with a schoolteacher to form a band, who exclusively rap in Gaelic. This is real crowd-pleaser stuff, having picked up the audience award at Sundance in January.

My Old Ass

One of the breakout hits at January’s Sundance, My Old Ass revolves around a teenage girl (Maisy Stella) who, during a mushroom trip with friends, comes face to face with her older self (Aubrey Plaza). Described in a Hollywood Reporter review as comparable to Toy Story 3 in its ability to “reduce grown-ass adults to puddles of tears”, the film stems from Margot Robbie’s production company LuckyChap, and will inevitably be one of 2024’s must-see comedies.

Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza in ‘My Old Ass’ (Amazon/MGM)

Never Look Away

This documentary on the photojournalist Margaret Moth is particularly notable as it marks the directorial debut of Xena: Warrior Princess star Lucy Lawless. Dig into Moth’s life and you can understand why the actor behind one of television’s most celebrated female heroes would be drawn to her story. Moth, who died in 2010, was a fearless camerawoman with jet-black hair, a traumatic history, a succession of lovers and jaw wounds from a sniper shooting in Sarajevo. In the wake of the success of the action film Civil War, which also explored photojournalists in the field, Never Look Away could be one of the year’s big documentary hits.

Book tickets for Sundance London here