Risking death to scale a skyscraper and other Sundance ’24 tales

Peter Howell

Movie Critic

It seems only natural that the most engaging film to premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival would be a vertigo-inducing doc about daredevil lovers scaling the world’s second tallest building.

“Skywalkers: A Love Story,” a doc that director Jeff Zimbalist calls an “epic ninja mission,” teeters between glory and disaster for almost all of its 100-minute run time, threatening to leave viewers in a puddle of nervous sweat.

It was sort of like that for this 40th anniversary edition of Sundance, which is struggling to find its footing after three years of pandemic restrictions forced most of the festival’s screenings online.

The fest this year “prioritized the in-person experience” with a smaller slate of films and theatre reductions, hoping to recover some magic of old. It also retained its popular online platform, but those screenings didn’t commence until a week into the 11-day event, which concluded on Jan. 28.

But Sundance programmers have excellent taste, so there was much quality cinema available online. Here’s my list of 10 favourites from the more than two dozen films (and counting) I screened before deadline:

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