Yes, You Can Attend the Sundance Film Festival From Your Sofa This Year!

Day Trip: Day Package ($100)​

Attendees gain access to a single day from Jan. 22 to 28. That's four tickets in one day (really as much as I can ever consume in a festival day without succumbing to emotional overload), plus the advantages of the Explorer Pass (described below). ​​

Investigate the Fringe: Explorer Pass ($50)​

Even through the portal, viewers can wander off the beaten path throughout the entire festival. This pass, the only one available to international viewers, includes selections in the New Frontier, Indie Episodic and Short Film programs.​​

Catch a Flick: Single Film Ticket ($20)

​The chosen film will be at a specific day and time — and you’ll forever be able to say you attended Sundance with the cool kids. (You can apply your single ticket to the award-winner screenings.)

Still wondering which package is best for you? Sundance has a helpful graph for that, and the full program is here.​​

Six movies to put at the top of your Sundance Film Festival 2022 watch list ​​

Need a few hints? Here are a half-dozen movies for grownups titles to launch your festival adventure.​​​​​​​​​

Calendar Girls​

The world premiere of a documentary about a Florida dance troupe of over-60s who see a second coming-of-age period in retirement worth dancing about in this life-affirming story. ​

Check it out: Calendar Girls

The Exiles​

Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Christine Choy, 70, is the subject of this world competition documentary. She interviews a trio of exiled dissidents who survived the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre — including never-before-seen footage she shot for her abandoned film on the subject.​

Check it out: The Exiles

When You Finish Saving the World​

Julianne Moore, 61, plays the domestic-violence-shelter-running mother of a folk-singing teen (Stranger Things’ Finn Wolfhard) in this family dramedy from Jesse Eisenberg in his directorial debut. Moore also produced.​

Check it out: When You Finish Saving the World

Call Jane​

Award-winning Carol writer and director Phyllis Nagy, 59, cast Elizabeth Banks, 47, in the lead in a period drama set in 1968 Chicago. If follows one ordinary woman’s encounter with the Jane Collective, the underground network of abortion services organized by community women. Sigourney Weaver, 72, also stars.​

Check it out: ​​​Call Jane

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul​

Regina Hall, 51, pairs off with Sterling K. Brown, 45, for a broad satire on Southern Baptist megachurches and their leaders, written and directed by Adamma Ebo and produced by her twin, Adanne, based on their short film. ​

Check it out: Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul​​​​​

A Love Song​

Native American Wes Studi, 74, and Dale Dickey, 60, star in Max Walker-Silverman’s mountain-set romance about widowed, long-separated childhood crushes who get a second chance to connect for a night in the wilderness.​

Check it out: A Love Song

Coming to a theater (maybe?) near you! ​​

Even though the festival itself is entirely virtual, some films will be rolling in person from Jan. 28 to 30 at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival Satellite Screens, which includes: a/perture cinema (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), Amherst Cinema (Amherst, Massachusetts), Digital Gym Cinema (San Diego), Indie Memphis (Memphis, Tennessee), mama.film (Lawrence, Kansas), Northwest Film Forum (Seattle) and SNF Parkway Theatre, home of the Maryland Film Festival (Baltimore).​​

Be independent, stay safe and join the virtual festival herd.

Thelma M. Adams, the former film critic for Us Weekly and the New York Post, is a novelist who writes on film for AARP, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.