The day before: Catch up on some advance reading before the 2021 Sundance Film Festival starts

The 2021 Sundance Film Festival launches, on a digital platform rather than among the snowy mountains around Park City, on Thursday.

Before it starts, though, please look through these stories I wrote in preparation for the festival:

• Would Sundance ever leave Park City? Some folks in the Utah ski town wonder if this year’s festival — online most everywhere, with a few “satellite screens” around the country — might get Sundance thinking in that direction. Here’s my article about the likelihood of that happening.

• How is Park City’s economy going to fare without Sundance coming to visit? I talked to businesses and nonprofits about how they’re coping. (Along with that: A timeline of the intertwined histories of Sundance and Park City.)

• The COVID-19 pandemic prompted Sundance to change how it presents this year’s films — and it seeped into some of the films themselves.

• So, in the words of David Byrne, how do I work this? Some tips for navigating the digital Sundance.

• What should you watch? Here are 10 titles that look promising.

• And, if you missed them, here are the announcements of the festival’s non-movie programming, and the members of the festival’s juries.