Sundance review: 'Predators' asks big questions about TV and internet exploitation, but the answers are more elusive.

Director David Osit’s documentary “Predators” is a surprisingly thoughtful examination of one particularly seedy corner of television and internet culture: The “Dateline NBC” series “To Catch a Predator.”

The series rode in on the wave of fears about child sexual predators online — and, one might argue, exacerbated those fears — with a simple formula. A TV crew, aided by a nongovernmental justice organization, would monitor web chats between older men and a decoy young person. (The decoys, both men and women, were adults but looked and sounded younger.) At a certain point, the decoy would make contact to get the guy to meet at a house. The decoy would be there, and so would NBC reporter Chris Hansen, carrying a sheaf of printouts of the guy’s sex-filled texts. The guy would eventually leave, only to find law officers outside, waiting to arrest him.

Hansen did this dozens of times over the series’ run, from 2004 to 2007. The show became a cultural phenomenon and made Hanson famous, landing him on “Oprah,” “Jimmy Kimmel” and “The Simpsons.” Reruns ran on MSNBC for years after the show ended, and can be found online to this day.

What “To Catch a Predator” did for the cause of ending online sexual exploitation of minors is more murky. As Osit details, some prosecutors opted not to pursue charges against the accused abusers Hanson cornered, because the TV confessions made it difficult to make an open-and-shut case. Then there was the former county assistant D.A. in Texas, who backed out of meeting his decoy and, when the cops came to the D.A.’s house, died by suicide.

The middle section of Osit’s film introduces us to a YouTube personality who gets attention and clicks for copying the “To Catch a Predator” model — though without Hansen’s more stringent protocols or the same law-enforcement support.

And in the third chapter, Osit goes to the source, for a sit-down interview with Hansen, now 65 and anchoring a similar show for a cop-centric YouTube channel.

Osit — who directed, wrote, edited and shot the movie — explains deep into the movie why this issue, and specifically “To Catch a Predator,” are so personal to him, so we understand why so much intellectual scrutiny is being placed on a TV show. But his approach is even-tempered and stridently fair to all parties, including Hansen. 

“Predators” seeks answers about whether a public service can also be entertainment. Osit’s exploration may not get those answers, but the way he asks the questions is illuminating.

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‘Predators’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Sunday, January 26, 8:10 p.m., Redstone 2, Park City; Monday, January 27, 6 p.m., Broadway 3, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 6 p.m., Redstone 4, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for thematic material involving child sexual abuse. Running time: 96 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Atropia' is an uneven satire of war and commerce, with a warm and hilarious central performance by Alia Shawkat

With ambition that outpaces its execution, writer-director Hailey Gates’ war satire “Atropia” takes aim at the brain fog of war but is shooting blanks more often than not.

The opening scene shows a U.S. Army squad in an unnamed Iraqi village in 2006, with the soldiers coming upon an abandoned pickup truck that they suspect is holding an explosive device. Their suspicions are correct, and the device detonates, causing chaos all around. Then a voice over a PA system can be heard overhead — and it becomes clear that this is a simulation, with actors, sound effects and fake explosions.

Welcome to Atropia, a camp in the California desert where wartime scenarios can be re-created for training purposes. There’s even a promo video that explains to clients that the camp’s proximity to Hollywood means they can hire professional actors, special effects technicians and makeup artists.

None of the actors in Atropia takes the job more seriously than Farhuz (Alia Shawkat), an Iraqi American actor who espouses Method techniques and leads her castmates in breathing exercises. She also bargains with the other actors to get choice assignments when visitors come to the camp — because they could be somebody famous or influential.

When a big-time Hollywood actor is rumored to be coming to Atropia, Farhuz trades cigarettes and ramen with one actor, Maria (Shaholly Ayers), to get a plum role as a mustard-gas chemist — and makes sure one of the soldiers knows where to look for her, so she can get her big scene.

Farhuz’ actions catch the notice of a new player, Abu Dice, an insurgent leading the native Atropians to fight against the Army forces. Abu Dice turns out to be a soldier, Tanner (Callum Turner), recently deployed in Iraq, who’s working to give the soldiers a realistic view of what they’ll be up against in Iraq.

What no one — the “insurgents,” the soldiers, or the military and corporate bosses (represented by Tim Heidecker and Chloë Sevigny) — sees coming is Farhuz and Tanner falling for each other.

Gates, who developed the script with Shawkat in mind, has a ton of good ideas rattling around this movie, about the absurdity of preparing for an Iraq invasion — particularly when the soldiers know, if they think about it, that attacking a country that didn’t have anything to do with 9/11 doesn’t make a lot of sense.

But Gates has a harder time wrangling these ideas into a movie that’s consistently sharp and funny. It has its moments — particularly when a couple of soldiers take Farhuz and Abu Dice hostage, using methods as murky as those the other side does.

The shining light is Shawkat, a comedic dynamo who takes this rare chance at carrying a movie and runs with it. For all its faults, “Atropia” shows the world that Shawkat is a star and a romantic lead, and deserves more chances to show her stuff.

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‘Atropia’

★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Sunday, January 26, 7:30 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Monday, January 27, 9 p.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, January 29, 8:15 a.m., Library, Park City; Friday, January 31, 9 p.m., The Ray, Park City; Saturday, February 1, 5:45 p.m., Broadway 3, Salt Lake City; Sunday, February 2, Redstone 1, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for sexual situations, simulated violence, and strong language. Running time: 102 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Brides' is a sensitive, harrowing tale of two Muslim teens running away from the UK to chase a fantasy

The drama “Brides” is an absorbing look at two immigrant teen girls so intent on escaping the pain of their current lives that they’re lured by false promises to what everyone watching knows will be a worse horror. 

Fardosa (Ebada Hassan) is from Somalia. Muna (Safiyye Ingar) and her family come from Pakistan. They are classmates in a school in Wales. As the only Muslim students, they get a barrage of racist taunts every day. Fardosa — whom Muna calls Doe — wears a hijab to school and is reserved. Muna doesn’t wear anything to cover her hair, and her brash talk gets her in trouble with teachers and other students.

The movie starts with Doe and Muna dressed like any typical U.K. student, but it’s for show. They’re running away from home, and they don’t want to draw suspicions when they buy plane tickets to Istanbul. They’re following instructions they got online, to make their way to Syria — where, they’ve been told, they will be welcomed as Muslim princesses.

Once in Istanbul, though, the teens’ plans run into obstacles. The contact they’re supposed to meet at the airport never shows, so they decide to buy bus tickets to a town near the Syrian border. Doe later realizes her passport and money are missing, so they go back to the ticket clerk at the bus station (Cemre Ebuzziya), who invites them to stay with her family overnight. 

Along the way, director Nadia Fall and screenwriter Shayla El-Bushra provide glimpses of Doe and Muna’s lives that led up to this decision. We meet Doe’s mother, Khadijah (Yusra Warsama), a non-Muslim who endures an abusive boyfriend. We see Muna come home from school bloodied from a fight, and see her parents’ disturbing reactions. 

What’s fascinating about “Brides” is how Fall and El-Bushra subtly hint at what might await these girls in Syria — with a carefully ratcheted sense of dread — while putting the focus on the relationship between Doe and Muna. It’s clear how deep and strong their friendship is, but also how taking this leap toward what they hope is freedom takes its toll. The result is a quietly moving chronicle of teen female camaraderie, pushed to the ultimate limits.

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‘Brides’

★★★1/2

Screening in the World Cinema Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Saturday, January 25, 8:50 p.m., Redstone 3, Park City; Monday, January 27, 7 p.m., Broadway 6, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 4 p.m., Holiday 1, Park City; Sunday, February 2, 9:30 p.m., Redstone 4, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for language, some violence and sexual material. Running time: 93 minutes; in English, and Turkish with subtitles.

Sundance review: 'Prime Minister' presents a deeply personal portrait of Jacinda Ardern, as she led New Zealand and raised a baby

In politics as in documentary filmmaking, access is everything — and “Prime Minister” directors Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz get extraordinary access and use it to create a fascinating, emotional portrait of former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

The main narrative runs from 2017, when Ardern suddenly ascended to the leadership of New Zealand’s Labour Party, just two months before a general election, to her somewhat surprise resignation in 2023. In between, Ardern faced and answered a series of crises that would humble any world leader.

She spoke at the United Nations in 2018, urging global cooperation in the face of Donald Trump’s isolationism. There was the mass shooting at a mosque in Christchurch in 2019, in which 50 people were killed — and prompted Ardern to become her country’s mourner-in-chief, and then push for a nationwide ban on assault weapons. 

The biggest crisis came in 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic. Ardern oversaw a national shutdown, and closed her country’s borders — a move that, for awhile, allowed New Zealand to avoid the worst of the pandemic’s first wave. As the pandemic continued, Ardern led the efforts to get her citizens to get the vaccine, which caused a backlash from a minuscule but loud far-right protest movement, which unfurled misinformation and Trump flags in front of Parliament. (Of all the things the United States could export, why that?)

Oh, and just as she took office in 2017, Ardern found out she was pregnant. Her daughter, Neve, grows into the movie’s scene-stealer.

Walshe and Utz have footage from deep inside Ardern’s campaign, government and home life. Her then-partner, and now husband, broadcaster Clarke Gayford, started shooting footage on his phone when Ardern was named to lead the Labour Party, and kept getting the view from inside the house for years after. The film also had access to audio diaries Ardern recorded over the years, part of an oral history project that usually doesn’t release its clips until the subject dies. All told, the filmmakers said, they had 200 hours of material to comb through.

What Walshe and Utz produce is both expansive and intimate,covering not just Ardern’s politics but her personal side — from the security dangers the wing nut protesters put her family through to her deep interest in the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, who serves as a metaphor for a leader making hard decisions to keep people alive.

“Prime Minister” presents a strong argument that the test of leadership isn’t what a leader plans to do, but what a leader does when the unexpected comes. Based on the evidence of history and this engaging documentary, Ardern clears the bar with room to spare.

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‘Prime Minister’ 

★★★1/2

Screening in the World Cinema Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Saturday, January 25, 4 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Sunday, January 26, 11:30 a.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 5:45 p.m., Library, Park City; Friday, January 31, 4 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language snd mild breastfeeding scenes. Running time: 102 minutes.

Sundance review: 'André Is an Idiot' is a scathingly funny and humane look at an irascible cancer patient's health battle

Director Tony Benna’s “André Is an Idiot” is a documentary for those of us who have seen hundreds of movies about someone fighting back against cancer with nobility and poise — and chucks it all in the crapper and says, “Screw that.”

The person going through cancer here is André Ricciardi, an iconoclastic San Francisco advertising guy whose mind is as full and as unkempt as the massive halo of gray hair around his head. The hair was one of the first things to go when, in 2020, André was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. The movie gets its title from the comment his mother made when she learned of the diagnosis — that colon cancer is easy to spot, and that André was an idiot for not getting a colonoscopy earlier.

André’s story starts in 1995, with his marriage to Janice, a bartender at his favorite bar who needed to marry someone for two years to get her green card. What started as a bit of a joke — and a way for Andre to get free drinks — eventually blossomed into true love and resulted in two daughters, Tallula and Delilah, who were 19 and 14 when André got his diagnosis. 

Since André didn’t do parenthood in the normal way — bedtime reading for his girls was “Halter Skelter,” the book about the Manson family — he’s determined not to be normal in fighting cancer. And while Benna chronicles André’s exploits with chemotherapy, the movie also shows André’s devotion to smoking pot and cracking jokes about dying, both to Janice and to his best pal, Lee. 

Benna honors André’s irreverence by following in kind. Some of the hospital misadventures are depicted with dolls in stop-motion animation. And when André decides that his father would never in a million years appear in a documentary like this, Benna finds a hilarious and apt alternative (which I wouldn’t spoil for all the money in the world).

Avoiding poignancy in a cancer journey is as impossible as cheating death itself. Benna shows us André’s tenacity, Janice’s weary work as his caregiver, and their daughters’ quite mature understanding that their dad won’t be here for long. By avoiding the cliches of a cancer documentary, injecting André’s subversive humor and irascible charm, “André Is an Idiot” hits the heart more squarely than you expect.

(Also, if you don’t see this movie and then make an appointment for a colonoscopy, you really are an idiot.)

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‘André Is an Idiot’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Saturday, January 25, 11 a.m., Redstone 4, Park City; Sunday, January 26, noon, Broadway 3, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 1:10 p.m., Redstone 2, Park City; Saturday, February 1, 11:55 p.m., The Ray, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for language and drug use. Running time: 88 minutes.

Sundance review: "Twinless" is a dark comedy about twins and death, topped by an outrageous performance by writer-director James Sweeney

How much enjoyment a viewer gets from “Twinless” is dependent on how much you can tolerate the character of Dennis — played by the film’s writer-director, James Sweeney, as what can best be described as a “Napoleon Dynamite” vibe, if Napoleon were gay and a bit psycho.

Sweeney’s character, Dennis, doesn’t open the movie. That place is held by Roman (Dylan O’Brien), a guy from Idaho who acknowledges that he’s “not the brightest tool in the shed.” We first see Roman at a funeral for his gay twin brother, Rocky (played by O’Brien in flashbacks), who died in an auto-pedestrian accident in Portland.

After the funeral, Roman and his scowling mom (Lauren Graham), are trying to go through Rocky’s things in his Portland, Ore., apartment. Roman decides he’s going to stay in Portland awhile, get a job, and try to figure out life without his twin. Roman even joins a support group for people who have lost their twin — which is where he meets Sweeney’s Dennis, who tells the group about his twin, Dean.

That all happens n the first 15 minutes, before the film’s title appears on the screen. This is where Sweeney starts telling Dennis’ side of the story — about which I will try to say little, to keep from spoiling the twists of this sometimes bizarre comedy.

I will say that Roman and Dennis become friends through the support group, and start hanging out together — which is how Roman meets Dennis’ co-worker Marcie (Aisling Franciosi). A romance blooms, which is good news for Roman and Marcie but bad news for Dennis, who fears it will infringe on his friendship.

Sweeney creates a singular character whose insecurities and his talent for turning small problems into big ones will make you laugh and cringe, often at the same time. Ccrazy as some of the turns Sweeney navigates are, O’Brien doesn’t just hang on for the ride — but adds an underlying menace when Roman demonstrates his hot temper. 

“Twinless” may leave a few audience members out in the cold. For those with an appetite for a comedy that takes a few risks, “Twinless” is a challenge worth exploring..

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‘Twinless’

★★★

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Friday, January 24, 7 p.m., The Ray, Park City (replacing the canceled “BLKNWS: Terms and Conditions”: screening); Friday, January 24, 11:15 p.m., Library, Park City; Saturday, January 25, Redstone 1, Park City; Thursday, January 30, 7:30 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Saturday, February 1, 2:30 p.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for strong sexuality, violence and language. Running time: 100 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Omaha' is a tense, claustrophobic drama of a family road trip, highlighted by actor John Magaro and two talented child actors

The success of director Cole Webley’s intense drama “Omaha” is due entirely to the tight ensemble of performers — three actors, two of them under the age of 10 — in the claustrophobic space of a dilapidated Toyota crossing the American West.

Webley and screenwriter Robert Machoian start with a father, played by John Magaro (“September 5”), carrying his sleeping 6-year-old son, Charlie (Wyatt Solis), to the car. Then he wakes his 9-year-old daughter, Ella (Molly Belle Wright), and tells her to join her brother. They’re taking a trip, Dad tells them, from their home in Nevada to Nebraska. (The bulk of the movie was filmed in Utah, and only locals would be able to notice.)

Dad tells the kids the trip will be a fun adventure. Ella notices the envelope Dad put in the glove box — containing the kids’ Social Security cards and birth certificates — and suspect the family is moving.

Webley and Machoian plant other clues for the audience, like the fact that a sheriff’s deputy approaches Dad just before they’re leaving, reminding him that the house has to be vacated today — or the hints that Ella and Charlie’s mom “got sick” and is no longer in the picture.

Why has Dad put the kids in the car? And why Nebraska? Those questions are eventually covered in Machoian’s spare script, but saying more now would deny viewers the opportunity to watch Magaro’s restrained performance as a working-class man slowly unraveling.

Part of the beauty of Magaro’s performance is that it works in perfect harmony with the young actors playing his children. Especially good is Wright (who starred in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever”), who carries the emotional weight of this road trip with a strength more experienced actors would have trouble mustering. Together, Magaro and these remarkable children make “Omaha” an intense and rewarding drama.

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‘Omaha’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Friday, January 24, 9:30 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Saturday, January 25, 9 p.m., Broadway 3, Salt Lake City; Thursday, January 30, 12:30 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Saturday, February 1, 10 a.m., Holiday 1, Park City. Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably R for language and children in peril. Running time: 87 minutes.

Sundance review: 'Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore' gives the Oscar winner her props, with a director who's viewpoint gets into issues other people might have missed

One might expect the documentary “Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore” to be a straight-forward profile of the Oscar-winnng actress – the first deaf person to win an Academy Award for acting — because it has the PBS logo at the beginning. (It’s part of the “American Masters” series, though an air date has not been set.)

But because director Shoshannah Stern is, like the movie’s subject, both an actor and deaf, this thoughtful and absorbing movie reaches into territory other filmmakers — especially ones who can hear — wouldn’t think to cover.

Stern starts at the Oscars — not in 1987, when she won for her first movie, “Children of a Lesser God,” but in 2022, when she starred in “CODA,” which won Best Picture and an supporting-actor Oscar for Troy Katsur (who was the second deaf actor to win an Academy Award). But Stern does go back to that 1987 win, when Matlin was 19, to show how that win catapulted Matlin not only into instant fame but also a spokesperson for America’s Deaf community. Matlin today says it’s a role for which she was unprepared.

An example of this came the next year, when Matlin followed Academy tradition and presented the Best Actor award. She signed her intro, then spoke the names of the nominees and the winner (Michael Douglas for “Wall Street”). In so doing, she quickly learned, she incurred the wrath of the Deaf community, who debated whether her speaking was selling out to the hearing majority.

Matlin’s entire career, Stern’s movie shows, happened without a road map, because no other performer had faced the obstacles she did. That included an abusive relationship with Willam Hurt, her “Children of a Lesser God” co-star, who was 16 years older than her — and, the movie points out, never paid a price for what most of Hollywood knew was abhorrent behavior.

The documentary is dotted with bits of history and information that the hearing community would never think about. For example, when Stern interviews deaf actor Lauren Ridloff they compare notes about the fact that Stern, too, took her tun playing the Sarah role in “Children of a Lesser God” — the one that Matlin played in the movie, and that Ridloff earned a Tony for in the 2018 Broadway revival.

Stern’s attention to the Deaf people she interviews carries into the camerawork — because she frames the subjects so that their sign language is visible, without being cropped out. And the movie is shown with subtitles, which is helpful for both deaf and hearing viewers, since one group can’t hear the people speaking and the other likely doesn’t know the sign language.

None of this detracts from what’s the central thesis of Stern’s documentary: Namely, that Marlee Matlin is an incredible human being with a complicated and fascinating history — and Stern is determined to give Matlin all her flowers.

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‘Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Documentary competition of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Screens again: Friday, January 24, 12:30 p.m., Redstone 1, Park City; Saturday, January 25, 11:30 a.m., Rose Wagner, Salt Lake City; Wednesday, January 29, Library, Park City; Thursday, January 30, 9:40 a.m., Redstone 2, Park City.  Online screenings Thursday, January 30, 8 a.m. to Sunday, February 2, 11:55 p.m. (All times Mountain time zone.) Not rated, but probably PG-13 for language and descriptions of sexual and physical abuse. Running time: 97 minutes.

Want to prepare yourself for Sundance 2025? Here's where to start.

Welcome to The Movie Cricket’s coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

A couple of items to help you get ready for the madness, which starts Thursday, Jan. 23, in Park City, Utah — and runs, in Park City and Salt Lake City, through Feb. 2.

• If you need help navigating the festival, I’ve compiled (for The Salt Lake Tribune) a list of tips to handle tickets, the online portal, parking, transit, venues, and the all-too-muchness of the festival.

• Also for The Tribune, I’ve put together a list of noteworthy celebrities expected to come to Sundance this year.

• We have the full slate of movies — 88 of them — playing in this year’s festival. And a list of the 52 movies that will be shown online during the festival’s final four days, on the festival’s streaming portal.

• And a few words about the process for finding a new home for the festival, starting in 2027. The three finalists in the bidding process are: A joint Salt Lake City/Park City bid; Boulder, Colorado; and Cincinnati, Ohio. Sundance officials say the announcement won’t be made until March or April.

Sundance reviews: 'In the Summers' captures two siblings' life with their difficult dad more with looks than with words

The thoughtful and sometimes wrenching drama “In the Summers” takes an episodic look at a difficult childhood, showing two siblings on their summertime visits to their volatile father.

Each of the four chapters starts the same way: The kids, Violeta and Eva, are standing outside the airport in Las Cruces, New Mexico, waiting for their father, Vicente (René Pérez Joglar, known by his rap name, Residente), to pick them up. In the first chapter, Violeta (Dreya Castillo) and Eva (Luciana Elisa Quinonez) are elementary-school age, and enjoying swimming in the pool at Dad’s house, or going out stargazing in the desert. The most dramatic moment in this segment, and a foreshadowing of what’s to come, is Violeta cutting her hair to a more masculine bob.

In the second chapter, Violeta (Kimaya Thais) and Eva (Allison Salinas) are a few years older, and Dad is more troubled. They notice more easily, playing pool at the bar of Vicente’s friend Carmen (Emma Ramos), that Dad drinks too much. One night, on a long drive, Dad’s interest in beer leads to horrific results.

Chapter 3, and Eva arrives without her sister, and finds Dad has a new girlfriend, Yenny (Leslie Grace, from “In the Heights”), and together they have a baby girl, Natalia. In Chapter 4, the siblings are out of college, Violeta (played now by Lio Mehiel, from last year’s Sundance hit “Mutt”) is transitioning and Eva (Sasha Calle, who played Supergirl in “The Flash”) is wary of getting too open with Dad.

Writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio is not particularly interested in the surface details of these characters — for example, it’s never clear what Vicente does for a living, other than once when we see him tutoring a student, Camila (played by Gabriella Surodjawan and Sharlene Cruz at different ages). Instead, Lacorazza is aiming for the emotional truths below the surface. This may be confounding for fans who expect an explosive argument where all the grievances are finally aired, but it turns out the subtle approach is more true to who these characters are.

Though Pérez Joglar is the constant force of “In the Summers” and carries Vicente’s pain well, the film’s emotional weight is handled adeptly by the six young actors who play Violeta and Eva at three different ages — particularly Mehiel and Calle, who communicate years of pain and memory with a single look.

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‘In the Summers’

★★★1/2

Screening in the U.S. Dramatic competition at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Not rated, but probably R for sexuality, some violence, alcohol and marijuana use, and language. Running time: 98 minutes.

Screens again: Thursday, January 25, 9:15 p.m., Redstone Cinemas 2, Park City.  Also available online via the Sundance portal, Thursday-Sunday, January 25-28.