The 2022 Sundance Film Festival is coming to Lawrence this weekend!
Eight world premieres from this year’s festival will screen at Liberty Hall from Friday, Jan. 28 through Sunday, Jan. 30. Lawrence is one of only seven cities across the country where audiences will be among the first in the world to see these movies on the big screen.
Films include the narrative feature films Alice (starring Keke Palmer, directed by Krystin Ver Linden), Emergency (starring Sabrina Carpenter, directed by Carey Williams), Every Day in Kaimuki (starring Naz Kawakami, directed by Alika Tengan), Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul (starring Reginal Hall and Sterling K. Brown, directed by Adamma Ebo), and Marte Um (directed by Gabriel Martins). Documentaries include Free Chol Soo Lee (directed by Julia Ha), La Guerra Civil (directed by Eva Longoria Baston) and Sirens (directed by Rita Baghdadi). Friday’s screenings will include one short film program including Chilly and Milly and Kicking the Clouds. Pre-recorded Q&A’s for all the films will be available to watch on the mama.film website.
Due to COVID restrictions, capacity at Liberty Hall has been reduced to 50% and masks and vaccination cards are required for entry. Tickets are $10 and are available online up to an hour before scheduled showtime and at the door as available.
The festival comes to Lawrence through the Sundance Film Festival’s partnership with mama.film, a Wichita-based nonprofit cinema arts organization. In 2021, mama.film brought the festival to Wichita, screening films at the Starlite Drive-In Theater, and when the organization had the opportunity to bring Sundance to another part of the state, mama.film jumped at the chance.
“Last summer, we reached out to Liberty Hall, to see if they were interested in partnering with and were so excited when we were selected as one of seven — and the only city not on a coast — Satellite Screens. We knew we’d meet a wonderful film-loving audience in Lawrence and we are so thankful to this community for welcoming us,” said mama.film founder Lela Meadow-Conner.
“We are grateful to Sundance for recognizing Kansas, and Lawrence especially, as a cultural hub, and to our partners, including Liberty Hall, Free State Festival, KC Film Office, KU Film & Media Studies and Wichita State University’s Shocker Studios, who’ve truly made this possible for us.”
Originally set to include a weekend of meetups for film professionals in Kansas, those touch points have been moved to coincide with the Free State Festival on April 15 and 16.
A full lineup of films can be found here, and tickets are on sale here. Additionally, mama.film is hosting a series of Community Conversations, with Transgender Film Center (Olathe, Kansas), Kevin Willmott & KD Davila (screenwriter, Emergency) and more, which can be viewed here.
