The Sundance Film Festival, which wrapped up in Park City over the weekend, is a bright spot in the otherwise gloomy movie month of January. It launches careers (Steven Soderbergh! Noah Baumbach! Ryan Coogler!) and builds buzz for independent films that need it. Did 2024 accomplish that? Yes—there was palpable excitement around movies like Rose Glass’s body-horror romance Love Lies Bleeding and Jesse Eisenberg’s Poland-set road comedy A Real Pain. But what really emerged at Sundance this year were new stars in the indie firmament: many young and lesser-known actors breaking out in compelling roles. Here were our favorite new faces.
Lily Collias in Good One
My favorite movie of the festival was Good One, a quiet, patient debut feature from filmmaker India Donaldson about a teenage girl, played by the astonishingly good young actor Lily Collias, on a camping trip in the Catskills with her divorced father and his best friend. Collias is the gravity in this intimate film, shot mostly in the woods; a girl growing up and out of her father’s world and shaping one of her own. (Collias also had a small part in last year’s excellent if underseen Sundance film Palm Trees and Power Lines.) Good One is currently seeking distribution. —Taylor Antrim
Jay Will in Rob Peace
I wasn’t sure if I’d seen the actor Jay Will before–he’s a 2021 Julliard graduate with only a couple of small TV roles under his belt. He won’t be hard to place after you’ve seen Rob Peace, an adaptation of Jeff Hobbs’s bestselling book about a Yale student who comes to an untimely end, directed by Chiwetel Ejiofor. The movie is a bit earnest, but Will is fantastic, finding a tricky balance between academic brilliance, enormous self confidence, and a propensity for bad choices. His scenes with Ejiofor, who plays Peace’s incarcerated father, have high-stakes energy. —TA
Izaac Wang in Dìdi
Was there a more crowd-pleasing film at Sundance than Dìdi? This first feature, from the talented young director Sean Wang (who is nominated for an Oscar this year in the documentary short film category), is a coming-of-age movie about a Taiwanese American 13-year-old growing up in early ’00s Fremont, California—and it wouldn’t work at all without the natural, low-key magnetism of its lead. That would be the young actor Izaac Wang who manages to be misanthropic, boisterous, and authentically appealing all at the same time. The film mixes skateboarding, early internet culture, pop-punk, and the uneasy need to belong—and it won the Sundance Audience Award. Dìdi feels like a hit, and is seeking distribution. —TA
Callina Liang in Presence
Steven Soderbergh’s stripped-down haunted-house thriller Presence was one of the must-see movies of the festival, both technically impressive (under 90 minutes, all shot in a single suburban house) and exceedingly tense. The ensemble cast is excellent but one member stood out: Liang, a modern-day final girl to root for. Presence was bought by Neon, so expect a release later this year. —TA
Mia McKenna-Bruce in How to Have Sex
Molly Manning Walker’s feature debut, How to Have Sex, was one of the buzziest titles to screen at the Cannes Film Festival last year, especially after it won the top Un Certain Regard prize. And much of the film’s success lies in the vast spectrum of emotions playing across lead actor Mia McKenna-Bruce’s baby face. The 26-year-old, who has performed on the British stage and screen since she was a child, capitalizes on her youthful mien as she portrays Tara, a party-loving 16-year-old on a debauched, spring break-type Mediterranean getaway with two of her best friends. Cutting through flashing club lights, thumping bangers, and enough alcohol sloshing around onscreen to give you a contact hangover, McKenna-Bruce’s carefully calibrated performance makes the gentle shift to themes of consent and peer pressure nothing short of riveting. No surprise that McKenna-Bruce is among the nominees for BAFTA’s directional Rising Star Award this year. The film will be in New York theaters from this Friday, February 2, with openings across the country in the following weeks. —Lisa Wong Macabasco
Adria Arjona in Hit Man
Already sold to Netflix, and due out later this year, Hit Man is the supremely entertaining romance/comedy/thriller from Richard Linklater. Glen Powell, its hunky star, is a college professor-turned-police undercover agent, but he’d be nowhere without his love interest in the movie, Adria Arjona, who makes a wife fighting back against her abusive husband a delight to spend time with. Arjona understands exactly how irrepressible this movie should be and plays her part to the hilt. —TA
Katy O’Brian in Love Lies Bleeding
Despite considerable pre-festival hype, I couldn’t quite get comfortable with the shifting tones and moods of Love Lies Bleeding, a love story/horror film by director Rose Glass with Kristen Stewart in the lead. But it was impossible not to be captivated by Stewart’s love interest, the actor Katy O’Brian, a body builder who begins to take steroids ahead of a competition in Las Vegas and then more or less loses her mind. O’Brian has had smallish parts in superhero films and The Mandalorian; nothing prepares you for the commitment she brings to this one—which is coming from A24 in March. Get ready. —TA
Preeti Panigrahi in Girls Will Be Girls
Shuchi Talati’s compelling debut feature, Girls Will Be Girls, surprises at nearly every turn. One of my favorites of the entire festival this year, the film won the audience award in the world cinema dramatic category, with lead Preeti Panigrahi also receiving a special jury prize for acting. Panigrahi plays rule-following Mira, a 16-year-old at the top of her class in a strict Himalayan boarding school whose laser focus on academics is tested by a charming new student, to the dismay of her mother. Panigrahi embodies with tenderness, vulnerability, and nuance a character whose exploration of her nascent sexuality finds her pushing limits both at home and at school. —LWM
