Hear more from tt stern-enzi on this topic by tuning into this episode of Cincinnati Edition.
It would be difficult to impossible to talk about the 2025 Sundance Film Festival without mentioning the power and allure of the spotlight. Cincinnati basked in the warm glow of attention thanks to our position as one of the three finalists to become the new home for the festival. In addition, the new issue of MovieMaker Magazine once again posted its list of "The Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker" and the Queen City occupies #11 on the Best Big Cities compilation (ahead of Cleveland, which clocks in at #16).
As a film critic and artistic director of a regional film festival, I now thoroughly enjoy my role as a cheerleader for Cincinnati and believe in the transformative impact of earning this coveted status. Cincinnati can and should revel in this moment, but make no mistake — this is not a fleeting or passing fancy. We are on the map and regardless of the Sundance decision, I have faith that this spotlight will not dim.
How can I be so certain
I would look no further than the array of titles that played at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which presented a host of celebrities whose legacies continue to garner attention and maintain a grip on the collective consciousness. The white-hot glare may burn off, but the light shines on.
Editor's note: Trailers posted where available.
Marlee Matlin: Not Alone Anymore
Directed by Shoshannah Stern
For film lovers in the know, Marlee Matlin is an icon. In 1987, she won a Best Actress in a Leading Role Academy Award for her performance in Children of a Lesser God, becoming the first deaf performer to do so. It was a captivating turn that left my teenage self aghast. Already enamored with film and storytellers, I fell hard for Matlin and what, to my mind, was the most full-bodied expressive work I had ever seen. Watching her sign was a gut punch; at once sensual and fiery. You didn’t need the subtitles to understand her every emotion.
RELATED: These Sundance films left our film critic wondering, what makes a good father?
But a sad reality set in, almost as soon as she wrapped her hands around the statue. Matlin found work, in fits and starts, in other films and television, but year after year passed without the opportunity for another deaf actor to grab the spotlight. Matlin took advantage of opportunities to speak out, as forcefully as only she could, about the state of the deaf community and even used her leverage to push television to institute captioning.
Of course, when it was time for another deaf performer to step up on the stage to claim an Oscar — 35 years later — Matlin was there, as a co-star of CODA. Troy Kotsur made sure that Matlin was no longer alone, displaying flashes of the passion she brought in Children of a Lesser God mixed with a healthy dose of humor and homespun heart.
Stern’s documentary is a marvel of storytelling that speaks volumes when she and Matlin — both members of the deaf community — sit down and share pivotal conversations that anchor the overall historic narrative. Such spotlights are not only bright, but loud with conviction.
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)
Directed by Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson
As a founder and de facto leader of The Roots, Questlove has been upending expectations about hip-hop and his own role in our ongoing cultural conversation for years as the author of books on music history, creative inspiration and food — and that was before he directed Summer of Soul, which ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
RELATED: Film critic tt stern-enzi's favorite films of 2024
With Sly Lives!, he tackles the groundbreaking and mysterious musical career of Sly Stone, while exploring the challenges of Black genius, a particularly heady topic full of misunderstood ideas about who has the right to own their transgressive natures and profit from them. Besides telling Stone’s story — from his early days as a radio personality and burgeoning music producer to founding a fronting a multi-racial and multi-gender band in the late 1960s and early 1970s — Questlove incorporates the voices of Stone’s peers and generations of musicians who followed him, who each in their ways, faced the same struggles he encountered decades prior.
Genius may be an overused term, but without a doubt, Stone embodied it with every breath he took, even as his world came to collapse around him. Thanks to Questlove, the consummate renaissance man, the spotlight on genius expands will inspire future generations to strive to be even more of themselves, no matter the costs.
It’s Never Over, Jeff Buckley
Directed by Amy Berg
I live with very few regrets, but one would be that I did not know and embrace the angelic majesty of Jeff Buckley until after his death. My Buckley introduction came via British musician and soul singer Lewis Taylor, who covered the Buckley song "Everybody Here Wants You" on a neo-soul compilation I stumbled across in the early 2000s. His version became an instant favorite of mine, leading me to seek out the original, which would change my life.
Buckley was the love child of Robert Plant’s soaring vocal prowess merged with Jimmy Page’s bruising musicality on guitar. He loved female vocalists like Judy Garland and Nina Simone (who he often covered) and constantly battled with his own masculine persona. Along with all of this, there was the reality of Buckley being the offspring of folk-jazz performer Tim Buckley, who had little to no presence in his son’s life and ended up dying quite young as well.
RELATED: Cincinnati one of 3 finalists to host the Sundance Film Festival
Berg presents Buckley’s life with a deep reverence that doesn’t shy away from capturing the freewheeling humor and tragedy of his experience. It is confounding to realize that he had such an outsized impact on the music and cultural landscape despite the fact that he only released a single album, Grace, before his death in 1997. He lives in that album and the cascade of posthumous releases that have emerged since then. My record collection alone stands as a reminder and spotlight of sorts to his legacy, which I will pass on to those close to me.
It's never over…
