Welcome to the Cinema Femme Sundance 40 hub! This is this is the place you’ll find all of our interviews and reviews from Sundance 2024. We also will include some reviews on films playing at Slamdance 2024. Stay tuned!
We are sponsored by The Gene Siskel Film Center. The Gene Siskel Film Center presents a curated collection of international, independent, and classic cinema reflective of Chicago’s diverse community. Learn more.
Sundance 40 Wrap-Up
Sundance 40: Mel Eslyn’s coming-of-age debut series “Penelope” will have you yearning for simpler times
Sundance 40: Kelly O’Sullivan hopes you see empathy in her directorial feature debut, “Ghostlight”
Sundance 40 Review: “Good One” Chronicles The Dark Side of Female Adolescence
Sundance 40 Review: Haley Elizabeth Anderson’s “Tendaberry” is a Sacred Portrait of Personal Memory
Sundance 40: Haley Elizabeth Anderson pens a love letter to Brooklyn in her feature debut, “Tendaberry”
Sundance 40 Review: A Multifaceted Exploration of Personal Girlhood in “Suncoast”
Sundance 40 Review: Pathos lands poignantly in Alessandra Lacorraza’s “In the Summers”
Sundance 40 Review: Theda Hammel’s head-spinning pandemic-themed comedy “Stress Positions”
Sundance 40: Co-directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie capture the generational impacts of Native boarding schools in their award-winning doc “Sugarcane”
Sundance 40 Review: The beauty of pain is captured through Frida Kahlo’s art delicately and seamlessly in Carla Gutiérrez’ feature debut
Sundance 40: Thea Hvistendahl on her bold zombie film “Handling the Undead”
Sundance 40 Review: “Handling the Undead” feasts on existentialism in this unconventional horror drama
Sundance 40 Review: An Intersectional Exploration of Transmasculinity and Identity Makes “Desire Lines” A True Standout
Sundance 40: Kate Jean Hollowell on her U.S. Fiction Jury Award-Winning Short Film, “Say Hi After You Die”
Sundance 40 Sponsor Spotlight: The Gene Siskel Film Center
Sundance 40 Review: Klaudia Reynicke’s “Reinas,” a moving ode to sisterhood and motherhood
Sundance 40: Nora Fingscheidt directs Saoirse Ronan in her latest feature, “The Outrun”
Sundance 40 Review: Shiori Ito’s “Black Box Diaries” is a Triumph
Sundance 40 Review: June Squibb Shines in the Splendid Comedy, “Thelma”
Sundance 40: Raha Amirfazli & Alireza Ghasemi hopes their film “In the Land of Brothers” will bring empathy for refugees
Sundance 40: Klaudia Reynicke reconnects with her roots in her family drama, “Reinas”
Sundance 40: Kicking off January with “Thelma” star June Squibb and producer Zoë Worth
Sundance 40: Editor in Chief’s Top Ten Sundance Films of All Time (1984 – 2023)
Slamdance 2024 Review: Love and Manipulation Combine in Zoë Eisenberg’s Confident “Chaperone”
We are sponsored by The Gene Siskel Film Center. The Gene Siskel Film Center presents a curated collection of international, independent, and classic cinema reflective of Chicago’s diverse community. Learn more.
Sundance 40 Dream Team
Rebecca Martin Fagerholm is the Managing Editor of Cinema Femme magazine and the Festival Director of Cinema Femme Short Film Fest. She founded her publication in 2018 because she wanted to create a platform for female and non-binary voices in the film community. She has hosted film screenings in Chicago, led virtual panel discussions, Q&As, and has covered festivals like the Chicago International Film Festival, Sundance, Tribeca, and the Bentonville Film Festival.
Rebecca is the editor in chief for THE CALL SHEET, a magazine that launched in January 2023, a collaboration between Cinema Femme and Camera Ambassador. Newcity’s Chicago Top 50 Screen Gems in 2022.
Peyton Robinson is a Chicago-based writer and critic. She has bylines with numerous online publications such as Film School Rejects, JumpcutOnline, on Rogerebert.com. Her long-held, formative passion for horror has been the kickstarter for her career in film journalism, but she also loves writing about cult movies and stories of the Black experience. Some of her favorite films include Inherent Vice, The Double, and Psycho.
Emily Jacobson is a graduate from the Cinema Arts + Sciences program at Columbia College Chicago. She currently works as a video editor in the city. She has written for Film Daze, Bloody Disgusting, and Cinema Femme. Her favorite Chicago based film is GO FISH.
Dawn Borchardt is a Salt Lake City-based film festival producer, film podcaster and filmmaker. She has worked at many film festivals around the US including Sundance and the LA Film Fest, and currently produces the Freeland Film Fest which focuses on sharing stories that inspire. She hosts the podcast Faux Reel interviewing indie filmmakers about how their personal histories and beliefs interweave with the stories they share on screen. Dawn’s lifelong love of horror film is what got her immersed in the film world, ultimately landing her focus on experimental work, documentaries and stories that inspire change.
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The film community that has been built and continues to grow through Cinema Femme is how we thrive. Our local community continues to grow, especially now courtesy of our involvement with Camera Ambassador and our collaboration that has produced the print publication, THE CALL SHEET. Our world-wide community grows through our readership and our short film fest. We are so happy to have Independent Film Alliance Chicago as a fiscal sponsor for our festival, but our year-round magazine needs your support. Please consider donating to support us as we give you extensive festival coverage over the next few weeks. We appreciate you and your support!