FQ's B. Ruby Rich files her annual report from Sundance, where the most powerful new dramatic films were by and about women. She singles out Kitty Green's The Assistant (2019) and Eliza Hittman's Never Rarely Sometimes Always for their meticulous attention to the hardly matter-of-fact rituals of life for two very different young women, as well as for a style that might be tagged “microrealism.” She also discusses Janicza Bravo's Zola and Pablo Larraín's Ema (2019), two very different enactments of female sexuality with varying degrees of agency. Praising the festival as the mothership of documentary, Rich recounts new favorites including Iryna Tsilyk's The Earth Is Blue as an Orange, Ramona S. Diaz's A Thousand Cuts, David France's Welcome to Chechnya, Hubert Sauper's Epicentro, Anabel Rodríguez Ríos's Once upon a Time in Venezuela, Kareem Tabsch and Cristina Costantini's Mucho Mucho Amor, Maite Alberdi Soto's The Mole Agent, Garrett Bradley's sobering Time, and Shalini Kantayya's chilling Coded Bias.

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2020
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