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Sundance 2017, Day One: Storytelling, Now More Than Ever

'An Inconvenient Sequel' and 'The Worker's Cup' start off this year's festival.
Paramount Pictures

It never feels normal to be at Sundance. America's foremost independent film festival is frequently absurd—from the logistical nightmare of shuttling half of Hollywood into a tiny ski village, to the altitude, to the LED glow of Main Street's brand activation gauntlet. It's also, despite being one of the most dressed-down major film festivals in the world (the only week in the year when most Angelenos will wear duck boots) and despite taking place at a series of school auditoriums and rec centers connected by slush-covered roads and parking lots, unmistakably luxurious.

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In the past two years that I've attended the festival, I've consciously reveled in the fact that Sundance is an excuse to get away from the drudgery of my everyday work week and escape to a rarified temporary utopia where the most important thing to worry about is whether breakout indie director X can avoid a sophomore slump or whether the complimentary water bottle in the press bag will suck or rule. (It sucks this year.) Sundance is luxurious for film reporters and critics, who can let the staff back home pick up the mainstream film content while they do the noble work of spotlighting promising breakouts with zero clickability. It's luxurious for the filmmakers, many of whose films will be talked about more this week than they ever will again. It's luxurious for studios and buyers, who definitely find time to hit the slopes in between throwing around play money at films that, for the big ones like Amazon and Netflix, represent a tiny fraction of their yearly investments. Best of all, this all counts as work for everyone.

Sundance still feels like an escape in 2017, but the jury's out on whether or not it's the kind of escape we need right now. The inauguration of President Donald J. Trump, which took place on the second day of the film festival, has been what dominates the overheard conversations in the heated tents of Park City during these first 24 hours. At the opening day press conference, the first question for festival founder Robert Redford was about what role art can play during the Trump administration. And politics dominated the rest of the conference, especially in light of the news that the incoming administration would be defunding the NEA, which Redford said was instrumental in the founding of the festival. Another question was what role the festival itself could play politically. It's as if everyone is looking for a reason, any reason, that it makes sense to be in Park City, Utah, on January 20, 2017.

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There has been a lot of talk about storytelling—storytelling against all odds, storytelling now more than ever. This year, the festival has introduced its "New Climate" sub-section, "a must-see lineup of environmental films and projects that seek to drive attention and action." The first of these was the opening night film An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth To Power, a follow up to Al Gore's Oscar-winning 2006 climate change documentary. Originally conceived as a fresh wake-up call, paired with some would-be encouraging progress reports, it features a more fiery and emotional Gore than the monotone figure parodied over the past decade. If filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk were looking to turn the film into a messianic portrait of the former vice president—who's still showing the slide show to audiences all around the world—he doesn't quite take to it. Gore is no rock star, certainly no Leo. He's plain spoken and not given to hyperbole and grand emotion. His medium of choice is Power Point, for crying out loud. You have to be selfless to dedicate your life to slowing climate change, the film seems to say—selfless enough to risk being dull.

If Sundance 2017 is about the power of storytelling in times of political uncertainty, they could have no better or worse figurehead than Gore. I remain charmed by, inspired by, and doubtful about Gore's commitment to the idea that if we tell enough people about the science of climate change, if we present information in a compelling and inarguable manner, then we can set the gears in motion to stop it. He uses the model of a self-help seminar, or perhaps more appropriately, religious proselytizing, to mobilize communities all over the world. Now, on the one hand, 2016 was a referendum on facts—the new data of An Inconvenient Sequel is terrifying not just in and of itself but because so many refuse to acknowledge it. On the other, modeling the climate change movement after religious movements is not the worst framework to use. The world's most seismic historic conflicts and revolutions have been fueled by religion. [Deep toke] When you think about it, wasn't Jesus Christ the original storyteller? [Exhale.]

An Inconvenient Sequel makes a compelling case for storytelling at its most mundane. Subsequently, I left the theater hardly in the mood for the medieval nun comedy The Little Hours or Macon Blair's directorial debut I Don't Feel At Home In This World Anymore, two of the other opening night films. I knew I'd be ready for that patented acerbic Sundance quirk later on, but I opted for The Worker's Cup, a documentary about the migrant workers building the stadiums for Qatar's 2022 World Cup. If anything could put a human face to the existential doom of the industrialized world, it would be this—thousands of underpaid workers from India, Africa, and the Middle East shipped out to live in rows of desolate temporary barracks in the shadow of Doha's gleaming dildoscape of a skyline. They spend their backbreaking days constructing a Space Age super stadium that looks like the mothership of a race of violent alien gynecologists. To inject a little fun into the proceedings, the contracting companies that essentially own their lives for the duration of construction decide to organize an inter-company soccer tournament.

It's a fascinating setup for a documentary, and an opportunity to highlight the human cost of FIFA's notoriously corrupt contracts. But The Worker's Cup believes in the game a little too much to drive home the insanity of its scenario. It tracks the scores and fates of central team, GCC, through superimposed titles whose ultimate narrative purpose I was never quite clear on. At times it started to resemble the Documentary Now! episode about the Icelandic Al Capone impersonation contest—a send-up of every twee competition-oriented documentary that rose up after the success of King of Kong and Spellbound. A competition gives a documentarian a default arc, but the fortunes of the GCC football club is the least interesting thing going on in The Worker's Cup. The sit-down interviews with the team members are insightful and frequently surprising, I would have loved if the filmmaking had matched them.

Both An Inconvenient Sequel and The Workers Cup focus heavily on the industrial decisions of the developing world; they decentralize the United States's role in the global picture. It's as if Sundance was trying to tell me, on day one, not to worry about whatever horrors would be set in motion on day two. The world is a big place, and we certainly won't be the only people fucking it up over the next four years. Now, get out there and enjoy some storytelling.

Follow Emily Yoshida on Twitter.