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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 85 movies from Sundance Institute
Caught between her alienated parents, teenage Ama starts a new relationship with a young lifeguard - but she can’t escape a quiet haunting that feels increasingly familiar.
Sep 2025
In a rapidly changing America where mass inequality and dwindling opportunity have devastated the black working class, three Detroit men must fight to build something lasting for themselves and future generations.
Apr 2017
A short documentary exploring the connection between Christianity and homophobia in the wake of the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
When one’s sole focus is to provide for their children, the stakes are extremely high. The need for multiple jobs to make ends meet has become a common reality for many families in this country, which leads to a very important question: who looks after the children while their parents work? Through the Night examines the economic and emotional toll affecting some American families, told through the lens of a 24-hour daycare center in Westchester, New York. At the center of it all is Nunu, the primary caregiver and a hero to many families in need of a safe space to bring their children.
Jun 2021
A rousing portrait of feminist writer Andrea Dworkin, one of the most controversial and misunderstood figures of the 20th century, who fought passionately for justice and equality for women.
Jun 2022
On the lazy banks of the Mississippi, a young girl is reunited with her time-served but innocent father. But the reunion is tainted with the whereabouts of the stolen loot, and those who come looking for it...
Sep 1984
As a wave of anti-boycott legislation has swept through the country, so has a counter-wave in defense of freedom of speech. Everyday Americans are challenging these laws for their constitutionality in a nation-wide battle likely to go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Nov 2021
Filmmaker Angelo Madsen Minax returns to his rural Michigan hometown following the death of his infant niece and the subsequent arrest of his brother-in-law as the culprit. Using the audio-visual approaches of essay film, first-person cinema vérité, staged actions, and decades of home movies, Madsen navigates a town steeped in opioid addiction, economic depression, and religious fervor, while using the act of filmmaking to rebuild familial bonds and reimagine justice. Posing empathy as a tool for creating a more just world, North By Current does not seek to investigate a crime, but creates a relentless portrait of an enduring pastoral family, poised to reframe and reimagine narratives about incarceration, addiction, trans embodiment, and ruralness.
Mar 2021
When a daughter becomes concerned about her mother's well-being in a retirement home, private investigator Romulo hires Sergio, an 83-year-old man who becomes a new resident—and a mole inside the home, who struggles to balance his assignment with becoming increasingly involved in the lives of several residents.
Dec 2020
Based on the writer/director's childhood, FARMING tells the story of a young Nigerian boy, 'farmed out' by his parents to a white British family in the hope of a better future. Instead, he becomes the feared leader of a white skinhead gang.
Sep 2018
Short film made with the help of the Sundance Film Institute and serving as a proof-of-concept for the subsequent feature film.
Jun 1991
Exploring the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces accurately, and her journey to push for the first-ever legislation in the U.S. to govern against bias in the algorithms that impact us all.
Nov 2020
In the aftermath of a tragic fire in a Romanian club, burn victims begin dying in hospitals from wounds that were not life threatening. A team of investigative journalists move into action uncovering the mass corruption of the health system and of the state institutions. Collective follows journalists, whistle blowers, and authorities alike. An immersive and uncompromising look into a dysfunctional system, exposing corruption, propaganda, and manipulation that nowadays affect not only Romania, but societies around the world.
Feb 2019
While locked-up for six years in federal prison, artist Jesse Krimes secretly creates monumental works of art—including an astonishing 40-foot mural made with prison bed sheets, hair gel, and newspaper. He smuggles out each panel piece-by-piece with the help of fellow artists, only seeing the mural in totality upon coming home. As Jesse's work captures the art world's attention, he struggles to adjust to life outside, living with the threat that any misstep will trigger a life sentence.
Sep 2022
Direct cinema pioneer Frederick Wiseman takes an in-depth look at the preeminent American university during a fall semester that saw a vigorous debate taking place over tuition hikes, budget cuts, and the future of higher education in the United States.
Nov 2013
Under the neon lights in a gay-friendly neighborhood of New York City, four young African-American lesbians are violently and sexually threatened by a man on the street. They defend themselves against him and are charged and convicted in the courts and in the media as a 'Gang of Killer Lesbians'.
Jun 2014
Iranian musician Shahin Najafi flees his homeland and heads to Cologne, Germany after harsh criticism by several clerics over the release of his song speaking out against human rights abuses resulted in a fatwa being issued.
Miriam is an unemployed journalist who has a beat on a story that could turn her bad luck around. Her dad is an evangelical who believes the fossil record derived from Noah's Flood. For ten years, he has lived in the Mojave Desert, running a paleontology museum. Miriam ventures west to interview him about what made him a creationist.
Jan 2012
In a cluttered news landscape dominated by men, emerges India’s only newspaper run by Dalit women. Armed with smartphones, Chief Reporter Meera and her journalists break traditions on the frontlines of India’s biggest issues and within the confines of their own homes, redefining what it means to be powerful.
Jan 2021
When 17-year-old Lennon Lacy is found hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014, his mother's search for justice and reconciliation begins while the trauma of more than a century of lynching African Americans bleeds into the present.
Jan 2019