This weekend, the snowy streets of Park City, Utah will be packed with some of the coolest stars of today, and the most thrilling talents of tomorrow. This Thursday marked the kickoff of the Sundance Film Festival, now running for its 41st year (and perhaps its penultimate one in its home state), and over the next week in the mountains, a whole slate of exciting new indies will premiere — and some will surely go on to be counted among the hottest titles of 2025. 

Didn’t book your condo in time? Don’t worry about it! You can get in on the indie spirit from the comfort of your own home, whether it’s with a movie that celebrates the drive to make art, a trio of films from revered festival alumni, or with a mini-Sundance of your own, to last all weekend long.  

But first, what’s new on Netflix?

A whole new lifestyle. The glitzy new docusoap W.A.G.s to Riches follows a group of glamorous and driven women in Miami whose relationships with famous athletes and artists are just a fraction of what makes their lives thrilling. Not your style? Call The Night Agent instead. Season 2 of the spy thriller (created by Shawn Ryan, based on the novel by Matthew Quirk and starring Gabriel Basso in the title role) can now be found on your screens. 

If you have just a night … 

Go meta. Sandi Tan’s acclaimed documentary Shirkers didn’t just premiere at Sundance in 2018 (where Tan won the World Cinema Documentary Directing Award), but also makes independent filmmaking its subject. Tan’s film recounts the story of how she and her friends shot a road movie together in the ’90s, only for their mentor to disappear with the footage. When Tan got hold of it years later, the rediscovery sent her on a journey that resulted in the finished doc, which is equally an investigation of a mystery, a reflection on a profound disappointment, and a celebration of the creativity that started it all. 

If you have a whole day … 

Check in with the masters. Hundreds of filmmakers have launched their careers at Sundance, but a select few exist alongside it in film history as indie legends. The debut films from Joel and Ethan Coen (1984’s Blood Simple), Steven Soderbergh (1989’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape), and Quentin Tarantino (1992’s Reservoir Dogs) all screened at Sundance right as the independent film movement took off, and you can follow their careers by calling up some of their later works. The Coen brothers’ 2018 Western anthology film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs comprises six Tales of the American Frontier, all shot through with the filmmakers’ signature dark humor. Soderbergh’s 2019 sports drama High Flying Bird was shot on an iPhone, in one of the filmmaker’s many explorations of new technology. And Tarantino brings his taste for stylish violence to the west with 2015’s star-studded The Hateful Eight, his eighth feature. They may have become household names, gotten studio budgets, and landed on film-school syllabi, but none of these artists ever lost their independent spirit.  

If you have the entire weekend … 

Program your own festival using titles on streaming from Sundance’s past, all of which exemplify the kind of originality for which the festival is known. Start with some documentaries: Since we’re talking indies, call up the stranger-than-fiction underdog story of an independent baseball team with Chapman and Maclain Way’s The Battered Bastards of Baseball (2014). To follow another filmmaker’s journey, watch two films from Margaret Brown, 2008’s The Order of Myths and 2022’s Descendant, both of which examine racial dynamics in the South. For a darkly funny but touching reflection on mortality, turn to Kirsten Johnson’s Dick Johnson Is Dead, the 2020 documentary in which her elderly father enacts different possible deaths for himself. And if you’re missing the Eras Tour already, Lana Wilson’s Miss Americana (2020) follows Taylor Swift at a turning point. 

But let’s not neglect fiction, either! Ava DuVernay won a festival Directing Award for her second feature, the 2012 drama Middle of Nowhere, about a woman (Emayatzy Corinealdi) navigating her life after her husband’s imprisonment. In 2023, Randall Park made his directorial debut with the romantic dramedy Shortcomings, about a young couple trying to grow into their future — together or not. Noah Baumbach’s Oscar-nominated The Squid and the Whale (2005) sees two brothers dealing with their parents’ divorce, while Sydney Freeland’s crime dramedy Deidra & Laney Rob a Train sees two sisters dealing with their mother’s incarceration (by robbing trains). And for a truly singular musical experience, there’s Lenny Abrahamson’s Frank, a 2014 dark comedy about a band whose frontman (Michael Fassbender) wears a huge papier-mâché mask at all times. 

Don’t forget, you have one last chance … 

… for a killer match. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie star in Doug Liman’s 2005 action comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, about a married couple whose boring suburban life gets a little more exciting with the discovery that they’re both undercover assassins — and they’ve been assigned to take each other out. After this weekend, the film will be dispatched. 

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