Big Themes

Writer-director Charlie McDowell returns to Sundance this year with a thriller about a scientist (played by Robert Redford) who uncovers scientific proof that there is indeed an afterlife. His son is portrayed by Jason Segel, who's not too sure about his father's "discovery", and Rooney Mara plays a mystery woman who has her own reasons for wanting to find out more about the afterlife.

Thirty years after the events of Blade Runner (1982), a new Blade Runner, L.A.P.D. Officer "K" (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former L.A.P.D. Blade Runner, who has been missing for thirty years.

David Dunn (Willis) is taking a train from New York City back home to Philadelphia after a job interview that didn't go well when his car jumps the tracks and collides with an oncoming engine, with David the only survivor among the 131 passengers on board. Astoundingly, David is not only alive, he hardly seems to have been touched. As David wonders what has happened to him and why he was able to walk away, he encounters a mysterious stranger, Elijah Prince (Samuel L. Jackson), who explains to David that there are a certain number of people who are "unbreakable" -- they have remarkable endurance and courage, a predisposition toward dangerous behavior, and feel invincible but also have strange premonitions of terrible events. Is David "unbreakable"? And if he is, what are the physical and psychological ramifications of this knowledge?

A biologist's husband disappears. She puts her name forward for an expedition into an environmental disaster zone, but does not find what she's expecting. The expedition team is made up of the biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, a surveyor, and a linguist.

During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive. Millions of miles away, NASA and a team of international scientists work tirelessly to bring "the Martian" home, while his crewmates concurrently plot a daring, if not impossible, rescue mission. As these stories of incredible bravery unfold, the world comes together to root for Watney's safe return.

Set in 2031, the entire world is frozen except for those aboard the Snowpiercer. For seventeen years, the world's survivors are on a train hurtling around the globe creating their own economy and class system. Led by Curtis (Chris Evans), a group of lower-class citizens living in squalor at the back of the train are determined to get to the front of the train and spread the wealth around. Each section of the train holds new surprises for the group who have to battle their way through. A revolution is underway.

Caleb, a 26 year old programmer at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.

Trapped in a lab and stuck in a time loop, a disoriented couple fends off masked raiders while harboring a new energy source that could save humanity.

PREDESTINATION chronicles the life of a Temporal Agent sent on an intricate series of time-travel journeys designed to ensure the continuation of his law enforcement career for all eternity. Now, on his final assignment, the Agent must pursue the one criminal that has eluded him throughout time.

Grey's a stay-at-home mechanic, whose wife is Asha. One day, Grey asks Asha to help him return a car to his client. Whilst Grey and Asha's self-driving car malfunctions, it crashes. Grey watches helplessly as Asha bleeds to death next to him. Grey returns home - a widowed quadriplegic, under the care of his mother. His wife's death and the inability of police to identify their attackers cause him to sink into a depression. After a suicide attempt, he's offered to have high tech chip implanted - enabling him to walk. Though initially hesitant, he's persuaded to have the surgery.

A love story set in a dystopian near future where single people are arrested and transferred to a creepy hotel. There they are obliged to find a matching mate in 45 days. If they fail, they are transformed into an animal and released into the woods.

50 years into the future, the Sun begins to die, and Earth is dying as a result. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun - but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind's last hope.

Ben and Leslie Cash live largely off the grid with their offspring -- Bodevan, Kielyr, Vespyr, Rellian, Zaja and Nai -- in a cabin in the mountains of Washington state. The parents have passed their socialist and survivalist ideals to their children. Ben considers most of Western society to be fascist, especially corporate America. He also believes that no one will or should be there for you, so you'd better learn how to take care of yourself. As such, the children have been subject to vigorous physical training; know how to deal with minor bumps, bruises, cuts, sprains, and even fractures; and know how to hunt, forage, and grow their own food. The children are also non-registered home schooled, meaning that they have no official academic records. Ben and Leslie have tried to make the children critical thinkers, however, within the context of their ideals. Beyond these issues, Ben and Leslie made the decision to live this lifestyle for Leslie's health. Formerly an attorney, Leslie was diagnosed as bipolar. Ben believes that this disorder started with her postpartum depression with Bo. Yet Leslie's condition has worsened. Despite not believing in Western medicine, Ben sends Leslie to a hospital close to Ben's sister, Harper, so that there can be family close by. While hospitalized, Leslie commits suicide. Beyond the collective grief, Leslie's act brings out a battle between Ben and Leslie's father, Jack Bertrang, a Christian who not only blames Ben for Leslie's death, but believes that what he is doing "to" the children can legally be considered abuse. Jack takes over the funeral arrangements as per his and his complacent wife Abby's Christian morals, against what Ben knows was Leslie's wishes, as she believed in Buddhist philosophies. Although Jack threatens to call the police if Ben shows up to the funeral, Ben and the children believe it is their mission to honor Leslie's last wishes to be cremated as per Buddhist philosophy. This mission not only may bring the divide between Jack and Ben to a head, but may also bring out some long dormant issues between the Cash children as they are exposed to commercial America in all its good and bad, and as Bo grows into manhood, he may have his own ideas of what he should do with the next phase of his life.

Kate Macer leads a Phoenix based kidnap response unit for the FBI. Following Kate's team leading a raid on a known drug den in nearby Chandler, Kate is recruited to work on a special ops team led by Matt Graver of the CIA, he who is on special assignment for the Department of Defense. They recruited her because they wanted someone with tactical procedures knowledge. Outwardly, the team's mission, which works behind a Delta Force team as its primary gun power as required, is to decapitate a Mexican drug cartel by capturing or dismembering the workings of the main players, cartel head Manuel Díaz, his second in command Guillermo Díaz (Manuel's brother), and drug lord Fausto Alarcón. Kate agrees to the assignment as she feels the work of this team would be more effective in stopping the drug trade in the US than the piecemeal work of her current kidnap response unit. The third on the team is a mysterious Hispanic or Latino man Kate only knows as Alejandro, and who she does not fully trust as she can tell that he is suffering from a very traumatic past. When Kate and the team arrive in El Paso for their first mission, Kate learns that the team's workings are not all they appear on the surface - many of the proceedings which would not be considered above board or legal - despite the end goal being as she knows it to be. Still largely in the dark and only given information on a need to know basis, Kate decides to stick it out with the team if only to discover all that she is not told while still believing in the end goal. She may have changing or at least mixed emotions as she learns more and more about what is going on, including the specific reason why she was recruited.

In the dystopian world of 2027 London, humans have been incapable of reproducing for 18 year for an unknown reason, meaning the imminent extinction of the species. Britain is the one remaining civilized society on the planet, which has resulted in people wanting to migrate there, so it has become a police state to handle the immigrants, who are placed into refugee camps. Lowly government bureaucrat Theo Faron, once an activist, is approached by the Fishes, deemed a terrorist group, led by his ex-wife Julian Taylor, whom he hasn't seen in almost 20 years, since their marriage disintegrated after their infant son Dylan's death during the 2008 flu pandemic. Although the Fishes did use terrorist means in their on-going revolution against the state in the fight for immigrant rights, Julian vows that they now garner support solely by speaking to the people, and she wants Theo to use his connections to get transit papers for a young immigrant woman named Kee who needs to get to the coast. Although initially reluctant to do it because of the difficulty, Theo is able to grant Julian this favor, however with the change that he now needs to accompany Kee on her journey. As Theo and Kee progress on that journey, Theo learns more and more about what's going on, including the reason that Kee needs to get to the coast, the fact that no one in the group knows if their end destination even exists, and that his and Kee's lives are in greater danger than he believed when they started the journey. But Theo's sole mission becomes to help Kee at any cost for the survival of the species.

On the night of an astronomical anomaly, eight friends at a dinner party experience a troubling chain of reality bending events.

Linguistics professor Louise Banks leads an elite team of investigators when gigantic spaceships touchdown in 12 locations around the world. As nations teeter on the verge of global war, Banks and her crew must race against time to find a way to communicate with the extraterrestrial visitors. Hoping to unravel the mystery, she takes a chance that could threaten her life and quite possibly all of mankind.

In the not-too-distant future, a less-than-perfect man wants to travel to the stars. Society has categorized Vincent Freeman as less than suitable given his genetic make-up and he has become one of the underclass of humans that are only useful for menial jobs. To move ahead, he assumes the identity of Jerome Morrow, a perfect genetic specimen who is a paraplegic as a result of a car accident. With professional advice, Vincent learns to deceive DNA and urine sample testing. Just when he is finally scheduled for a space mission, his program director is killed and the police begin an investigation, jeopardizing his secret.