Sundance’s 18 Buzziest Movies for Sale in 2022, From ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ to ‘892’ (Photos)

For the second year in a row, Sundance will be virtual, meaning that a whole lot of emerging filmmakers won’t get the chance to present their movies in front of a packed Park City audience. But the premieres, competition titles and documentaries playing the fest for 2022 represent a much larger slate of films than were available last year, especially on the marketplace. Already movies like “Fresh” and “Calendar Girls” have found homes, while audiences are eagerly awaiting their first looks at projects that already have distribution such as “Lucy and Desi,” “When You Finish Saving the World” and “jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy.”

Am I OK? — Tig Notaro and Stephanie Allynne make their directorial debut in this LGBT tale of two very close friends (Dakota Johnson and Sonoya Mizuno) having their relationship tested when one gets a major job opportunity in London while the other reveals that she is lesbian.

892 — John Boyega’s post-“Star Wars” career has been marked with outspoken activism, and that translates into his latest role as a Marine veteran separated from his family and barely scraping by. Ignored by the country he served and at the end of his rope with financial troubles and severe PTSD, the soft-spoken soldier grabs the world’s attention by holding a bank hostage with a bomb.

Cha Cha Real Smooth — Cooper Raiff stars and directs this quarter-life crisis tale of a recent college graduate who, after spending his time in higher education drinking and partying, decides to get a job working at bar mitzvahs that will allow him to do the same. That changes when an encounter with a single mother (Dakota Johnson) gives him a vision of a future he never realized he wanted.

Living — In 1952, Akira Kurosawa created a searing critique of Japanese bureaucracy with “Ikiru,” a story of a government worker in postwar Tokyo who scrambles to make something lasting for others when he discovers he has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. With “Living,” director Oliver Hermanus and actor Bill Nighy transfer that story to postwar London as a veteran bureaucrat races against his own mortality to free a modest building project from red tape.

God’s Country — “Westworld” star Thandiwe Newton plays a widowed college professor in the rural American West who is confronted with a world that cares not for her sense of right and wrong when a pair of hunters trespass on her property.

Watcher — First time director Chloe Okuno has earned buzz for her Hitchcockian thriller about a married woman who moves to Bucharest with her husband, who leaves her alone often for his new job. But as news reports reveal that there’s a serial killer on the loose, she begins to get the feeling that she’s being watched.

Sharp Stick — With “Girls” finished, Lena Dunham returns to filmmaking with a drama starring Kristine Froseth, Jon Bernthal and Jennifer Jason Leigh about a woman in her mid-20s living in an apartment with her influencer sister and her cynical mother. Desperate for intimacy, she begins a wild affair with the father of a learning disabled boy she takes care of, beginning a journey into sexuality and power

Honk for Jesus, Save Your Soul — God is big business in this satire starring Regina Hall and Sterling K. Brown as a woman in charge of a Southern Baptist megachurch plans a big comeback after her husband and the church’s pastor is caught in a scandal. Directed, written and produced by twin sisters Adamma and Adanne Ebo, the film uses a faux-documentary style to show how religious corruption isn’t just committed by men but by the wives that protect and profit from them.