Sundance 2025: All That’s Left of You, Magic Farm, Didn’t Die

As we’ve written about before, dispatches are often bundled out of festivals at this site based on program, theme, even the day they premiere, but necessity dictates that the assemblage must sometimes be random to clean up films with no obvious dance partners. Welcome to my final such Sundance dispatch of 2025, a collection of two premieres and a midnight offering that I haven’t had a chance to write about yet. One is among the best of the fest, the other two are on a tragically lower tier, despite some interesting efforts by their creators.

The best of this bunch, and one of the best of Park City 2025, is the nuanced and moving “All That’s Left of You,” from the Palestinian-American filmmaker Cherie Dabis (“Amreeka”). Dabis has made her most confident and powerful work to date, a story of generational trauma. We’ve seen that theme unpacked in films about Israel & Palestine before, and Dabis doesn’t break any molds here, but she focuses strongly on character over theme, at least until the final act. The latter comes through in a story of cycles of violence and shared humanity across generations of hatred, but Dabis writes character first and has directed her cast to uniformly strong performances, including a stunning turn from Saleh Bakri, opposite the writer/director herself. Like a lot of Sundance 2025 films, grief takes center stage here, but Dabis’ approach is never maudlin, capturing how choices within relationships can have an impact not just across generations but cultures and even from friends to enemies.

“All That’s Left of You” unfolds primarily in three chapters across generations of a Palestinian family. It opens in 1980 as protests lead to violence, before cutting back to 1948 to really make clear how this family got to this point. In 1980, a young man named Noor (Muhammad Abed Elrahman) is shot by an Israeli soldier. Before we learn his fate, Dabis is on-screen, sort of playing both Noor’s mother and herself as she speaks directly to camera about the familial decision and international politics that led to this day.

Cut back to Noor’s grandfather Sharif (Adam Bakri) in 1948 in Jaffa, trying to live peacefully in a region torn apart by violence. When he is arrested just for being on his own land after the British withdrawal from the region, it sends ripples through his family tree. The second chapter details Sharif’s son Salim (an excellent Saleh Bakri, giving easily one of the best performances of this year’s Sundance) and an encounter with an Israeli soldier who nearly kills the man in front of his son, Noor. This event seems to harden Noor, making him grow up too quickly. The arrest of Sharif shaped the life of Salim in a way that made him fearful, which the altered the trajectory of Noor, leading to his shooting. How that event will end up actually saving lives gives Dabis’ film a bittersweet edge.

The moments of broader political and emotional messaging in “All That’s Left of You” wouldn’t have half their power if not for the delicacy with which Dabis handles her scenes of family mundanity. She opens her second act with a wedding and regularly circles back to families trying to maintain normalcy for their children, such as singing songs and playing games. It’s a story of turmoil that’s grounded in humanity. And it’s easily the best non-English production of a festival not really known for its international cinema.

There’s an international angle to Amalia Ulman’s “Magic Farm” too, but that’s about all the two have in common. The director of the superior “El Planeta” returned to Sundance this year with a quirky comedy about ugly Americans in an Argentinian village, a film that works in fits and starts but can’t quite get over its episodic nature enough to present a coherent, entertaining vision.

“Magic Farm” opens with promise as it introduces us to a media personality named Edna (Chloe Sevigny), who seems to be one of those people who espouses understanding of cultures around the world while exploiting their otherness for clout. She’s supported by her collaborator and partner Dave (Simon Rex), an equally icky personality, and has a team of producers and assistants around her who accompany Edna on a new filming project in Argentina. Producer Jeff (Alex Wolff) thinks he has discovered a culturally resonant place to profile, but it turns out that he’s in the wrong village, leading everyone to try and fake the quirky for a series of videos before the entire production goes broke. Ulman herself is excellent as a producer while Joe Apollonio is memorable as another team member and Camila del Campo practically steals the film as a local girl named Manchi who develops a crush on Jeff.

The scenes between Del Campo and Wolff are easily the best in the film as the two form an unexpected relationship between the pampered filmmaker and the village girl with few options to escape her corner of the world, one that’s constantly beset upon by toxic chemicals from nearby crop dusters. For the most part, “Magic Farm” consists of cultural confusions masquerading as comedy, but Ulman can’t quite find the right tone or rhythm for the piece. I kept waiting for it to find another gear and tie its episodic comedy scenes together before realizing that was just never going to happen. Despite some funny Wolff acting choices and how much I want to see Del Campo in a better project, there’s just not enough magic here.

There’s almost no magic in the drab misfire “Didn’t Die,” a midnight offering from Meera Menon that proves that a fun concept and cool inspirations do not necessarily equate to a good movie. On paper, this one should be catnip for this George A. Romero acolyte, and Menon clearly bows at the Cinematic Alter of the Dead too, cribbing imagery and narrative choices from the master, but she falters in so many other departments that she never reaches the level of that to which she pays homage. Without being overly cruel, there’s only one even marginally good performance in this film, and Menon can’t overcome the lack of quality acting with the scares or even imagery that can often allow us to look the other way when it comes to horror movie ensembles.

Kiran Deol leads “Didn’t Die” as Vinita, the best (only?) podcaster after the apocalypse, speaking to the few remaining souls on the planet after their friends and family members turned into the walking dead. It’s a minor complaint in a film that does a number of things wrong, but Menon doesn’t even really play with her lead’s profession other than to set up a few scenes involving a microphone and to give her a chance to provide shallow voiceover. Everything changes when Vinita’s ex, Vincent (George Basil) shows up back in her life, carrying a baby he found orphaned by its zombified parents. Can Vincent and Vinita care for this life amidst all this death? And how will it impact Vinita’s brothers: a scared soul played by Vishal Vijayakumar and a more confident older bro played by Samrat Chakrabarti, easily the best thing about “Didn’t Die.”

Chakrabarti understands how to play a complex dynamic of fear and resilience in a manner that almost gives life to “Didn’t Die,” but he’s just not a big enough character to rescue this film from what it does wrong. The performances rarely feel true, winking at the camera as if everyone knows they’re in a black-and-white Sundance zombie movie. And the framing is off too, especially in the too-few action/horror scenes, which are just awkwardly staged. I’m all for using camera tricks to hide low budgets in DIY horror but the film still needs to be coherent in ways that Menon’s is not. My first few days were dominated by films that I told people were “good ideas in search of better filmmaking” (“Rabbit Trap,” “The Thing with Feathers,” more). At least “Didn’t Die” wasn’t alone.