Sundance 2017: 10 Films Everyone Is Buzzing About

5. Columbus

Columbus Movie 2017
Superlative Films

Director: Kogonada

The Plot: Columbus centres on a young woman (Haley Lu Richardson) who is forced to take care of her mother, a recovering addict, and her relationship with a Korean-born man (John Cho) who's in town to attend to his comatose father.

The Buzz: This is director Kogonada's first ever full-length feature, with the director primarily known for his video essays - and he's garnering a ton of buzz for his incredibly successful leap to the big-screen.

Star Haley Lu Richardson has also been marked as one to watch, and with the recent box-office success of Split (which she also appeared in), could very well become the breakout female performer of 2017.

But when all is said and done, this will be Kogonada's show. His ability to create a compelling video essay surely helped him apply a similar level of rigidity and depth here, and in that sense, Columbus may be a tad too subtle for mainstream viewing, but easy to appreciate for those who give it time.

Columbus does not yet have a wide release date.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!