Sundance 2020: 10 Films Everyone Is Buzzing About

9. Surge

Ben Whishaw Surge
Protagonist Pictures

Back in 2013, director Aneil Karia released a short film called Beat, in which Ben Whishaw played a man wandering the streets of London, dancing and knocking things off shelves and generally just letting loose and not having a care in the world.

Now, the filmmaker has expanded some of the ideas from that short into a full-length feature, with Whishaw starring as Joseph, a troubled airport worker who gets pushed to his limits - uncaring co-workers, resentful parents and a dull job are all factors here - and embarks on a crime spree.

By all accounts, Whishaw does not hold back in his role, delivering a twitchy and unpredictable physical performance that is as transfixing as it is disturbing. The movie's screenplay has been criticised, but its leading man has been generating a lot of buzz, and this is definitely a performance to keep your eye on throughout this year.

Whishaw is even winning awards already, earning the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Acting at the tail-end of the festival.

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!