Sundance 2020: 10 Films Everyone Is Buzzing About

7. Nine Days

Nine Days Winston Duke Zazie Beetz
Mandalay Pictures

At face value, the premise of Nine Days sounds a little bit ridiculous, almost like you're describing a comedy movie. It's about a man called Will - played by Black Panther's Winston Duke - who is tasked with interviewing souls for the privilege of being born.

But writer-director Edson Oda doesn't exactly play things for big belly laughs - far from it. Nine Days has been likened to movies like Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, with the movie offering an extremely thoughtful take on its concept - how would people actually be chosen for the honour of being brought to life?

On the downside, the movie has been described as slow, dreary and perhaps a bit too "artsy", but with an insanely buzzy cast including Duke, Zazie Beetz, Benedict Wong and Bill Skarsgard, some beautiful cinematography and that extremely intriguing concept, it sounds like there's - potentially - going to be a lot to love here.

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!