The awards, which recognize standout artistic and cinematic achievement, are decided upon by six section juries. As in years past, festival audiences have a role in deciding the 2021 Audience Awards, open to films in the U.S. Competition, World Competition, and NEXT categories. As previously announced, the juried Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize was awarded to “Son of Monarchs.” Below are all this year’s jury members, with bios courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival....

Per the official synopsis: “Nothing extraordinary ever happens to Carol Peters, so when she starts getting snarky backtalk from her TV, phone and microwave, she thinks she is being punked or losing her mind. In fact, the world’s first superintelligence has selected her for observation, taking over her life… with a bigger, more ominous plan to take over everything. Now Carol is humanity’s last chance to prove that people are worth saving....

Meanwhile, in the United States, Latinx audiences are known to be enthusiastic (and paying) fans of all things horror, even if Hollywood projects rarely include Latinos on screen. There are still few genre features by or about American Latinos out there, but up-and-coming storytellers are striving to change that. As streamers and studios vow to support emerging voices in entertainment, this is a space ripe for growth. A thematically compelling quality in many of the most prominent Latino horror films is that genre often serves as a vehicle to create discourse around current socio-political topics or to reckon with a country’s troubled past....

In the fall of 2003, a new nurse arrived at a quiet hospital in the middle of New Jersey. He was mild-mannered and affable, with an impressive resume of former gigs. His name was Charles Cullen. Call him Charlie. He quickly became friends with fellow nurse Amy Loughren, who was also good at her job and kind to those who came into her orbit. Both were hiding secrets: Amy had recently learned she had a disease that required a heart transplant, one she could not afford until she had finished up six months at her new-ish gig at the hospital (that’s, of course, when her medical benefits kicked in); Charlie was a serial killer....

Suddenly left without his trusted caretaker, and facing the reality of his mortality, old man Ptolemy Grey (Jackson) lives in solitary squalor. A hoard of a house, Ptolemy exists amid a relentless flood of unrestrained memories and associations that render his mind as inoperable as his congested, reeking toilet. He can’t throw anything away because he’s not sure what’s valuable and what isn’t, and since he’s outlived just about everyone he’s ever truly cared for, there’s no one close enough that he’d trust to help him....

Nor is it particularly compelling to watch. Small wooden pieces being slowly slid around a tabletop doesn’t easily lend itself to absorbing cinema, especially given the challenging nature of the game itself. “Pawn Sacrifice,” “Computer Chess,” and even the Pixar short “Geri’s Game” earned praise for their depictions, but none set the world on fire. “The Queen’s Gambit” may be the exception. It deserves to be, and Frank’s last limited series certainly was, when he took another out-of-fashion genre — the western — and turned “Godless” into a sizable hit (considering its cultural impact)....

That line is uttered by Vanessa Kirby, who plays the stepmother to a teenager dealing with psychological troubles in “The Son.” While the first trailer tells us little, it’s clear we are in the territory of a dark family drama about demons, trauma, and mental illness. French playwright turned Oscar-winning screenwriter Florian Zeller returns to the stage trilogy he first adapted to the screen with 2020’s “The Father” for “The Son....