Sundance Institute

Institute History

2022 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Alice (Keke Palmer) spends her days enslaved on a rural Georgia plantation restlessly yearning for freedom. After a violent clash with plantation owner Paul (Jonny Lee Miller), Alice flees through the neighboring woods and stumbles onto the unfamiliar sight of a highway, soon discovering that the year is actually 1973. Rescued on the roadside by a disillusioned Black activist named Frank (Common), Alice uncovers the lies that have kept her enslaved and the promise of Black liberation.
In her debut feature, writer-director Krystin Ver Linden spins a modern liberation fable that is equal parts earthy Southern Gothic and soulful Blaxploitation. Inspired by true accounts of Black Americans who were kept in peonage for more than 100 years after the end of slavery, Alice is an audacious mix of grim historical fact and exceptional fiction. Moving from a purgatorial plantation overgrown with Spanish moss to the lively landscape of urban Savannah, Ver Linden traces Alice’s breathless journey down the rabbit hole and into the turbulent wonderland of the post–Civil Rights South.
Contains depictions of sexual violence.
This film is part of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival Satellite Screen program.

Screening Details

Section: U.S. Dramatic Competition
Film Type: U.S. Narrative Feature
Country: United States
Language: English
Run Time: 100 min.

Credits

Composer
Executive Producer
Actor
Music Supervisor
- Ann Kline
Producer
- Peter Lawson
Director
- Krystin Ver Linden
Screenwriter
- Krystin Ver Linden
Casting Director
- Jennifer Presser
- Caitlin Well
Editor
- Byron Smith
Costume Designer
- Karyn Wagner

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