Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool and Jacqueline Castel’s My Animal are among the four Canadian feature films that have been selected to have their world premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

Lin Alluna’s Twice Colonized and Ido Mizrahy’s The Longest Goodbye are the other Canadian titles revealed by the Sundance Institute on Wednesday (Dec. 7) for its annual festival, which runs from Jan. 19 to 29. The Shorts and Indie Episodic lineups will be announced on Dec. 13, according to a news release.

Infinity Pool (pictured), written and directed by Cronenberg, is in the Midnight category. The Canada/Hungary/Croatia copro is produced by Karen Harnisch and Andrew Cividino of Toronto’s Film Forge, Noah Segal and Christina Piovesan of Toronto’s Elevation Pictures, Anita Juka of Croatia-based 4 Film, and Daniel Kresmery and Jonathan Halperyn of Budapest-based Hero Squared. It is co-financed by Telefilm Canada, U.S.-based Neon and Topic Studios, and the Croatian Film Fund.

The film follows a couple who goes on an all-inclusive beach vacation and finds out about the horrors within the resort. It stars Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, and Cleopatra Coleman. Neon holds its U.S. distribution rights, while Elevation Pictures handles the Canadian distribution.

My Animal, directed by Castel in her feature debut and written by Jae Matthews, is also in the Midnight category. The horror romance was shot in Timmins, Ont., and is produced by Michael Solomon of Montreal’s Les Films Band With Pictures and Andrew Bronfman of Good Movies Inc.

It was produced in association with XYZ Films, JoBro Productions, GreenGround Productions, Vigilante Productions, Crave, and Photon Films, with the financial support of the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation and Ontario Creates. Toronto’s Photon Films holds its Canadian distribution rights, with a release slated for 2023, according to a spokesperson for the distributor.

My Animal follows an outcast teenage goalie who falls in love with a figure skater and learns how to control her desires and darkest secret. It stars Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Amandla Stenberg, Stephen McHattie, Heidi von Palleske, Cory Lipman, and Joe Apollonio. The film was also selected for the Frontières copro market at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2019.

Twice Colonized and The Longest Goodbye will screen in the World Cinema Documentary Competition.

Twice Colonized is a Canada/Greenland/Denmark copro, produced by Stacey Aglok MacDonald and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril of Nunavut-based Red Marrow Media, Emile Hertling Péronard of Greenland’s Ánorâk Film, and Bob Moore of Montreal’s EyeSteelFilm. It follows a renowned Inuit lawyer, who embarks on a journey to reclaim her language and culture after her son suddenly dies. Its also been selected for the 2019 Hot Docs Forum.

The Longest Goodbye, an Israel/Canada copro produced by Canadian producer Paul Cadieux and Israel-born filmmaker Nir Sa’ar, follows a NASA psychologist as he observes the impact of social isolation on Mars-bound astronauts.

The films were selected from 15,855 submissions. The festival will take place in a hybrid fashion, with in-person events and screenings set for Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort. A selection of films will be screened online across the U.S. from Jan. 24 to 29.

Image courtesy of Sundance Institute