It all started with Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt envisioning a bloody shoe. “I’ve been working on female characters that are struggling with their bodies through my short films,” she says.

A robust number of near-experimental documentaries and narratives already call out to us from this year's lineup, sure to yield a crop of future award winners.

The Sundance Film Festival catalogue can be overwhelming to navigate, with around 90 feature films playing across 11 days.