At Sundance, the Hottest Ticket in Town Was a Rose Byrne and Conan O’Brien Psychological Thriller 

Rose Byrne attends the premiere of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, at Library Theatre in Park City, Utah. (AP)
Rose Byrne attends the premiere of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, at Library Theatre in Park City, Utah. (AP)
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At Sundance, the Hottest Ticket in Town Was a Rose Byrne and Conan O’Brien Psychological Thriller 

Rose Byrne attends the premiere of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, at Library Theatre in Park City, Utah. (AP)
Rose Byrne attends the premiere of "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You" during the Sundance Film Festival on Friday, Jan. 24, 2025, at Library Theatre in Park City, Utah. (AP)

Rose Byrne plays a mother in the midst of a breakdown in the experiential psychological thriller “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”

Anticipation was high for the A24 film, which will be released sometime this year. Its premiere Friday at the Sundance Film Festival was easily the hottest ticket in town, with even ticketholders unable to get in. Those who did make it into the Library theater were treated to an intense, visceral, inventive story from filmmaker Mary Bronstein that has quickly become one of the festival’s must-sees.

Byrne plays Linda, who is barely hanging on while managing her daughter’s mysterious illness. She’s faced with crisis after crisis, big and small — from the massive, gaping hole in their apartment ceiling that forces them to move to a dingy motel, to an escalating showdown with a parking attendant at a care center. The cracks in her psychological, emotional and physical wellbeing have become too much to bear.

“I’d never seen a movie before where a mother is going through a crisis with a child but our energy is not with the child’s struggle, it’s with the mother’s,” Bronstein said at the premiere. “If you’re a caretaker, you shouldn’t be bothering with yourself at all. It should all be about the person you’re taking care of, right? And that is a particular kind of emotional burnout state that I was really interested in exploring.”

Byrne and Bronstein went deep in the preparation phase, having long discussions about Linda with the goal of making her as real as possible before the quick, 27-day shoot. Byrne said she was obsessed with figuring out who Linda was before the crisis. The film was in part inspired by Bronstein’s experience with her own daughter, but she didn’t want to elaborate on the specifics.

“That’s her story to tell,” Bronstein said.

Part of Linda’s story involves her therapist, played by Conan O’Brien, who joked that he didn’t realize he was in a movie.

“I’m not looking out for movie scripts or anything. But when I got a call from A24 that they wanted me to read something, I’m not stupid,” O’Brien said. “I showed it to my wife, who is one of the smartest people I know, and she read through it and she said, ‘I didn’t know they made movies like this anymore.’”

He was particularly in awe of his director and co-star, saying he felt like a fraud standing beside them.

“It was an amazing experience, one of the best experiences of my life, just to be with them and watch them work,” O’Brien said. “I don’t know how (Byrne) did that and not check into a hospital afterwards, because I haven’t seen any actor, man or woman, sustain that level for an entire movie.”

“I feel like I have to go to a hospital now, because this was the first time I watched it,” he added. “I’m a mess.”

A$AP Rocky also co-stars, as a man Linda meets at the motel, but was not in Park City for the premiere. He is currently on trial, charged with firing a gun at a former friend.

The film is full of ambiguity, metaphor and just plain artistic expression that Bronstein hesitated to explain, from the name itself to the hole in the ceiling, which takes on a somewhat supernatural quality.

“When we have nothing left to give, we have an emptiness inside of us,” Bronstein said. “And that emptiness is actually not empty: It’s filled with all the darkness and self-hate and doubt and fear and dread and regret and everything. ... That to me is what the hole is.”

Some of it, she said, she doesn’t even fully understand. The point is the experience, and critics and Sundance audiences are already fully on board.

Bronstein, a bit of a cult figure in the film world, made her directorial debut in 2008 at the SXSW festival with “Yeast,” which featured a pre-fame Greta Gerwig and was hailed by New Yorker critic Richard Brody as a “mumblecore classic.”

“If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” is only her second feature.

“This is the first time that anybody else has paid for me to make art,” Bronstein said. “I’m proud to say that this is the film that came directly from my head to the screen.”



‘Conclave’ Wins Best Picture at BAFTAs as ‘The Brutalist’ Takes Directing and Acting Prizes 

British actor Ralph Fiennes poses on the red carpet at the 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London, Britain, 16 February 2025. (EPA)
British actor Ralph Fiennes poses on the red carpet at the 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London, Britain, 16 February 2025. (EPA)
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‘Conclave’ Wins Best Picture at BAFTAs as ‘The Brutalist’ Takes Directing and Acting Prizes 

British actor Ralph Fiennes poses on the red carpet at the 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London, Britain, 16 February 2025. (EPA)
British actor Ralph Fiennes poses on the red carpet at the 2025 EE BAFTA Film Awards at the Royal Festival Hall in London, Britain, 16 February 2025. (EPA)

Papal thriller “Conclave” won four prizes including best picture on Sunday at the 78th British Academy Film Awards, where genre-bending musical “Emilia Pérez” proved that it’s still an awards contender despite a multipronged backlash that looked to have dented its chances.

At a ceremony where no film dominated, “The Brutalist” equaled the awards tally of “Conclave," scooping four trophies, including best director for Brady Corbet and best actor for Adrien Brody. Mikey Madison won the best actress prize for Brooklyn tragicomedy “Anora.”

“Conclave,” which stars Ralph Fiennes as a cardinal corralling conniving clergy as they elect a new pope, beat “Anora,” “The Brutalist,” “Emilia Pérez” and Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” to the top prize. “Conclave” was also named outstanding British film and took trophies for editing and adapted screenplay.

Supporting performer prizes went to Kieran Culkin for “A Real Pain” and Zoe Saldaña for “Emilia Pérez,” which also won the award for best film not in the English language.

From the BAFTAs to the Oscars

Stars including Cynthia Erivo, Hugh Grant, Ariana Grande, Lupita Nyong’o, Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan walked the red carpet at London’s Royal Festival Hall for the awards, known as BAFTAs. The British prizes often provide clues about who will triumph at Hollywood’s Academy Awards on March 2, in an unusually hard-to-call awards season.

They also have a distinctly British accent. The ceremony kicked off with its kilt-wearing host, Scottish actor David Tennant, leading the audience in a rousing singalong of The Proclaimers’ anthem “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

Madison won the female acting trophy for her powerhouse performance as an exotic dancer entangled with a Russian oligarch's son in “Anora.” She beat Karla Sofía Gascón, Demi Moore for body-horror film “The Substance,” Ronan for “The Outrun,” Erivo for “Wicked” and Marianne Jean-Baptiste for “Hard Truths.”

Brody beat competition from Fiennes, Chalamet, who plays the young Dylan in “A Complete Unknown,” Grant for the horror film “Heretic,” Colman Domingo for prison drama “Sing Sing” and Sebastian Stan for his portrayal of a young Donald Trump in “The Apprentice.”

Brody, who plays a Hungarian-Jewish architect in the postwar United States, said “The Brutalist” carried a powerful message for our divided times.

“It speaks to the need for all of us to share in the responsibility of how we want others to be treated and how we want to be treated by others,” he said. “There's no place any more for antisemitism. There's no place for racism.”

“The Brutalist” also won prizes for its cinematography and musical score.

“A Real Pain,” about mismatched cousins on a trip to explore their roots, won the BAFTA for best original screenplay, as well as Culkin's acting award.

“I’d like to share this with my wife, who didn’t come because she didn’t think I’d win,” quipped writer-director Jesse Eisenberg, who also co-starred in the film.

Claymation caper “Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl” won awards for best animated feature and best family and children’s film.

Sci-fi epic “Dune: Part Two” won prizes for sound and visual effects, while blockbuster musical “Wicked” took the costume and production design trophies.

Rising stars and lifetime honors

Most BAFTA winners are chosen by 8,000 members of the UK academy of industry professionals, with one — the Rising Star Award — selected by public vote from a shortlist of nominees. This year's winner was David Jonsson, star of high finance TV drama series “Industry” and London rom-com “Rye Lane.”

“Star, I don’t know,” he said. “But rising, I guess.”

The prize for best British debut went to Rich Peppiatt, writer-director of Irish-language hip-hop drama “Kneecap.”

“Willow” and “Return of the Jedi” actor Warwick Davis received the academy’s top honor, the BAFTA Fellowship, for his screen career and work to create a more inclusive film industry.

The 3-foot, 6-inch (1.1-meter) actor founded a talent agency for actors under 5 feet tall, because, he said, “short actors weren’t known for their talent, just their height.”

“This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me — and I’ve been in ‘Star Wars,’” Davis said as he accepted his award.

This awards season has been clouded by last month’s devastating Los Angeles wildfires, and BAFTA chairwoman Sara Putt sent a message of strength to everyone affected,

The event was without a dash of royal glamour this year. Neither Prince William, who is honorary president of the British film academy, nor his wife Kate attended the ceremony, which coincided with school holidays for their three children.

William, 42, sent a video message, recorded during a visit to meet students at the London Screen Academy on Wednesday.

During the visit, the heir to the throne discussed his own viewing habits, saying he’d watched World War II drama “Darkest Hour” and had begun postapocalyptic TV drama “The Last of Us.” He said he found it “quite full on” and didn’t make it to the end.