2025 Sundance Film Festival: Best and Worst Films

Writer-director Hailey Gates took home the top prize in the U.S. Dramatic competition with this sendup of a military role-playing facility adapted from her 2020 short Shako Mako. After researching and abandoning thoughts of a documentary, Gates pivoted to a story about a romance between an aspiring actress (Alia Shawkat) and a war veteran (Callum Turner) with hopes of being redeployed derailing the simulation.

Chloë Sevigny and Tim Heidecker play supporting roles. Atropia may have won over the jury, but film critics weren't convinced. "The film never comes close to finding a rhythm. It's tiresome from start to finish," Chase Hutchinson writes for TheWrap. Benjamin Lee of The Guardian claims it's a "deadening jumble of ideas, tones, motivations and genres that just doesn't coalesce into much of anything," giving the "frustrating feeling of emptiness despite such a rich subject."

THR critic Lovia Gyarkye finds it "scattered" despite its "incredibly compelling premise," and Variety's Siddhant Adlakha feels Gates' film is "a pass or two away from truly biting satire, but at each turn, it stops just short of expanding its purview."