Sundance adds Brett Kavanaugh assault allegation documentary to its lineup

The Sundance Film Festival made a late addition to its lineup today, with Deadline reporting that Justice, a new documentary about now-familiar allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has now been added to the festival’s slate.

News of the addition was announced at an opening day press conference in Park City today, with director of programming Kim Yutani announcing the Friday night addition while laying out the rest of the Sundance slate. (Not for nothing but this was the first in-person Sundance press conference in two years, as the festival returns to a less-virtual version of itself.)

One somewhat surprising thing about Justice, meanwhile: This is the first documentary from Doug Liman, who’s best known as, among other things, one of that handful of directors who’ve made a healthy career out of pointing the camera at Tom Cruise while he does ludicrously unsafe things. (Previous entries in that canon including American Made and Edge Of Tomorrow; Liman more recently directed sci-fi parable Chaos Walking and a few episodes of Noah Centineo’s The Recruit.) Not that Liman doesn’t have the filmmaking chops to tackle documentary, but it’s kind of wild to see a guy we normally associate with reasonably smart action thrillers dialing into a topic as heavy as the allegations of sexual assault—levied against Kavanaugh by multiple women, but most notably Christine Blasey Ford, and discussed extensively during his confirmation hearings—that have cast a shadow over Kavanaugh ever since he was nominated to the Court.

Liman’s film will debut at Sundance on Friday night. In describing the movie, Yutani noted that, “It’s a very powerful documentary, we felt it was important to add. We saw it practically yesterday. It challenges existing narratives and asks tough questions.”