biography film festival

• Skip to primary navigation
• Skip to main content

The Bay Area's home for the world's finest films and filmmakers.

2024 About the Festival

BROWSE THE PROGRAM

40 countries

47 programs, the bay…, …the world, see it all at sffilm, “few festivals are more suited to their city than the san francisco international film festival.", 2024 festival sponsors and partners.

 Katie Hall & Tom Knutsen

Nancy Blachman

Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) EatDrinkFilm

• Manage SFFILM Account
• My Membership
• Upcoming Events
• Contact Info
• Order History

U.S. Film Festival

Sundance Institute assumed creative and administrative control of the U.S. Film Festival, expanded it to 10 days, and showcased American independent and international films, including: John Schlesinger ’s The Falcon and the Snowman , Robert Rosenberg and Greta Schiller’s Before Stonewall, William Duke ’s The Killing Floor , John Sayles’s Brother from Another Planet , and Roland Joffé ’s The Killing Fields . Award-winning films included the Coen brothers’ debut film Blood Simple and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise .

Fun fact: Renowned documentary filmmakers Frederick Wiseman, D.A. Pennebaker, and Barbara Kopple (all 1985 jurors) and Rob Epstein participated on the “What’s Real” panel, which examined cinematic representation of reality.

Behind the Headlines

Highlights from the Festival included spotlights on Orson Welles and Ron Mann, an Australian independent cinema showcase, and panels on marketing documentaries, screenwriting, financing, and distribution. Notable films included Susana Blaustein Muñoz and Lourdes Portillo’s Las Madres: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo , Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances , Lee Shapiro’s Nicaragua Was Our Home , and Donna Deitch’s Desert Hearts. Smooth Talk , directed by Joyce Chopra and starring Laura Dern and Treat Williams, won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.

Fun fact: The Festival’s programmers briefly considered eliminating the competition format in favor of a “celebration” of American independent film.

Consumer Media Stats for 1986

A next wave.

Festival highlights included panels on first-time filmmakers, Canada’s next wave, and actors on acting, as well as premieres of Jim McBride’s The Big Easy , Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue , Atom Egoyan’s Next of Kin , David Anspaugh’s Hoosiers , Gary Walkow’s The Trouble with Dick , Jill Godmilow’s Waiting for the Moon , Barbara Margolis’s Are We Winning, Mommy? , and David Jones’s 84 Charing Cross Road . Award winners included Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March and Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls .

Fun fact: The first year of the United States Film Festival in Japan intended to expose new films to the Japanese public, foster creative exchange, and create opportunities for independent filmmakers in the Japanese market.

Consumer Media Stats for 1987

Superstar short films.

The Festival honored Sam Fuller, showcased new Argentine cinema, and screened nearly 100 films, among them Bruce Weber’s Broken Noses , Louis Malle’s Au Revoir Les Enfants , Michael Hoffman’s Promised Land , Norman Jewison’s Moonstruck , John Waters’s Hairspray , Beth and George Gage’s Fire on the Mountain , and Rob Nilsson’s Heat and Sunlight . Award winners included Jennifer Fox’s Beirut: The Last Home Movie , Bill Couturie’s Dear America , and Jerry Rees’s The Brave Little Toaster .

Fun fact: Short films were screened as part of the debut of the Discovery Program for emerging filmmakers, Rogues Gallery, and Best of American Animation. Todd Haynes’s Superstar premiered in the Rogues Gallery.

Consumer Media Stats for 1988

Sex , lies , and heathers.

The Festival opened with a restoration of F.W. Murnau's 1927 film, Sunrise , and continued with a tribute to John Cassavetes and screenings of notable works including Christian Blackwood’s Motel , Martin Donovan’s Apartment Zero , Michael Lehmann’s Heathers , Jonathan Wacks’s Powwow Highway , Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Letters from the Park , and Nancy Savoca’s True Love . Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape won the inaugural Audience Award and, after winning the Palme d’Or, became the most successful independent film of its time.

Fun fact: Nobel Prize-winning writer Gabriel García Marquéz spearheaded the Festival's continuing exploration of Latin American film, overseeing the creation of six feature-length works based on his stories.

A Human Face on the AIDS Crisis

The Sundance U.S. Film Festival featured tributes to Richard Lester and Melvin Van Peebles and special sections showcasing Colombian and Kazakhstani film. Notable films included Jane Campion’s Sweetie , Michael Moore’s Roger and Me , Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan , and Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger . Award winners included Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street and Norman René’s Longtime Companion , a groundbreaking film supported by the Feature Film Program, which was widely considered the first film to put a human face on the AIDS crisis.

Fun fact: House Party , directed by Reginald Hudlin and based on the short film of the same title, won both the Filmmaker Trophy and the Excellence in Cinematography Award in the dramatic category.

From Slackers to Dreamers

The Festival presented retrospectives on Michael Powell and Robert Altman and featured special sections for Japanese cinema, Latin American film, and the history of character animation. Panels included topics on women directors and art and politics. Notable films included Stephen Frears’s The Grifters , Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust , John Sayles’s City of Hope , Todd Haynes’s Poison , Matty Rich’s Straight Out of Brooklyn , and Hal Hartley’s Trust . Barbara Kopple’s documentary American Dream swept the Audience Award, Filmmaker Trophy, and Grand Jury Prize.

Fun fact: The Festival was officially renamed the Sundance Film Festival, and the Park City at Midnight section and Shorts Programs as we know them today were introduced.

From Anders to Zhang

The Festival’s notable screenings included Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala , Derek Jarman’s Edward II , Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth , and Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen . Retrospectives for Stanley Kubrick and Zhang Yimou were showcased, the Discovery Program of short films was presented, and the competition section had an eclectic variety of film including Errol Morris’s A Brief History of Time , Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Brother’s Keeper , Les Blank’s Innocents Abroad , Allison Anders’s Gas, Food, and Lodging , Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs , and Neal Jimenez and Michael Steinberg’s The Waterdance .

Fun fact: Before its premiere at the Festival, Quentin Tarantino and Steve Buscemi attended the 1991 Sundance Institute Directors Lab with Reservoir Dogs .

Consumer Media Stats for 1992

Independent vision.

Sally Potter’s Orlando , Peter Friedman and Tom Joslin’s Silverlake Life: The View from Here , and Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate all premiered during the 1993 Festival. Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. , Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise , and Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi were among the award winners, and filmmakers Philip Kaufman and Christian Blackwood were honored with retrospectives of their work. Panels covered topics ranging from regional filmmaking to the next generation of filmmakers.

Fun fact: Wes Anderson’s 13-minute short Bottle Rocket screened during the 1993 Festival, and his feature-length version of the film was supported by the Institute’s Screenwriters Lab in the same year.

Consumer Media Stats for 1993

Spotlight on native american artists.

Sundance Institute affirmed its commitment to Native American filmmakers by launching a Festival program to showcase Native and Indigenous films. Panels covered topics on interactivity and cinema and the fate of short film. Lodge Kerrigan’s Clean, Shaven , Rose Troche’s Go Fish , and Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral were among many films that saw box-office success and critical acclaim. Award winners included Steve James’s Hoop Dreams and Kevin Smith’s Clerks .

Fun fact: Director Guillermo del Toro premiered his first feature-length film, Cronos , during the 1994 Festival.

Consumer Media Stats for 1994

Asian, european, and latin american cinema.

The Festival screened many films to sold-out crowds. Among the premieres were Antonia Bird’s Priest , Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction , Mina Shum’s Double Happiness , and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Strawberry and Chocolate . In addition to sidebars for Asian, European, and Latin American film, the Festival presented programs devoted to the personal documentary genre and animation. Award-winning films included Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb , Ed Burns’s The Brothers McMullen , and Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion .

Fun fact: Sundance Film Festival in China marked the first festival of American independent film in China. The American delegation included Quentin Tarantino, Allison Anders, and Ethan Coen, among others.

Exploring New Frontiers

Scott Hicks’s Australian biopic Shine and Stanley Tucci and Campbell Scott’s Big Night went on to capture the public consciousness. The Sundance/NHK Filmmakers Award was introduced to support the next generation of independent filmmakers from four global regions: USA, Europe, Latin America, and Japan. Walter Salles was among the inaugural winners for Central Station , which went on to critical acclaim. Award winners included Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s The Celluloid Closet and Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings .

Fun fact: The World Cinema, New Frontier, and American Spectrum sections were introduced.

Consumer Media Stats for 1996

Cinematic and vivid, elusive and ephemeral.

The Festival continued to attract crowds, international attention, and alumni filmmakers. Many of the Premiere section filmmakers were returning directors—Errol Morris, Tom DiCillo, Victor Nunez, Gregg Araki, and Kevin Smith. A major retrospective of the works of German New-Wave director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was presented, and panels examined theatre to film, cyberspace, and the impact of documentary film. Award winners included Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men , Arthur Dong’s Licensed to Kill , and Theodore Witcher’s Love Jones.

Fun fact: In the shorts program, filmmakers Trey Parker and Matt Stone screened The Spirit of Christmas after a bootleg version of the film had previously circulated. The Spirit of Christmas was a precursor to their long-running animated series, South Park .

Consumer Media Stats for 1997

Actors behind the camera.

The Festival saw the rise of the actor/director, with Timothy Hutton, Sara Gilbert, Vincent Gallo, Greg German, and Saul Rubinek moving behind the camera. Christina Ricci attended the Festival with starring roles in both Don Roos’s The Opposite of Sex and Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66 . Award winners included Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art , Darren Aronofsky’s Pi , and Marc Levin’s Slam .

Fun fact: The year saw the renovation of the iconic Egyptian Theater with the addition of its marquee and the introduction of the 1,300 seat Eccles Theatre.

Consumer Media Stats for 1998

Blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

Notable premieres included Rory Kennedy’s American Hollow , Allen and Albert Hughes’s American Pimp , Doug Liman’s Go , and Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels . Panels examined distribution for low-budget films, music and narrative, and documentary funding. Chris Smith’s American Movie , Eric Mendelsohn’s Judy Berlin , and Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen’s On the Ropes were among award winners, and a small Midnight film, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s The Blair Witch Project , saw huge box-office success.

Fun fact: Institute lab-supported film Three Seasons , directed by Tony Bui, was the first feature film shot in Vietnam by a Vietnamese American writer/director and went on to win the Grand Jury Prize, Audience Award, and Excellence in Cinematography Award and opened to critical acclaim.

The Rise of Digital

Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me , Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight , Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides , Rodrigo García’s Things You Can Tell by Just Looking at Her , Mary Harron’s American Psycho , Jamie Babbit’s But I’m a Cheerleader , and Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye were among the many films audiences discovered on the screens of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival saw and embraced the rising influence of digital content with streaming video, digital projection of over 18 films, and the popularity of Miguel Arteta’s digital feature Chuck and Buck .

Fun fact: The Gen-Y Studio was introduced as a gathering place for high school students from around the country to share ideas, explore film, experience new film technology, and converse with Festival filmmakers and industry professionals.

Going Online

The Festival continued to recognize the rise of digital filmmaking with the launch of the Sundance Online Film Festival and by projecting 40 of the year’s films with digital technology. Programmatically, 2001 introduced many films that would soon become cult classics. Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko , David Wain’s Wet Hot American Summer , Jay Chandrasekhar’s Super Troopers , Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast , Richard Linklater’s Waking Life , Christopher Nolan’s Memento , John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch , Stacy Peralta’s Dogtown and Z-Boys , and Alison Anders’s Things Behind the Sun were among the titles introduced by the 2001 Festival.

Fun fact: The Sundance Online Film Festival, showcasing the best in new short films and retrospective work specifically created for the web, received over 3.3 million hits.

Consumer Media Stats for 2001

Art is to make silence speak.

“I thought I had seen everything, but I will leave here astonished” is how jury member John Waters described his experience at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Audiences were treated to a program that included Steven Shainberg’s Secretary , Gary Winick’s Tadpole , Miguel Arteta’s The Good Girl , Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen’s The Kid Stays in the Picture , Patricia Cardoso’s Real Women Have Curves , Todd Louiso’s Love Liza , Liz Garbus’s The Execution of Wanda Jean , Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow , and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity .

Fun fact: What is now known as SIO (Sundance Industry Office) was introduced as the Sales Office, created to further support filmmakers and help facilitate communication and interaction with the industry.

Consumer Media Stats for 2002

West meets east.

Unseasonably warm weather attracted record attendance to the Festival that introduced audiences to films including Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler , Jim Sheridan’s In America , Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon , Peter Hedges’s Pieces of April , Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas , Catherine Hardwicke’s thirteen , Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent , and David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls . The power of the nonfiction form was illustrated with documentaries including Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans , Stanley Nelson’s The Murder of Emmett Till , Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s The Weather Underground , and Weijun Chen’s To Live Is Better Than to Die , a depiction of the AIDS crisis in China.

Fun fact: Bend It Like Beckham screened in the World Cinema section and went on to be the first Western film to be shown on North Korean television.

Consumer Media Stats for 2003

Saw and seen.

With Shane Carruth’s Primer , Ondi Timoner’s DIG! , Joshua Marston’s Maria Full of Grace , Zach Braff’s Garden State , Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite , and many more, the 2004 Film Festival presented the directorial debuts of filmmakers who continued to deliver for audiences around the world. Documentaries like Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal and Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s Born Into Brothels showcased the transformative power of art, resonating with audiences in Park City and beyond.

Fun fact: Progenitor of an entire series of gory horror flicks, Saw premiered as part of the 2004 Festival’s Park City at Midnight program.

Consumer Media Stats for 2004

World cinema competition.

Solidifying its commitment to showcasing original storytelling from around the world, the Festival launched its World Cinema Competition in 2005. Jun Ichikawa’s Tony Takitani (Japan), Susanne Bier’s Brothers (Denmark), Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (Portugal), and Peter Raymont’s Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire (Canada) were among the films presented in the inaugural international competition. Filmmakers working in the US gave us films including Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know , Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow , Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale , Henry Rubin and Dana Shapiro’s Murderball , and Luc Jacquet’s March of the Penguins . For the first time, the Festival presented a selection from its Short Film Program online, marking a convergence of the Festival's commitment to short films and its continued efforts to extend the Festival experience to audiences online.

Fun fact: Hours before the Opening Night screening in Park City, the power line to the Eccles Center was severed. Festival staff had backup generators at the ready, but utility crews restored power in time for the Festival to start without a hitch.

One Million Views

Highlights of the 2006 Film Festival included Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine , Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth , Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking , Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy , and Patrick Creadon’s Wordplay . Documentaries focused on artists ranging from musicians Neil Young and Leonard Cohen to painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, photographer William Eggleston, and playwright Tony Kushner. The Beastie Boys turned the camera on their fans with Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That . Attendance at Festival theaters reached record levels, and online audiences downloaded more than 1,000,000 short films and original content episodes from the Festival’s official site.

Fun fact: Festival-related videos rapidly became one of the most popular features on the Institute’s website, with views first surpassing the one-million mark shortly after the close of the 2006 Festival.

Consumer Media Stats for 2006

A new frontier.

Audiences discovered stories from around the world and from their own backyards with films such as Sarah Polley’s Away from Her , Lincoln Ruchti’s Chasing Ghosts , James C. Strouse’s Grace Is Gone , John Carney’s Once , Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) , Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight , Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib , Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine’s War/Dance , and many more. Award winners included Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science , Christopher Zalla’s Padre Nuestro , and David Sington’s In the Shadow of the Moon .

Fun fact: The Festival’s long-standing commitment to experimental cinema expanded with the introduction of New Frontier, a new program and venue devoted to artists working at the intersection of film, art, and technology.

Film Takes Place

Films from 35 countries were represented in the 2008 program. Further punctuating the Festival’s role as a platform for filmmakers worldwide, Jordan’s first independent feature film in 50 years, Captain Abu Raed , directed by Amin Matalqa, took home the Audience Award. The eclectic lineup was further marked by films as varied as Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River , Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Sugar , James Marsh’s Man on Wire , Carl Deal and Tia Lessin’s Trouble the Water , Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired , Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind , Brad Anderson’s Transsiberian , Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington’s U2 3D , and George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead .

Fun fact: The World Cinema Jury Prizes for directing, cinematography, editing, and screenwriting were first awarded in 2008.

Consumer Media Stats for 2008

25 years of where the next begins.

The 25th edition of the Sundance Film Festival presented 218 films, 42 of which were made by first-time directors. Films ranging from Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max to Lee Daniels’s Precious , and documentaries like Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public , Louie Psihoyos’s The Cove , and Havana Marking’s Afghan Star thrilled audiences in Park City and beyond. In a nod to the history of independent film, Steven Soderbergh returned to the Festival to screen sex, lies, and videotape , which 20 years prior received the Dramatic Audience Award and achieved a new level of industry and mainstream attention for an independent film.

Fun fact: In the documentary Passing Strange, filmmaker Spike Lee captured the eponymous Broadway musical show, itself developed by singer/songwriter Stew at Sundance Institute’s Theatre Lab.

Consumer Media Stats for 2009

Longtime programmer John Cooper assumed the role of Festival director, and a sense of renewal defined the Festival as a whole. The program itself was revitalized with the inception of NEXT, a category featuring films marked by uncompromised vision and originality. Highlights of the lineup included the riveting war doc Restrepo , directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger; the exploration of America’s education system in Davis Guggenheim’s Waiting for Superman ; Debra Granik’s eventual Oscar nominee Winter’s Bone ; the intensely thrilling Animal Kingdom , directed by David Michôd; and Gaspar Noé’s intensely bizarre Enter the Void .

Fun fact: During the 2010 Festival, graffiti artist Banksy—the subject of the documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop —surprised Park City and Salt Lake residents with strategically hidden, film-themed street art.

Iconic Snowflakes

The 2011 Sundance Film Festival played host to 25 first-time filmmakers in the Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, had a record 78 film sales, and introduced an all-new Documentary Premieres category, showcasing the work of established masters of the craft. The slate was marked by award winners such as Drake Doremus’s Like Crazy , Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene , Danfung Dennis’s Hell and Back Again , and Peter Richardson’s How to Die in Oregon , and it featured breakout performances from actresses Elizabeth Olsen, Felicity Jones, and Brit Marling. Michael Moore, Harry Belafonte, Vera Farmiga, and the Chapin Sisters were among the highlights of the Offscreen program.

Fun fact: The snowflake logo for the 2011 Festival was composed of hundreds of individual symbols, each representing an iconic film or aspect of the Festival experience.

Influential documentaries such as Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles , Susan Froemke and Matthew Heineman’s Escape Fire , and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia depicted the effects of economic turmoil across the nation, while narrative features like James Ponsoldt’s Smashed , Ry Russo-Young’s Nobody Walks , and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild showcased masterful storytelling from first-time directors. Offscreen highlights included a performance by Ice-T in conjunction with the premiere of his directorial debut, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap , and panels and discussions with director Spike Lee, journalist David Carr, and actress Julie Delpy, among others. Nonny de la Peña’s Hunger in Los Angeles was presented in the New Frontier section. The invitation prompted de la Peña’s intern Palmer Luckey to create a mobile version of a VR headset, which became an early manifestation of Oculus Rift, marking the beginning of the multibillion dollar gold rush among the technology, gaming, and film industries to bring viable virtual reality to the masses.

Fun fact: Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild was supported by the Institute labs, won the Festival Grand Jury Prize and Excellence in Cinematography Award, and went on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

New Paths, New Stories

For the first time in the Festival’s history, both juries and audiences selected the same films in the U.S. Dramatic and U.S. Documentary Competitions for their top awards: Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale and Steve Hoover’s Blood Brother both took home the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for best dramatic and documentary, respectively. Half of the films in the U.S. Dramatic Competition were directed and written by women, most of them first-time filmmakers. Richard Linklater returned to the Festival with the third chapter in his great cinematic love story Before Midnight . Award-winning, acclaimed documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Freida Mock, Lucy Walker, Robert Stone, Barbara Kopple, and Alex Gibney all screened their latest efforts. Other audience favorites were Jeff Nichols’s Mud and Sarah Polley’s hybrid documentary Stories We Tell .

Fun fact: Between 1985 and 2013, approximately 20 million feet of 35mm film were screened at the Festival. Stretched end to end, the film would reach from New York to Paris.

Consumer Media Stats for 2013

Thirty years of different.

On the 30th anniversary of the Festival, Sundance Institute president and founder Robert Redford spoke about how the Sundance Film Festival had evolved over the previous three decades. “Change is inevitable. You either resist it—we know who those people are—or you go with it,” he said. “We want to ride with that wave.” Celebrating 30 years of independent storytelling, the Festival explored an always feared, often denied, but most vital aspect of the creative process—failure—with FREE FAIL, a day of panels, workshops, and special events. New to 2014 was the Kids section, designed for independent film’s youngest fans. Standout films of the Festival included Obvious Child , A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night , Skeleton Twins , God Help the Girl , Rich Hill , 20,000 Days on Earth , and Boyhood , while the unique history of baseball was showcased in both The Battered Bastards of Baseball and No No: A Dockumentary. The undead was a common theme 2014 with What We Do in the Shadows , Life After Beth, Jamie Marks Is Dead, Only Lovers Left Alive, and Dead Snow; Red vs. Dead.

Fun fact: Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and went on to win three Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for J.K. Simmons’s performance as Terence Fletcher, the brutally savage music instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential.

Me and Earl and the Art of Film

Exploring cinema and highlighting the unique roles that bring stories to life on screen, Art of Film Weekend was introduced to take aspiring filmmakers and film-loving audiences behind the scenes to see the creative, collaborative spirit of artists at every stage of the creative process that’s core to the Festival. The annual A Celebration of Music in Film concert was a tribute to jazz icon Nina Simone, the subject of Liz Garbus’s What Happened, Miss Simone? , and featured Common, Erykah Badu, Aloe Blacc, Kate Davis, Andra Day, and Al Schackman. Popular with both jurors and audiences, Alfonso Gomez-Rejon’s Me and Earl and the Dying Girl won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, while Crystal Moselle’s The Wolfpack won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Meru received the U.S. Documentary Audience Award. The World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize and World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize went to Chad Gracia’s The Russian Woodpecker and John Maclean’s Slow West , respectively.

Fun fact: Nearly 20 years before premiering Dope and winning the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Excellence in Editing at the 2015 Festival, Rick Famuyiwa premiered his first film, the short Blacktop Lingo , at the 1996 Festival. Famuyiwa also attended the 1997 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs with The Wood , which was released in theaters in 1999.

Independent Minded

“Diversity comes out of independence. If you’re independent minded, you’re going to do things different from the common form, and you’re going to have more diverse products.” —Robert Redford Directing duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert premiered Swiss Army Man, a wholly original debut feature bursting with limitless creativity both in content and form. The Daniels also had a short film, The Pound Hole , screen as a part of the Midnight Shorts Program. Films like Robert Greene’s Kate Plays Christine , Michal Marczak’s All These Sleepless Nights , Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami’s Sonita, and Penny Lane’s Nuts! sought to expand the definition of the documentary, while Anna Rose Holmer’s The Fits , from the NEXT section, brought fabulist storytelling to a real-life cast and location. New for 2016 was the Special Events section, an evolving category that included episodic work, short films, and live performances. Award winners included Sonita, Swiss Army Man , Carlos del Castillo and Manolo Cruz’s Between Sea and Land , Kerem Sanga’s First Girl I Loved , Brian Oakes’s Jim: The James Foley Story , Elite Zexer’s Sand Storm , and Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg’s Weiner .

Fun fact: New Frontier celebrated its 10th anniversary of cutting-edge media, fine art, and the vast potential and possibilities of storytelling with the presentation of nearly 40 VR works.

Consumer Media Stats for 2016

• xxxx cinema screens in the US/Canada
• xxxx digital cinema screens in the US/Canada
• xxxx million US households have VOD
• Over xxxx million Netflix members globally
• xxxx million US households have smartphones

Mr. Pink Meets Patti Cake$

The 2017 Festival brought environmentalism front and center, with 14 films and virtual reality experiences on the subject—including follow-up films Chasing Coral (Jeff Orlowski's sequel to Chasing Ice ) and Al Gore's much-anticipated Day One film An Inconvenient Sequel directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. And 25 years after its Sundance premiere, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs returned for a special anniversary screening as part of the From the Collection category. Other highlights included culture-clash love story Michael Showalter’s The Big Sick , Damon Davis and Sabaah Folayan’s Ferguson uprising documentary Whose Streets? , Macon Blair’s absurdist crime movie I don't feel at home in this world anymore. , Jordan Peele's surprise Midnight screening Get Out , and, one year after the big success of Sonita, two new films about female rappers: Geremy Jasper’s Patti Cake$ and Michael J. Larnell’s Roxanne Roxanne . Off of the screen, an independently organized Women's March featuring such speakers as Dolores Huerta, Chelsea Handler, and Jessica Williams brought an estimated 8,000 people to crowd Main Street on the third day of the Festival, joining millions of others across the country in similar demonstrations.

Fun fact: The 2017 Festival saw heavy snowfall, a power outage that caused screenings at three theaters to be rescheduled, and a cyberattack that halted ticket sales—but not even that trifecta of misfortunes could stop the Festival from going on as planned.

Consumer Media Stats for 2017

• 43,661 cinema screens in the US/Canada
• 42,552 digital cinema screens in the US/Canada
• 108,481 cinema screens internationally
• 98,498 digital cinema screens internationally
• 116.4 million US households had TVs
• 72.9 million US household had VOD
• 65 million Netflix subscribers globally
• 187.5 million smartphone users in the US
• $18 billion in US home entertainment spending

Small Screen Goes Big

Recognizing the increasing demand for serial content, the 2018 Festival introduced the Indie Episodic section specifically for stories told in multiple installments. And to house even more screenings in Park City for the ever-growing Festival, the Institute converted a sporting goods store into a new permanent 500-seat theater, The Ray—the basement of which became a New Frontier exhibition space that included a 40-seat mobile VR cinema.

Also making its debut in 2018 was the new Festival Favorite Award, determined by audience ballots from all Festival screenings, which went to the Kids documentary Science Fair . The U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Grand Jury Prizes were awarded to The Miseducation of Cameron Post (directed by Desiree Akhavan) and Kailash (directed by Derek Doneen), respectively, while the biggest sale of the year was Sam Levinson’s Midnight hit Assassination Nation for more than $10 million.

Fun fact: Eliza McNitt’s Spheres, a three-part VR series that lets viewers explore the center of a black hole, was purchased for seven-figures, a first for a VR project at the Festival.

Powerhouse Women Take Center Stage

As Kim Yutani took the reins as the new director of programming, the 2019 Festival made huge strides toward the Institute’s commitment to inclusion—with 41% of films directed by people of color, 17% by people who identified as LGBTQ+, and 45% by women.

Some of the buzziest women-helmed films included two of the Festival’s biggest deal earners—Nisha Ganatra’s Late Night and Gurinder Chadha’s Blinded by the Light —along with Chinonye Chukwu’s U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize–winning Clemency and Lulu Wang’s The Farewell .

A slew of documentaries also made big waves, not the least of which were Special Jury Award winner APOLLO 11 , featuring never-before-seen archival footage of the moon landing mission, and Festival Favorite Knock Down the House , which chronicled the journeys of four female political newcomers in the 2018 midterm elections, including youngest-ever Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Fun fact: The 2019 Festival saw an unusual bunch of surprise special guests walk the press lines, including an alien lizard, dog, robot, and astronaut.

Imagined Futures

Among the 2020 program’s award-winning films were Lee Isaac Chung’s coming-of-age immigrant story Minari and Jim LeBrecht and Nicole Newnham’s disability-rights documentary Crip Camp , while the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award went to first-time feature director Radha Blank, who also wrote, starred, and rapped in The 40-Year-Old Version . Notable Festival guests included Hillary Clinton and Gloria Steinem, each of whom had a biographical story (documentary and narrative, respectively) premiering in Park City.

To celebrate the beginning of the decade, the new Imagined Futures series highlighted the possibilities of an equitable future with panels and special screenings, culminating in a communal bonfire gathering. And at the close of the Festival, longtime Documentary Film Program director Tabitha Jackson was announced as the incoming Festival director in light of John Cooper’s retirement—marking the first time in the Institute’s history that the position went to a woman.

Fun fact: The New Frontier project Spaced Out brought audiences into the swimming pool at the Park City Sheraton for a floating outer-space simulation.

Independent Together

The pandemic led the Institute to reimagine the festival experience and offer the 2021 Sundance Film Festival digitally for the first time via a custom-designed online platform alongside screenings at local cinemas and arts organizations across the U.S. in the form of Satellite Screens. Huge strides in accessibility led to tripled attendance, with audiences from all 50 states and 120 countries, and industry praise for setting a high standard in user experience for screenings. The all-new New Frontier Spaceship experience allowed artists and Festivalgoers to mingle, watch performances, and view VR projects in a virtual space.

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt hosted the online Awards Night Ceremony, where the top prizes were presented to Sian Heder’s CODA , Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee , Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) , and Blerta Basholli’s Hive , among many others.

Fun fact: During the “Barbed Wire Kisses Redux” Big Conversation, B. Ruby Rich reassembled the titans who spoke at the 1992 Festival (a watershed year for LGBTQ+ cinema that gave rise to the term “New Queer Cinema”)—and invited a few guests from the next generation.

The Spaceship, Satellite Screens, and Beyond

It was an epic journey to get to the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and, like any good saga, there were twists and turns along the way. Even with these shifts, the Institute’s goal to highlight the newest and most innovative voices in independent filmmaking never wavered, and, for the second year in a row, the Festival took place all over the world thanks to the online platform, The Spaceship – the virtual New Frontier community, and Satellite Screen locations across the United States.

Festival director Tabitha Jackson hosted How to Fest: Daily , a series of videos that brought together artists, programmers, and film lovers to explore Festival themes and projects. Bold, intimate, and culture- shifting stories prevailed across all categories, including award winners such as Nikyatu Jusu’s Nanny , an exploration of motherhood and the immigrant experience; Daniel Roher’s Navalny , which documents the experiences and vision of the titular Russian opposition leader; and Alejandro Loayza Grisi’s Utama , a portrait of an elderly Quechua couple contending with a climate change-induced drought that threatens their way of life.

Fun fact: Decked out in striped pajamas, the titular homemade robot character Charles from Jim Archer’s Brian and Charles took center stage for the film’s satellite screening Q&A.

All Eyes on Independents

After two years of digital Festivals, the 2023 Festival returned to Utah for the kickoff of the first hybrid Sundance Film Festival. Over 11 days — in person and online — Festivalgoers watched 175 films and 4 Indie Episodic projects. Award winners included A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One , Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol , D. Smith’s KOKOMO CITY , Maryam Keshavarz’s The Persian Version , and Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson’s Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project .

Prominent Festival film themes included trans stories, narratives centering Iran, and explorations of motherhood. Meanwhile, Festival talks created avenues for thought-provoking discussions about how to keep pushing the film industry forward, delving into the complexities of representation in art, presenting some of the freshest faces in film, tackling the rising wave of antisemitism, and more.

Fun fact: Mariachi Juvenil de Utah and the Theater Camp cast treated Festival attendees to memorable music performances at the premieres of Sam Osborn and Alejandra Vasquez’s Going Varsity in Mariachi and Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s Theater Camp , respectively.

40 Years of Independents

With a record-setting 17,000 film submissions from around the world, the 2024 Festival isn’t just a celebration of our 40-year legacy; it’s the start of a new decade for independent storytelling and propels us into the next 40 years and beyond.

Sundance Institute assumed creative and administrative control of the U.S. Film Festival, expanded it to 10 days, and showcased American independent and international films, including: John Schlesinger ’s The Falcon and the Snowman , Robert Rosenberg and Greta Schiller’s Before Stonewall, William Duke ’s The Killing Floor , John Sayle’s Brother from Another Planet , Roland Joffé ’s The Killing Fields . Award-winning films included the Coen brothers’ debut film Blood Simple and Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger than Paradise .

Consumer Media Stats for 1985

• 21,147 cinema screens in the US
• 84.9 million US households have TVs
• 17.7 million US households have VCRs

Highlights from the Festival included spotlights on Orson Welles and Ron Mann, an Australian independent cinema showcase, and panels on marketing documentaries, screenwriting, financing, and distribution. Notable films included Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters , Bill Sherwood’s Parting Glances , Lee Shapiro’s Nicaragua Was Our Home , and Ray Lawrence’s Bliss . Smooth Talk , directed by Joyce Chopra and starring Laura Dern and Treat Williams, won the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize.

Festival highlights included panels on first-time filmmakers, Canada’s next wave, and actors on acting, as well as premieres of Jim McBride’s The Big Easy , Jean-Jacques Beineix’s Betty Blue , Atom Egoyan’s Next of Kin , David Anspaugh’s Hoosiers , Gary Walkow’s Trouble with Dick , Jill Godmilow’s Waiting for the Moon , Barbara Margolis’s Are We Winning, Mommy? , and David Jones’s 84 Charing Cross Road . Award winners included Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March and Lizzie Borden’s Working Girls .

The Festival opened with a restoration of F.W. Murnau's 1927 film, Sunrise and continued with a tribute to John Cassavetes and screenings of notable works including Christian Blackwood’s Motel , Martin Donovan’s Apartment Zero , Michael Lehmann’s Heathers , Jonathan Wacks’s Powwow Highway , Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Letters from the Park , and Nancy Savoca’s True Love . Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies, and videotape won the inaugural Audience Award and, after winning the Palme d’Or, became the most successful independent film of its time.

Fun fact: Nobel Prize–winning writer Gabriel García Marquéz spearheaded the Festival's continuing exploration of Latin American film, overseeing the creation of six feature-length works based on his stories.

Consumer Media Stats for 1989

• AVID nonlinear editing system publically introduced
• 14.1 million households have PCs

The Sundance U.S. Film Festival featured tributes to Richard Lester and Melvin Van Peebles and special sections showcasing Colombian and Kazakhstani film. Notable films included Jane Campion’s Sweetie , Michael Moore’s Roger and Me , Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan , and Charles Burnett’s To Sleep with Anger . Award winners included Wendell B. Harris’s Chameleon Street and Norman Rene’s Longtime Companion , a groundbreaking film supported by the Institute labs, widely considered the first film to put a human face on the AIDS crisis.

Consumer Media Stats for 1990

• 23,689 cinema screens in the US
• 92.1million US households have TVs
• 63.2 million US households have VCRs

The Festival presented retrospectives on Michael Powell and Robert Altman and featured special sections for Japanese cinema, Latin America film, and the history of character animation. Panels included topics on women directors and art and politics. Notable films included Stephen Frears’s The Grifters , John Sayles’s City of Hope , Todd Haynes’s Poison , Matty Rich’s Straight Out of Brooklyn , and Hal Hartley’s Trust . Barbara Kopple’s documentary American Dream swept the Audience Award, Filmmaker Trophy, and Grand Jury Prize.

Consumer Media Stats for 1991

• Adobe introduces initial version of Premiere

Sally Potter’s Orlando , Peter Friedman and Tom Joslin’s Silverlake Life: The View from Here , and Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate all premiered during the 1993 Festival. Leslie Harris’s Just Another Girl on the I.R.T. , Victor Nunez’s Ruby in Paradise , and Michael Mann’s Public Access were among the award winners, and filmmakers Philip Kaufman and Christian Blackwood were honored with retrospectives of their work. Panels covered topics ranging from regional filmmaking to the next generation of filmmakers.

Sundance Institute affirmed its commitment to Native American filmmakers by launching a Festival program to showcase Native and Indigenous films from around the world. Panels covered topics on interactivity and cinema and the fate of short film. Lodge Kerrigan’s Clean Shaven , Rose Troche’s Go Fish , and Mike Newell’s Four Weddings and a Funeral were among many films that saw box-office success and critical acclaim. Award winners included Steve James’s Hoop Dreams and David O. Russell’s Spanking the Monkey .

The Festival screened many films to sold-out crowds. Among the premieres were Antonia Bird’s Priest , Abel Ferrara’s The Addiction , Mina Shum’s Double Happiness , and Tomas Gutierrez Alea and Juan Carlos Tabio’s Strawberry and Chocolate . In addition to sidebars for Asian, European, and Latin American film, the Festival presented programs devoted to the personal documentary genre and animation. Award-winning films included Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb , Ed Burns’s The Brothers McMullen , and Tom DiCillo’s Living in Oblivion .

Consumer Media Stats for 1995

• 27,805 cinema screens in the US
• 95.4 million US households had TVs
• 75.8 million US households had VCRs

Fun fact: Strays , actor Vin Diesel’s feature-length directorial debut, premiered during the 1997 Festival.

The Festival added 1,300 additional seats with the Eccles Theatre; presented panels on digital filmmaking, avant-garde film, and reinventing genre film, and saw the rise of the actor/director, with Timothy Hutton, Sara Gilbert, Vincent Gallo, Greg German, and Saul Rubinek moving behind the camera. Christina Ricci grew up with very adult performances in Don Roos’s The Opposite of Sex and Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo 66 . Award winners included Lisa Cholodenko’s High Art , Darren Aronofsky’s PI , and Marc Levin’s Slam .

Fun fact: Institute lab-supported Smoke Signals , directed by Chris Eyre and written by Sherman Alexie, premiered and won the Audience Award and Filmmakers Award. It was not only the first film written, directed, co-produced by, and starring Native Americans, but also the first Native film to receive a commercial release.

Notable premieres included Rory Kennedy’s American Hollow , Allen and Albert Hughes’s American Pimp , Doug Liman’s Go , and Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels . Panels examined distribution for low-budget films, music and narrative, and documentary funding. Chris Smith’s American Movie , Eric Mendelsohn’s Judy Berlin , and Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgan’s On the Ropes were among award winners, and a small Midnight film, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez’s The Blair Witch Project , saw huge box-office success.

Consumer Media Stats for 1999

• 12 digital cinema screens in the US
• Apple introduces Final Cut Pro
• Netflix launches its monthly subscription service

Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count on Me , Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight , Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides , Rodrigo Garcia’s Things You Can Tell by Just Looking at Her , Mary Harron’s American Psycho , But I’m a Cheerleader , and Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato’s The Eyes of Tammy Faye were among the many films audiences discovered on the screens of the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. The Festival saw and embraced the rising influence of digital content with streaming video, digital projection of over 18 films, and the popularity of Miguel Arteta’s digital feature Chuck and Buck .

Consumer Media Stats for 2000

• 37,396 cinema screens in the US
• 31 digital cinema screens in the US
• 102.2 million US households have TVs
• 88.1 million US households have VCRs
• 13 million US households have DVD players
• 51 million US households have PCs
• 41.5 million US households have internet
• 4.4 million US households have broadband
• .2 million US households have VOD
• 29.6 million US households have cell phones

“I thought I had seen everything, but I will leave here astonished,” is how jury member John Waters described his experience at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. Audiences were treated to a program that included Steven Shainberg’s Secretary , Gary Winick’s Tadpole , Miguel Arteta’s The Good Girl , Nanette Bernstein and Brett Morgen’s The Kid Stays in the Picture , Patricia Cardoso’s Real Women Have Curves , Todd Luioso’s Love Liza , Liz Garbus’s The Execution of Wanda Jean , Justin Lin’s Better Luck Tomorrow , and Rebecca Miller’s Personal Velocity .

Unseasonably warm weather attracted record attendance to the Festival that introduced audiences to films including Wayne Kramer’s The Cooler , Jim Sheridan’s In America , Lisa Cholodenko’s Laurel Canyon , Peter Hedge’s Pieces of April , Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas , Catherine Hardwicke’s thirteen , Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent , and David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls . The power of the nonfiction form was illustrated with documentaries including Andrew Jarecki’s Capturing the Friedmans , Stanley Nelson’s The Murder of Emmitt Till , Sam Green and Bill Siegel’s The Weather Underground , and Weijan Chen’s To Live is Better Than to Die , a depiction of the AIDS crisis in China.

Fun fact: Bend it Like Beckham screened in the World Cinema section and went on to be the first Western film to be shown on North Korean television.

With Shane Curruth’s Primer , Ondi Timoner’s DIG! , Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me , Josh Marsden’s Maria Full of Grace , Zach Braff’s Garden State , Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite , and many more, the 2004 Film Festival presented the directorial debuts of filmmakers who continued to deliver for audiences around the world. Documentaries like Jessica Yu’s In the Realms of the Unreal and Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s Born Into Brothels showcased the transformative power of art, resonating with audiences in Park City and beyond.

Solidifying its commitment to showcasing original storytelling from around the world, the Festival launched its World Cinema Competition in 2005. Jun Ichikawa’s Tony Takitani (Japan), Suzanne Bier’s Brothers (Denmark), Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man (Portugal), and Roger Spottiswoode’s Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire (Canada) were among the films presented in the inaugural international competition. Filmmakers working in the US gave us films including Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know , Craig Brewer’s Hustle and Flow , Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale , Henry Rubin and Dana Shapiro’s Murderball , and Luc Jacquet’s March of the Penguins . For the first time, the Festival presented a selection from its Short Film Program online, marking a convergence of the Festival's commitment to short films and its continued efforts to extend the Festival experience to audiences online.

Consumer Media Stats for 2005

• 38,143 cinema screens in the US
• 324 digital cinema screens in the US
• 109.6 million US households have TVs
• 98.9 million US households have VCRs
• 75.9 million US households have PCs
• 4.2 million Netflix members
• 80.4 million US households have cellphones

Highlights of the 2006 Film Festival included Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’s Little Miss Sunshine , Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth , Jason Reitman’s Thank You for Smoking , Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy , and Patrick Creadon’s Wordplay . Documentaries focused on artists ranging from musicians Neil Young and Leonard Cohen to painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, photographer William Eggleston, and playwright Tony Kushner. The Beastie Boys turned the camera on their fans with Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That . Attendance at Festival theatres reached record levels, and online audiences downloaded more than 1,000,000 short films and original content episodes from the Festival’s official site.

Audiences discovered stories from around the world and from their own backyards with films such as Sarah Polley’s Away From Her , Lincoln Ruchti’s Chasing Ghosts , James C. Strouse’s Grace is Gone , John Carney’s Once , Jason Kohn’s Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) , Charles Ferguson’s No End in Sight , Rory Kennedy’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib , Sean Fine and Andrea Nix’s War/Dance , and many more. Award winners included Jeffrey Blitz’s Rocket Science , Christopher Zalla’s Padre Nuestro , and David Sington’s In the Shadow of the Moon .

Fun fact: The Festival’s long-standing commitment to experimental cinema expanded with the introduction of New Frontier, a venue devoted to artists working at the intersection of film, art, and technology.

Consumer Media Stats for 2007

• Netflix introduces its streaming service

Films from 35 countries were represented in the 2008 program. Further punctuating the Festival’s role as a platform for filmmakers worldwide, the first-ever independent feature film from Jordan, Captain Abu Raed , directed by Amin Matalqa, took home the Audience Award. The eclectic lineup was further marked by films as varied as Courtney Hunt’s Frozen River , Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Sugar , James Marsh’s Man on Wire , Carl Deal and Tia Lesson’s Trouble the Water , Marina Zenovich’s Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired , Michel Gondry’s Be Kind Rewind , Brad Anderson’s Transiberrean , Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington’s U23D , and George A. Romero’s Diary of the Dead .

The 25th edition of the Sundance Film Festival presented 218 films, 42 of which were made by first-time directors. Films ranging from Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre to Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max , Lee Daniel’s Precious , and documentaries like Ondi Timoner’s We Live in Public , Louis Psihoyos’s The Cove , and Havana Marking’s Afghan Star thrilled audiences in Park City and beyond. In a nod to the history of independent film, Steven Soderbergh returned to the Festival to screen sex, lies, and videotape , which 20 years prior received the Dramatic Audience Award and achieved a new level of industry and mainstream attention for an independent film.

Longtime programmer John Cooper assumed the role of Festival director, and a sense of renewal defined the Festival as a whole. The program itself was revitalized with the inception of NEXT, a category featuring films marked by uncompromised vision and originality. Highlights of the lineup included the riveting war doc Restrepo , directed by Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger; the exploration of America’s education system Waiting for Superman by Davis Guggenheim; Debra Granik’s eventual Oscar nominee Winter’s Bone ; the intensely thrilling Animal Kingdom , directed by David Michôd; and Gaspar Noe’s intensely bizarre Enter the Void .

Fun fact: During the 2010 Festival, graffiti artist Banksy—the subject of the documentary Exit through the Gift Shop —surprised Park City and Salt Lake residents with strategically hidden, film-themed street art.

Consumer Media Stats for 2010

• 39,547 cinema screens in the US
• 16,522 digital cinema screens in the US/Canada
• 114.9 millions US households had TVs
• 70.6 million US households had VCRs
• 100.2 million US households had DVD players
• 91.7 million US households had PCs
• 71.1 millions US households had internet
• 68.2 million US households had broadband
• 53.9 million US households had VOD
• 20 million Netflix members
• 105.6 million US households had cell phones

The 2011 Sundance Film Festival played host to 25 first-time filmmakers in the Dramatic and Documentary Competitions, had a record 78 film sales, and introduced an all-new Documentary Premieres category, showcasing the work of established masters of the craft. The slate was marked by award winners such as Drake Doremus’s Like Crazy , Sean Durkin’s Martha Marcy May Marlene , Constance Marks’s Being Elmo , and Peter Richardson’s How to Die in Oregon , and it featured breakout performances from actresses Elizabeth Olsen, Felicity Jones, and Brit Marling. Michael Moore, Harry Belafonte, Vera Farmiga, and the Chapin Sisters were among the highlights of the Offscreen program.

Consumer Media Stats for 2011

• UltraViolet launched in the US and UK

Influential documentaries such as Lauren Greenfield’s The Queen of Versailles , Susan Froemke and Matthew Heineman’s Escape Fire , and Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s Detropia depicted the effects of economic turmoil across the nation, while narrative features like James Ponsoldt’s Smashed , Ry Russo-Young’s Nobody Walks and Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild showcased masterful storytelling from first-time directors. Offscreen highlights included a performance by Ice-T in conjunction with the premiere of his directorial debut, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap , and panels and discussions with director Spike Lee, journalist David Carr, and actress Julie Delpy, among others. Nonny de la Peña’s Hunger in Los Angeles was presented in the New Frontier section. The invitation prompted de la Peña’s intern Palmer Luckey to create a mobile version of a VR headset, which became an early manifestation of Oculus Rift, marking the beginning of the multibillion dollar gold rush among the technology, gaming, and film industries to bring viable virtual reality to the masses.

Fun fact: Benh Zeitlin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild was supported by the Institute labs, won the Festival Grand Jury Prize and Excellence in Cinematography Award, and went on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Directing, Leading Actress, and Writing (Adapted Screenplay).

Consumer Media Stats for 2012

• 42,803 cinema screens in the US/Canada
• 36,377 digital cinema screens in the US/Canada
• 63.8 million US households had VOD
• Over 30 million Netflix members globally
• 122 million smartphone users in the US

For the first time in the Festival’s history, both juries and audiences selected the same films in the U.S. Dramatic and U.S. Documentary Competitions for their top awards: Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale and Steve Hoover’s Blood Brother both took home the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award for best dramatic and documentary, respectively. Half of the films in the U.S. Dramatic Competition were directed and written by women, most of them first-time filmmakers. Richard Linklater returned to the Festival with the third chapter in his great cinematic love story Before Midnight . Award-winning, acclaimed documentarians Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Frieda Mock, Lucy Walker, Robert Stone, Barbara Kopple, and Alex Gibney all screened their latest efforts. Other audience favorites were Jeff Nichols’s Mud and Sarah Polley’s hybrid documentary Stories We Tell .

Thirty Years Of Different

Fun fact: Damien Chazelle‘s Whiplash won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and went on to win three Academy Awards, including best supporting actor for J.K. Simmons’s performance as Terence Fletcher, the brutally savage music instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student’s potential.

Consumer Media Stats for 2014

• Facebook purchased Oculus VR for $2 billion

Exploring cinema and highlighting the unique roles that bring stories to life on screen, Art of Film Weekend was introduced to take aspiring filmmakers and film-loving audiences behind the scenes to see the creative, collaborative spirit of artists at every stage of the creative process that’s core to the Festival. The annual A Celebration of Music in Film concert was a tribute to jazz icon Nina Simone, the subject of What Happened, Miss Simone? ,and featured Common, Erykah Badu, Aloe Blacc, Kate Davis, Andra Day, and Al Schackman. Popular with both jurors and audiences, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl won both the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize and the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award, while The Wolfpack won the U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize and Meru received the U.S. Documentary Audience Award. The World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize and World Cinema Dramatic Grand Jury Prize went to The Russian Woodpecker and Slow West , respectively.

Fun fact: Nearly 20 years before premiering Dope and winning the U.S. Dramatic Special Jury Award for Excellence in Editing at the 2015 Festival, Rick Famuyiwa premiered his first film, the short Blacktop Lingo , at the 1996 Festival. Famuyiwa also attended the 1997 Sundance Institute Directors and Screenwriters Labs with The Wood , which was released in theatres in 1999.

Consumer Media Stats for 2015

• 72.9 million US household had SVOD
• 88.1 billion US online movie & TV views/transactions
• 74.8 million Netflix subscribers globally

“Diversity comes out of independence. If you’re independent minded, you’re going to do things different from the common form, and you’re going to have more diverse products.” —Robert Redford A major story of the Festival became The Birth of a Nation , the impassioned and incendiary feature chronicling the life and death of Nat Turner, the Virginia slave and preacher who led an improbable collective uprising against white masters. The film was met by standing ovations at all of its screenings, and it was sold for a record-breaking sum to Fox Searchlight. Another story that arose was the formal diversity of the 2016 program. Among the 123 narrative and documentary features, there seemed to be a critical mass of films that didn’t easily fit into traditional competition categories. Films like Kate Plays Christine , All These Sleepless Nights , Sonita , and Nuts! sought to expand the definition of the documentary, while The Fits , from the NEXT section, brought fabulist storytelling to a real-life cast and location. New for 2016 was the Special Events section, an evolving category that included episodic work, short films, and live performances. The Birth of a Nation and Sonita won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award, marking the third time in Festival history that films from two categories each won both awards. Other top awards went to Between Sea and Land , First Girl I Loved , Jim: The James Foley Story , Sand Storm , and Weiner .

The 2017 Festival brought environmentalism front and center, with 14 films and virtual reality experiences on the subject—including follow-up films Chasing Coral (Jeff Orlowski's sequel to Chasing Ice ) and Al Gore's much-anticipated Day One film An Inconvenient Sequel . And 25 years after its Sundance premiere, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs returned for a special anniversary screening as part of the From the Collection category. Other highlights included culture-clash love story The Big Sick , Ferguson uprising documentary Whose Streets? , absurdist crime movie I don't feel at home in this world anymore. , Jordan Peele's surprise Midnight screening Get Out , and, one year after the big success of Sonita, two new films about female rappers: Patti Cake$ and Roxanne Roxanne . Off of the screen, an independently organized Women's March featuring such speakers as Dolores Huerta, Chelsea Handler, and Jessica Williams brought an estimated 8,000 people to crowd Main Street on the third day of the Festival (the second day of Donald Trump's presidency), joining millions of others across the country in similar demonstrations.

Fun fact: The 2017 Festival saw heavy snowfall, a power outage that caused screenings at three theatres to be rescheduled, and a cyberattack that halted ticket sales—but not even that trifecta of misfortunes could stop the Festival from going on as planned.

Fun fact: Eliza McNitt’s Spheres, a three-part VR series that lets viewers explore the center of a black hole, is purchased for seven-figures, a first for a VR project at the Festival.

Consumer Media Stats for 2019

• 43,681 cinema screens in the US/Canada*
• 151,601 cinema screens internationally*
• 120.6 million US household had TVs
• 95.2 million US households had SVOD
• 235.8 billion US online movie & TV views/transactions
• 167 million Netflix subscribers globally
• 269.44 million smartphone users in the US
• $25.2 billion US home entertainment spending
• *Virtually all of the world's cinema screens were digital.

Comedian and actor Patton Oswalt hosted the online Awards Night Ceremony, where the top prizes were presented to Sian Heder’s CODA , Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee , Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s Summer Of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) , and Blerta Basholli’s Hive , among many others.

Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy © 2024 Sundance.org

Endowment Support

Dwight Anderson Ariel Investments, LLC Lin Arison Susan Cronyn Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Jake Eberts The Charles Engelhard Foundation Entertainment Industry Foundation Jeanne Donovan Fisher

Ford Foundation Mellody Hobson Cindy and Alan Horn Karen Lauder LisaBeth Foundation Occidental Petroleum Corporation Geoffrey K. Sands Target Corporation Steve Tisch Foundation Walter L. Weisman

• Distribution

What is a Film Festival — Everything You Need to Know

F ilm festivals are everywhere. There’s a festival for every niche you can imagine, and every niche you can’t. Today, festivals can take many shapes and sizes, from massive industry mainstays to scrappy yet exciting startups. A savvy independent filmmaker understands the festival circuit, knowing what to apply to and how. In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about film festivals.

Watch: How to Enter Film Festivals — Do's and Don'ts

Subscribe for more filmmaking videos like this.

What is a film festival?

The film festival, defined.

First, let’s look at what a film festival actually is, and why they’re important for filmmakers across the world.

WHAT ARE FILM FESTIVALS

A film festival is an event put on by an organization that selects and screens visual media. Historically, festivals would typically occur in a single location, at a theater or group of theaters. In recent years, however, there have been more online-only festivals.

Film festivals can be expansive and diverse, bringing together an international collection of films with varying subject matter. Other festivals focus on a single demographic or genre.

The first film festival, Venice, began in 1932. Today, the most prestigious film festivals in the world are referred to as the Big Five, and are Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and Sundance.

Benefits of Film Festivals:

• Elevating independent cinema
• Industry networking
• Distribution potential

What Exactly Happens at a Festival?

Going to a film festival for the first time can be overwhelming. There can be so much going on that it can be difficult to decide when to do what. In other words– what do you prioritize?

The answer to this question depends on the capacity in which you are visiting the festival. If you are visiting as an audience member, then you may want to watch as many movies as possible.

If you’re a filmmaker with a film at the festival, you may want to prioritize networking with other filmmakers and industry members. If you’re a manager looking for up and coming talent, you might want to split your time doing both.

A panel at Austin Film Festival  •  What is a film festival?

Here are some events which typically occur at festivals:

Ostensibly, this is the whole point of a festival. Watching the selections at a festival is almost always fun and almost always educational. Watch a block of shorts and you’ll begin to see what filmmaking trends are getting attention. Watch a low-budget international movie and you may be exposed to a culture you never knew about.

An audience at the New York Film Festival  •  What is a film festival?

At the most prestigious festivals, screenings can be a way to see much-hyped movies far before their release date. But be careful not to be blinded by the stars. You’ll be able to see these films later in the year, so you may want to prioritize seeing the no-budge movie that isn’t going to get significant distribution .

If you’re a filmmaker with work at a festival, you do not want to miss the filmmaker mixers. This is where you can meet fellow filmmakers and industry members. 

Typically, these mixers are limited to people with work in the festival or industry folks who have been specifically invited by the fest, so this is the ideal schmoozing environment– everyone there is someone to get to know. If the festival’s legitimate, there will also be free drinks.

Q&As 

Many festivals will also host Q&A’s after particularly anticipated screenings. This session may be with the cast, the director, the writer, or someone else related to the movie. These events can be engaging, especially if you have a question for a filmmaker or didn’t understand the movie at all.

A Q&A for Widows at the Chicago Film Festival  •  What is a film festival?

Panels are often equally engaging. These are events where a selection of industry professionals have a moderated talk about some hot topic. Panels may have job seminar titles like “How to Get Your First Feature Off the Ground” or “Finding Representation,” but others may skew towards state-of-the-industry laments, like “Indie Filmmaking in the Streaming Era” or “The IP Conundrum.”

A panel at Telluride  •  What is a film festival?

Be warned: for every enlightening panel there’s a panel that’s an out-of-touch exec bloviating about the need for filmmakers with a “unique voice.” It’s a good idea to look into who will be talking before attending.

Award Ceremonies 

For some festivals, the award is getting in. But at other festivals, there are additional awards given out to stand-out official selections. These are typically announced at an award ceremony. To be honest, these events are worth going to if you aren’t a filmmaker in the running. But if you’re an award season fiend who just needs a fix of award giving and receiving, this is the event for you.

Biggest Film Festivals 

How to get into a film festival.

Film festivals sound great, right? Unfortunately there’s a catch– or rather, a few catches. The first is that most festivals cost money to apply to, and if you're applying to multiple festivals (which you probably should) the costs add up fast.

That brings us to the second catch: most worthwhile festivals are difficult to get into. Really difficult. These two catches combined can make a filmmaker feel like they’re flushing large amounts of money down the drain. This interview with Sundance director Kim Yutani highlights just how hard it is to get in:

Kim Yutani interview  •  Festival cinema

There is no guaranteed method to get into a festival, unless you are a large studio that has a movie that festival organizers are falling over each other to obtain premiere status for. Most people aren’t in this position. So let’s look at some methods that might at the very least increase your chances.

Read The Rules and Requirements

This seems obvious, but talk to any festival programmer and you’ll see that a surprising amount of filmmakers do not follow this piece of advice. Each festival has its own rules and eligibility requirements. Breaking one of these rules is a surefire way not to get in.

Use Your Premiere Status Wisely

What is premiere status, anyway? It is a marker of when and where your film has been shown before playing at a festival. Most festivals prioritize world premiere status– they want to play movies that have never been seen before.

Asteroid City premiered at Cannes  •  Largest film festivals in the world

This means applying to festivals strategically. Many filmmakers will apply to more prestigious festivals first, some of which require world premiere status (see rule number 1). Then, once said filmmakers don’t make it into those festivals, they will apply to smaller ones.

Name Talent

The chances a film is accepted into a festival increase exponentially with a recognizable actor. Recognizable actors guarantee butts in seats. Of course, this isn’t an avenue for most beginning filmmakers, but we’d be remiss to not mention it.

Damien Chazelle landed JK Simmons for his Whiplash short

Professional packaging.

Unsurprisingly, most festivals advertise by boasting their crop of selections. This means programmers’ eyes often go to films that have a catchy synopsis , professional-grade poster , engrossing trailer , etc.. You’ve already done the work for them– they have the materials that will attract audiences.

NYFF uses trailers for its trailer

Utilize connections.

This may be a bit dispiriting, but many, many films cut the line in the submission process by using connections. This may look like a producer emailing a programmer with a link to watch, or for bigger projects, it may be a festival consultant reaching out to head programmers personally.

Obviously, a connection can only do so much, but it’s a good way to stand out of the initial crowd.

Cut it Down

This is a big one for shorts. The shorter a short, the better your chances are. Programmers need short shorts to fill in a few minutes here and there, and since it’s just a few minutes, the bar is a little lower. Shorts that are over 15 minutes, however, are more difficult to program and therefore really need to be worth it.

Make a Good Movie

Sometimes a filmmaker can get so obsessed with the politics of film festivals that they forget about the simplest thing: the quality of their project. This is the hardest rule to abide by because, of course, it’s hard to make a good movie. This video gives a rundown on some of the potential makings of a good short :

How to make a good short

Let’s get more specific. Festivals in particular are looking for unique films that are saying something distinct. In other words, your movie should feel original and should have potential to stand out in a huge pile of other shorts.

Festivals are also looking for professional quality. A film that is mixed and colored professionally will make a festival look better, and thus has better chances of getting in.

Movie Festivals

Choosing the right festival.

You’ve got all your materials ready, your film is finished and looking good. It’s time to apply to festivals. But which ones?

Scrolling through FilmFreeway (the primary destination to find and submit to festivals), one will quickly understand that there are many, many festivals out there. Do a little more research, and one will understand just as quickly that not all of them are worth entry.

The destination for festival films

The fastest way to see if a festival is worth its submission fee is to check out the festival’s past winners. Where are they now? This doesn’t just mean looking to see if a short ended up being developed into a feature. That rarely happens. Look at the writer and/or director of the short. Did they seem to get any traction out of the festival?

As we mentioned, the top film festivals are Venice, Cannes, Berlin, Toronto, and Sundance. If you think your film has a chance at one of these, they are certainly worth their submission fee.

It’s at these festivals where you are most likely to find enough attention for representation or even distribution (if it’s a feature). 

The Berlin Film Festival, one of the top international film festivals in the world

These festivals are also arguably the most political, however. Because they are so coveted within the industry, industry players will throw their weight into making sure their entries are at the front of the application line. In other words, these festivals are long shots.

The next tier of festivals are the Oscar-qualifying fests. A win at one of these can make you eligible for the Academy Awards. But the reason to apply to one of these festivals isn’t necessarily to get a chance at a little gold man. Being Oscar-qualifying guarantees a certain level of prestige. These are festivals that are respected within the industry. 

Palm Springs is an Oscar-qualifying festival  •  Important film festivals

FilmFreeway makes it easy to find out if a festival is Oscar-qualifying. There’s a little badge next to the festival listing.

For the tier below these festivals, you need to start taking a few different factors into account when weighing whether or not the submission fee is worth it. Essentially, these festivals will most likely not guarantee you distribution or significant industry representation.

So why go to one of these lower-level festivals? First and foremost: networking with fellow filmmakers and producers . This means you should apply to festivals you know you’ll be able to go to.

A mixer at Tribeca

Festivals you think you have a good chance of getting into are also more worth the submission fee. Say you’ve directed a horror film. Try applying to horror-specific festivals. Or maybe you made the film in Texas. Try submitting to a place like SXSW, which has a category specifically for TX-made movies.

It bears repeating: there is no way to guarantee entry into a festival. There are countless factors that are out of your control that go into a programmer’s selection process. As such, don’t get discouraged if you strike out at festivals. It doesn’t mean your film isn’t good. It just means you’ve got to find a different avenue, or you’ve got to try again.

Best Film Festivals

Now you know the in’s and out’s of film festivals, how to get into film festivals, what happens at film festivals, etc.. Time to take a look at the specific fests to apply to. In this post, we provide you with a whole bunch of festivals worth checking out.

Up Next: Top Film Festivals →

Showcase your vision with elegant shot lists and storyboards..

Create robust and customizable shot lists. Upload images to make storyboards and slideshows.

Learn More ➜

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• Pricing & Plans
• Product Updates
• Featured On
• StudioBinder Partners
• The Ultimate Guide to Call Sheets (with FREE Call Sheet Template)
• How to Break Down a Script (with FREE Script Breakdown Sheet)
• The Only Shot List Template You Need — with Free Download
• Managing Your Film Budget Cashflow & PO Log (Free Template)
• A Better Film Crew List Template Booking Sheet
• Best Storyboard Softwares (with free Storyboard Templates)
• Movie Magic Scheduling
• Gorilla Software
• Storyboard That

A visual medium requires visual methods. Master the art of visual storytelling with our FREE video series on directing and filmmaking techniques.

We’re in a golden age of TV writing and development. More and more people are flocking to the small screen to find daily entertainment. So how can you break put from the pack and get your idea onto the small screen? We’re here to help.

• Making It: From Pre-Production to Screen
• TV Script Format 101 — Examples of How to Format a TV Script
• Best Free Musical Movie Scripts Online (with PDF Downloads)
• What is Tragedy — Definition, Examples & Types Explained
• What are the 12 Principles of Animation — Ultimate Guide
• What is Pacing in Writing — And Why It’s So Important
• 0 Pinterest

37th Annual VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL Oct 30-Nov 3, 2024

37th Annual VIRGINIA FILM FESTIVAL October 30-November 3, 2024

Virginia Film Festival

The Virginia Film Festival, now in its 37th year, is a program of the University of Virginia and is widely recognized as one of the leading regional film festivals in America and is known for its commitment to taking audience beyond the screen to explore some of the most important issues of our time. Known as one of the premier cultural events in the Mid-Atlantic, the annual five-day festival annually delivers more than 100 films from around the world, combining special previews of some of the hottest titles of the festival season with an array of fascinating documentaries, exciting new voices on the independent film scene, the best of the international film scene and more. In a fast-changing cinema landscape where the means of delivery have reshaped the way many experience the art of filmmaking today, the VAFF is deeply committed to presenting and celebrating the unique brand of magic that happens when audiences gather in person to create a community in which to experience a film. Central to this commitment is the yearly lineup of compelling conversations around its films that bring some of today’s leading film artists and cultural figures with subject area experts from the University and beyond to explore some of the most important issues of our time. Under the leadership of its Director and the UVA Vice Provost for the Arts Jody Kielbasa, the Festival continues to deepen its connections with and commitment to the community that helps shape and support its efforts year after year.

Past VAFF guests: Ava DuVernay, Jon Batiste, Riley Keough, Cord Jefferson, Ashley Judd, Ethan Hawke, Wanuri Kahiu, Spike Lee, Shirley McLaine, Werner Herzog, Meg Ryan, Jeremy O. Harris, Danny McBride, and Richard Roundtree.

Recent VAFF Films: Origin , American Symphony , The Holdovers , American Fiction , Maestro , Women Talking, Living, The   Power of the Dog ,  C’mon C’mon ,  Spencer ,  The Harder They Fall,  The French Dispatch ,  Nomadland , One Night in Miami

Our Mission

The Virginia Film Festival’s mission is:

• To educate and engage audiences of all races, gender identities, physical abilities, LGBTQIA+ status, ages, and socio-economic backgrounds in an open dialogue on the art of film through a five-day annual festival and year-round screenings and events. 
• To foster inclusive conversations between audiences, artists, students, and academics around films and how they relate to the world in which we live. 
• To support films and filmmakers of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Our Program & Our Impact

Cultivating Community Dialogue

The Virginia Film Festival is known throughout the industry not just for its films but for the dynamic and interactive conversations that follow them. Thanks to our unique and deep ties to the University of Virginia and our home in Charlottesville, we are able to bring together world-renowned academic and cultural experts to engage with our audiences and help all involved develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for the most important issues of our time. The Festival’s longstanding partnerships with renowned institutions like The Miller Center or Public Affairs, the UVA Center for Politics, and The Library of Congress only strengthen its reach and impact, and help to deliver memorable audience experiences year in and year out. 

Celebrating Diverse Voices  

We give a platform to the rich diversity of our community through our series of films and guests, supported by our diverse team of guest programmers. Our Series & Themes include LGBTQIA+, Jewish & Israeli, Middle Eastern & South Asian Cinema, Korean Cinema, Black Excellence, Nature & Environment, and Indigenous Cinema of the Americas.

Supporting Virginia Filmmaking

We work closely with the Virginia Film Office to shine a spotlight on the ever-increasing profile of the Commonwealth of Virginia as a home for major film and television projects. Over the past several years alone, we have been proud to host high-profile pre-release screenings of Virginia-based films and series including Harriet , with actor Vanessa Bell Calloway and producer Daniela Taplin Lundberg; Loving, with director Jeff Nichols and producer Colin Firth; and the world premiere of Big Stone Gap with writer/director Adriana Trigiani alongside actors Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, Jenna Elfman, and Jasmine Guy. 

Special Guests

Each year the Festival brings in a fascinating selection of guests, from internationally acclaimed directors and actors to professors and leading cultural experts who lead discussions that stimulate, educate, and engage. Recent guests include Jon Batiste, Matthew Heineman, Ava DuVernay, Riley Keough, Cord Jefferson, Jonathan Majors, Jeremy O. Harris, Dustin Lance Black, Judith Ivey, Spike Lee, Shirley MacLaine, Werner Herzog, Ethan Hawke, Allen Hughes, Colin Firth, Meg Ryan, Christoph Waltz, Ben Mankiewicz, Ashley Judd, Oliver Stone,  Sandra Bullock, Tippi Hedren, Matthew Broderick, Stanley Nelson, January Jones, Cherry Jones, Will Forte, Mia Wasikowska, and Jorma Taccone.

Our Annual Program

VAFF by the Numbers

• 19,600+ Total Attendances
• 40 Sold Out Events
• 144 Industry Guests
• 38 Discussants
• 2,400+ UVA Student Tickets
• 127 Volunteers

Visit our Archives page to view our most recent Annual Report as well as to explore the films & guests featured in recent VAFF programs.

Our Audience

Responses below from our 2023 audience survey. 

• 14% of survey takers traveled more than 50 miles to attend
• 26% of survey takers attended 4-6 screenings
• 3.1 – average number of screenings/events attended
• 29% 18-34 years old
• 19% 35-54 yo
• 41% 55-74 yo
• 74% Residents of Charlottesville/Albemarle 
• 26% From other Virginia cities/counties or Out of State
• 84% Post-Secondary Degree 

UVA AFFILIATION

• 59% Have a connection to UVA

Beyond the Films

During the Festival, celebrations and special events provide a fun opportunity to mingle with other film lovers and filmmakers. The Opening Night Gala on the first night of the Festival is a great way to enjoy the company in a comfortably elegant atmosphere that brings classic Hollywood to life. Throughout the Festival, the Filmmakers and Sponsors Lounge provides an exclusive place for donors, sponsors, actors, and filmmakers to meet, interact, and refuel between screenings. It is also the venue for a panel discussion hosted by the Virginia Film Office. The Late Night Wrap Party following Saturday’s Centerpiece Film is a high-energy event that provides the perfect exclamation point for the weekend, complete with tasty late-night snacks, music, dancing, and a chance to celebrate the weekend with VAFF guests and fans.

A Program of

Presenting sponsor.

Premiere Sponsors

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

The New York Film Festival: Movies for Art’s Sake

In “Tár,” “Showing Up” and other selections, the annual event makes the case for big-screen aesthetics and large-scale ambitions.

By A.O. Scott

At 60, the New York Film Festival finds itself in a handsome middle age, wise and vigorous with nothing that it needs to prove. The last few years were challenging — the pandemic was hard on arts organizations that depend on in-person audiences — and the world has changed in ways that might cause an institution that was born in the ’60s to feel out of step or past its prime.

But the festival, which opens Friday at Lincoln Center, has remained relevant by staying more or less the same. According to the film historian Tino Balio , the festival at the time of its founding “served a cultural purpose by presenting the latest developments in international filmmaking, many of which would probably never have been shown publicly in New York.” It also served “as a pre-release showcase for films that had previously been acquired by lower-tier distributors. Only a small percentage of the festival presentations were predestined for commercial release, and only a few succeeded at the box office.”

That sounds like a somber analysis, but it’s actually a mission statement. And even though much has changed over the decades — some of those “lower-tier distributors” were replaced by studio specialty divisions, and then by streaming platforms — the mission has remained admirably constant. Yes, there have been concessions to popularity, to the news media and to the Oscar race, and special showings of commercially thirsty releases, but the festival stands on the confident assertion that film is art.

In 1963, its inaugural year, that could sound like a fairly radical proposition, and it’s still one that needs to be defended against pseudo-populist accusations of snobbery. The more interesting arguments, though, are the ones that follow from that proposition. What kind of art? For whom? For what?

As it happens, several selections this year are preoccupied with those questions, not with respect to cinema, but in the more rarefied worlds of classical music and visual art. Todd Field’s “Tár” and Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up” are miles apart in mood and setting — rage in Berlin; ennui in Oregon — but when viewed in the kind of serendipitous juxtaposition that a film festival invites, they look like two sides of a coin.

Each is the portrait of an artist in a period of existential crisis. In “Tár,” Cate Blanchett plays a world-famous conductor embroiled in a #MeToo drama of her own making. Rather than recycle the stale question of whether we can separate the artist from the art — the culture of modern celebrity and the orchestral tradition of maestro worship make that impossible — Field and Blanchett ask us to ponder the connections between aesthetic passion, creative ambition and the predatory exercise of power.

All of which seem to be missing from “Showing Up,” which finds piercing drama and wry comedy in the struggle to do anything at all. If Blanchett’s Lydia Tár is larger than life, Michelle Williams’s Lizzy Carr — surely the rhyming names are a coincidence — is watching her life shrink before her eyes. A ceramist who works at an art school run by her mother, Lizzy finds herself quietly overwhelmed by the demands other people make on her time and care. Everything seems to be conspiring against her desire to do the work that matters to her.

Lydia swans through sleek, elegant spaces (including Lincoln Center), cushioned by philanthropic largess and swaddled in prestige. Lizzy plods across a scruffier, more Bohemian outpost of the same nonprofit cultural system. Both “Tár” and “Showing Up” pay attention to the material conditions — the economic arrangements — that enable their protagonists to devote themselves to producing something whose value can’t be measured in money.

I’m dwelling on these movies because they are representative of the festival in two ways: as examples of the kind of serious, idiosyncratic, meticulously acted features that the festival favors; and as snapshots of the sociological cosmos it inhabits. It offers not a panoramic survey of cinema as an art form so much as a catalog of what a high-minded, well-established, comfortably underwritten institution defines as art.

I don’t mean to sound cynical, and I’m not unaware of my own function in this system, which consists mainly of evaluating individual movies as they make their way into the marketplace. But the marketplace itself is something to think about, especially at a time when the business of making and distributing movies is in such an uncertain and chaotic state.

The festival opens with “White Noise,” Noah Baumbach’s faithful and energetic adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 1985 novel . It’s a fascinating movie, in some ways a departure for Baumbach, who is working on a larger scale than he has before and with more resources at his disposal. DeLillo’s book is a thicket of weighty modern themes — consumerism, ecology, the fear of death and the nature of time — implanted in a tart campus satire. Baumbach reckons with all of that, while finding his sweet spot of emotional observation and half-sour domestic comedy. At the center of the film is a marriage story, with Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig as the heads of a hectic blended household.

I’ll have more to say about “White Noise” when it shows up on Netflix around Christmastime. For the moment I’ll note the way it feels both like an intensely contemporary product and a throwback to an older way of doing things. Not only because it’s a period film — set in a carefully designed simulacrum of the ’80s — that touches on present-day anxieties, but also because it recalls an all-but-extinct kind of studio filmmaking. It’s a big picture based on a big book with big ambitions and big stars. What we call nowadays a Netflix movie.

Is it a sign of hope or a portent of doom that the opening-night feature of this venerable film festival is destined for streaming? Does it even matter? This isn’t the first time Netflix has opened New York, and in any case the algorithm is where movies live these days. That fact makes this festival at once more valuable and more narrow, as non-blockbuster moviegoing becomes an increasingly specialized pursuit.

An obvious change that has taken place since 1963 is that — thanks to streaming — a larger audience for festival films is at least theoretically possible, even as the proportion of that audience that will see those films in theaters is growing ever smaller. Which means that New Yorkers are lucky, and that New Yorkers who can score tickets to the festival are spectacularly privileged.

They will have the chance to see Albert Serra’s post-colonial fantasia “Pacifiction” in all its lurid, languid, wide-screen glory. And to savor the operatic decadence and anachronistic wit of Marie Kreutzer’s “Corsage,” starring Vicky Krieps as Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Lavish, sprawling movies like these — like “Tár,” like “White Noise,” like Claire Denis’s sweaty “Stars at Noon” — look better on the big screen.

For that matter, so do intimate, small-scale stories like “Showing Up.” And Charlotte Wells’s “Aftersun,” a father-daughter story that was a standout in Cannes and Telluride, and Alice Diop’s “Saint Omer,” a courtroom drama that is at once restrained and explosive, and “Master Gardener,” Paul Schrader’s latest portrait of a man in moral turmoil, with Joel Edgerton as a horticulturalist on the run from his past.

And, and, and … at its best, the New York Film Festival is both selective and abundant, marshaling a diverse array of movies in support of its central thesis. Which is finally — for reasons we can’t always agree on or even articulate — that they matter. No argument here.

The New York Film Festival runs Friday through Oct. 16. For more information, go to filmlinc.org .

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

Biografilm Festival, International Celebration of Lives

BIO TO B 2024

FROM BOOK TO FILM 2024

BIGLIETTI E ABBONAMENTI

01 maggio 2024

Biografilm saluta Paul Auster

22 aprile 2024

Biografilm celebra la Giornata mondiale della Terra

19 aprile 2024

Biografilm ricorda Enrico Berlinguer a 40 anni dalla sua morte con il film di Samuele Rossi

17 aprile 2024

Confermati i primi Decision Makers di Bio to B 2024!

13 aprile 2024

Biografilm dice addio a Eleanor Coppola, ospite del festival nel 2017 con Paris Can Wait

12 aprile 2024

Avrei Questa idea, call4Talent!

11 aprile 2024

Biografilm ospite al Pordenone Docs Fest per parlare di sostenibilità ambientale

Prenotabili da oggi i tavoli per l’Adaptation Market!

04 aprile 2024

Biografilm 2024: l'immagine del ventennale e le prime anticipazioni sul programma

02 aprile 2024

Aperta la call per gli Emerging Producers di Bio to B 2024!

21 marzo 2024

Annunciati i primi ospiti di Bio to B 2024!

13 marzo 2024

Mancano 7 giorni alla chiusura del bando di Biografilm 2024!

11 marzo 2024

È aperto il bando per Fiction Factory di Bio to B - Industry Days!

02 marzo 2024

Biografilm dice addio a Iris Apfel, icona della moda newyorkese

29 febbraio 2024

Biografilm 2024, le prime anticipazioni: Les Filles d’Olfa sarà a Bologna a giugno in anteprima italiana

19 febbraio 2024

Bio to B - Industry Days (10-11-12 giugno 2024) quest'anno incontra il MeetMarket dello Sheffield DocFest

16 febbraio 2024

Biografilm apprende con rabbia e dolore la morte di Aleksej Navalny

07 febbraio 2024

Due film di Biografilm sono tra i cinque finalisti dei Nastri d’Argento documentari

05 febbraio 2024

Biografilm dice addio a Daniele Segre,"il regista degli ultimi" protagonista dell'edizione 2023

22 gennaio 2024

Bio to B - Industry Days è a Biarritz per partecipare a FIPADOC!

15 gennaio 2024

Torna anche quest'anno Biografilm Academy, il corso di alta formazione gratuito di Biografilm festival

11 dicembre 2023

-3 giorni alla prima deadline del bando Biografilm 2024

29 novembre 2023

Grazie Verzio Film Festival!

28 novembre 2023

Chiara Boschiero assegna il Bio to B – Industry days @Verzio Award 2023 al progetto di documentario Funeralzzi di Olena Fedyuk e Polina Georgescu

24 novembre 2023

Chiara Boschiero a Budapest per il Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival

22 novembre 2023

Biografilm e Bio to B a Milano Film Network

16 novembre 2023

Biografilm è il primo festival in Emilia-Romagna ad ottenere da ARPAE l’attestazione Green

14 novembre 2023

Hussain Currimbhoy, nuovo direttore artistico di Hot Docs di Toronto

10 novembre 2023

Condividete con noi i vostri ricordi per lo speciale #ThrowbackThursday di Biografilm!

09 novembre 2023

Mon Ami - il video nato all'interno del progetto Tutta un’altra storia di Biografilm arriva al MedFilmFestival di Roma

08 novembre 2023

Agli European Film Awards nominati tre film di Biografilm 2023

01 novembre 2023

Sono aperte le iscrizioni al nuovo bando di Biografilm Festival 2024

25 agosto 2023

Biografilm inizia la collaborazione con Bookciak, Azione!

20 giugno 2023

I numeri della 19esima edizione

19 giugno 2023

Biografilm 2023 - Giorno 11

18 giugno 2023

I vincitori di Biografilm 2023

17 giugno 2023

BIOGRAFILM FESTIVAL UN PERCORSO DI SOSTENIBILITÀ AMBIENTALE

Biografilm 2023 - Giorno 9

Biografilm 2023 - Giorno 10

16 giugno 2023

Biografilm 2023 - Giorno 8

15 giugno 2023

Biografilm 2023 - Giorno 7

09 giugno 2023

Nicolas Philibert e "Sur l'Adamant" inaugurano il Biografilm 2023

31 maggio 2023

Il tema dell’identità attraverso i film di Biografilm 2023

12 maggio 2023

Premio a Philippa Kowarsky in occasione dei dieci anni di Bio To B

05 maggio 2023

Il Lavoro attraverso i film di Biografilm 2023

Svelato il film d'apertura di Biografilm 2023

20 aprile 2023

Storie di Donne e Determinazione

17 febbraio 2023

“Essere e avere” è il tema di Biografilm 2023

18 gennaio 2023

Al via a Bologna CINEVASIONI.EDU

09 settembre 2022

Biografilm Festival 2023 - I Direttori Artistici saranno Chiara Liberti e Massimo Benvegnù

Sfoglia le fotografie #TBT

#ThrowbackThursday

Biografilm 2007

Biografilm 2013

Biografilm 2015

Luca Marinelli | Biografilm 2016

Biografilm 2017

Marcello Fonte | Biografilm 2018

Peter Greenaway | Biografilm 2018

Michela Murgia | Biografilm 2019

Ritorno al Futuro | Biografilm 2011

Advanced search

• COLLABORATIONS

Enter full date

or just enter yyyy, or yyyy-mm below

1. Oppenheimer

2. Back to Black

4. Amar Singh Chamkila

5. Bob Marley: One Love

6. The Iron Claw

7. The Wolf of Wall Street

8. Napoleon

9. One Life

10. Schindler's List

11. Unfrosted

12. Maidaan

13. The Boys in the Boat

14. 12th Fail

15. Priscilla

16. Amadeus

17. BlackBerry

18. Jeanne du Barry

19. Ford v Ferrari

20. Tombstone

21. Green Book

22. Ferrari

23. Goodfellas

24. The Greatest Showman

25. The Big Short

26. Megan Leavey

27. Society of the Snow

28. The Social Network

30. Hacksaw Ridge

31. Catch Me If You Can

32. Sound of Freedom

33. Michael

34. Braveheart

35. The Favourite

36. The Pianist

37. A Beautiful Mind

38. The Promised Land

39. Dumb Money

40. Erin Brockovich

41. Hamilton

42. Beautiful Boy

43. A Complete Unknown

44. The Irishman

45. Cabrini

46. King Richard

48. Curiosa

50. The Imitation Game

Recently viewed.

Independent Film Festival Boston turns 21: ‘We see the festival and the city as kind of intertwined’

This year’s program, which runs may 1-8, includes features like ‘janet planet’ and ‘fear of flying,’ the documentary ‘secret mall apartment,’ and much more.

This year, Independent Film Festival Boston turns 21 — old enough to drink and gamble. But for the event, the age represents something steadier: a vital position in Boston culture, fortified by two decades of showcasing artists and building community, all while prioritizing the sensibilities of local audiences.

“I think the Boston spirit is one of independence,” said Brian Tamm, the executive director of IFFBoston. “We see the festival and the city as kind of intertwined.”

Alongside program director Nancy Campbell, Tamm has worked at IFFBoston in some capacity nearly since its inception. Their time on the staff has allowed them to get to know Bostonian audiences.

Advertisement

“We are a group of people who are independently minded, probably somewhat stubborn,” Tamm said.

“That, to me, is what makes this a great filmgoing city,” he added. “People want to look beyond the headlines.”

This year’s program — which will screen May 1-8 at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square, the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, and the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline — offers a sampling of features culled from major independent film festivals around the country. Several had their world premieres at the Sundance Film Festival in January, where they received accolades and sold to major distributors. Their inclusion at IFFBoston ensures that local audiences can catch some of 2024′s best offerings months before they filter into theaters and onto streaming services.

But the lineup is also a showcase for smaller movies made by local talent, such as “Fear of Flying,” directed by Mark Phinney. And although prestige is a natural draw for audiences, it’s worth paying attention to the micro-budget movies, like the partially crowd-funded horror-comedy “Evil Sublet,” precisely because the IFFBoston programmers have chosen to spotlight them without big festival buzz.

My favorite movie in the program, “Janet Planet,” premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last fall, but its story and tone scratch a strong Massachusetts itch. The film is the glorious first feature from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, who was born in Cambridge and grew up in Amherst. Set in 1991, the story follows a taciturn preteen girl and her mother as they slog through the summer months in rural Western Massachusetts. Much of the movie’s magic hinges on Zoe Ziegler, the first-time actress who plays the 11-year-old Lacy (Julianne Nicholson plays her mother, Janet). When casting for the part, Baker put out a call that specifically asked for introverts, hoping to find a girl who could nail Lacy’s quiet, observant temperament.

“Janet Planet,” which will be released by A24 this year, might be the buzziest New England movie playing at IFFBoston, but there are other local stories on the lineup, including “Fear of Flying,” a warts-and-all portrait of a filmmaker on the brink of breakdown, and “Secret Mall Apartment,” a documentary that recently premiered at South by Southwest. The former, written and directed by Boston native Mark Phinney, is a thinly veiled self-portrait: It follows a Boston-based filmmaker named Mark (Mike Mitchell) whose phobias — of love, death, loneliness, and yes, flying — are disrupting his life and work.

The documentary “Secret Mall Apartment,” directed by Jeremy Workman, tells of a group of artists in Providence who in 2003 decided to move into a secret alcove in their local mall. The scheme began as a lark — a bet between friends on how long they could live in the vacant room before getting caught. But over time, the space grew into a kind of antiestablishment clubhouse, one that allowed the group to give a big middle finger to rampant commercial development and reclaim a sense of ownership over their rapidly urbanizing home city.

Other exciting documentaries include the Netflix titles “Daughters,” which follows four girls preparing for a Daddy-Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, and “Power,” a chronicle of the history of American policing directed by “Strong Island” filmmaker Yance Ford. The IFFBoston documentary centerpiece, “The Road to Ruane,” tells the local story of Billy Ruane, a legendary rock music promoter in Boston. During the ‘80s and ‘90s Ruane became known as a champion of indie acts; according to lore, he sometimes paid bands out of pocket if ticket sales were low.

On the narrative end, “Good One,” which I highlighted out of Sundance, is a major gem; its portrait of a teenage girl on a camping trip with two grown men is taut, alert, and excellently observed. The film begins as Sam (Lily Collias), her divorced dad, Chris (James Le Gros), and his best friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) are preparing for the outing, and then follows them over a couple days in the forest. In her first feature, writer-director India Donaldson demonstrates a keen eye for how gender roles work among the trio: Throughout, Sam is expected to perform as the men’s assistant, therapist, cook, and overall caretaker — which she does readily, until she can’t take it anymore.

Two other Sundance titles worth your while are the Aubrey Plaza-starring “My Old Ass,” which is playing as the IFFBoston narrative centerpiece, and “I Saw the TV Glow,” the hyper-stylized second feature from Jane Schoenbrun. Both focus on a suburban coming-of-age story but manage to avoid familiar tropes by incorporating elements of the surreal.

Movies about community theater might not seem like everyone’s cup of tea, but I suspect that few will be disappointed by “Ghostlight,” a tender and winning family drama. The film tells the story of overworked parents (Keith Kupferer and Tara Mallen) dealing with their rebellious teenage daughter (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) after she’s suspended from school. The plot kicks into motion once Dad stumbles into a community theater practice for “Romeo and Juliet” and decides to join in. The film, like IFFBoston more broadly, ultimately makes the case for the power of art to bring people together and transform them for the better.

INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL BOSTON

May 1-8 at Somerville, Brattle, and Coolidge Corner theaters. Tickets on sale now. Additional information about the festival is available at www.iffboston.org .

Natalia Winkelman can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her on Twitter @nataliawinke.

Winners of 14th Annual Beijing International Film Festival Announced, ‘Gold or S— ’ Takes Top Prize

The festival in Beijing celebrated films made in China and around the world

By Partner Content

Partner Content

• Winners of 14th Annual Beijing International Film Festival Announced, ‘Gold or S— ’ Takes Top Prize 3 days ago
• New York Film Academy Expands Miami Campus in Brand New Renovation 1 month ago
• How the Ad-Supported Streaming Era Is Transforming the Ways Brands Reach Audiences   2 months ago

At the 14th annual Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) awards ceremony, the seven-member international jury, led by Serbian director Emir Kusturica, awarded this year’s Tiantan Prize for best film, the most prestigious award of the festival, to China’s “Gold or Shit.” Along with Kusturica, the award was presented by Zhang Yimou and Jiang Wen, two accomplished Chinese directors. 

Popular on Variety

Fan Wei won the best actor award for China’s “Strangers When We Meet” while “Stop and Go” won the best supporting actress and best screenplay awards. 

At the end of the ceremony, director Chen Kaige, best known for “Farewell My Concubine,” received the lifetime achievement award. Directors, poets, actors, composers and other celebrities, with whom Kaige has had close friendships and working relationships, appeared on stage. Among them was actor Dan Li, who played the young schoolboy Laizi in “Farewell My Concubine” and had not reunited with Kaige for more than 30 years.  

Other international jury members for the Tiantan Award at this year’s Beijing International Film Festival included Australian film sound designer David White, Austrian director Jessica Hausner, Brazilian writer, producer and director Carlos Saldanha and Chinese actors Fei Xiang, Zhu Yilong and Ma Li. 

List of winners: 

Best film: “Gold or Shit,” China  Best director: Karan Tejpal, India (“Stolen”)  Best actor: Fan Wei, China (“Strangers When We Meet”)  Best actress: Mia Maelzer, India (“Stolen”)  Best supporting actor: Jari Virman, Finland (“Death Is a Problem for the Living”)  Best actress in a supporting role: Hong Yue, China (“Gold or Shit”)  Best artistic contribution: “All the Long Nights” Japan  Best screenplay: Huang Jia, China (“Gold or Shit”)  Best cinematography: Isshaan Ghosh, India (“Stolen”)  Best music: Marco Biscarini, Finland (“Death Is a Problem for the Living”) 

More From Our Brands

Olivia rodrigo’s manchester shows canceled due to technical issues at venue, you can now sleep in the ferrari museum, prince’s purple rain house, or the x-men mansion, perfect game, fanatics enter collectibles agreement, be tough on dirt but gentle on your body with the best soaps for sensitive skin, svu’s mariska hargitay is trying to get kelli giddish back for season 26, verify it's you, please log in.