SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

About

About the Sundance Film Festival

Every winter in Utah, the Sundance Film Festival becomes the ultimate gathering of original storytellers and audiences seeking new voices and fresh perspectives. Our annual program includes dramatic and documentary features and short films; series and episodic content; and New Frontier, showcasing emerging media in the form of multimedia installations, performances, and films. We also host daily filmmaker conversations, panel discussions, and live music events. Since 1985, hundreds of films that have launched at the Festival have gained critical recognition and acclaim, reaching new audiences worldwide. The 2021 Sundance Film Festival will take place from January 21 to 31, 2021. Submissions for the 2021 Sundance Film Festival will open on May 1, 2020.

Programming Team

Meet the team that brings the best in indie storytelling to audiences at the Festival and around the world each year.

  • Areas of focus: Oversees programming, Premieres

    John Cooper has been a member of the Sundance Film Festival programming staff since 1989 and assumed the role of Festival Director in April of 2009 after serving as the Director of Programming since 2003. His early work in theater, ranging from performance to design, took him to New York City. By chance, he volunteered at the Institute's Summer Labs in 1989 and fell in love with the process and energy of Sundance. He returned to California to become part of the Festival programming team, which at that time consisted of two people. In the Festival's early years, Cooper created the short film program and quickly transitioned into programming documentaries and feature films. As Festival Director, he oversees creative direction of the Festival as well as its ventures in London, Hong Kong and Los Angeles. He previously led the development of the Institute's online presence, which garnered two Webby Awards. More recently, he worked to create IGNITE, a program to nurture a new generation of filmmakers and independent film enthusiasts ages 18 to 24. Cooper has been a guest curator and juror at major film festivals around the world. From 1995-1998 he was the Programming Director of Outfest and served on its Board of Directors until 2002.

  • Kim Yutani began programming short films at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006. In 2009, she became a feature film programmer, focusing on US and international fiction feature films, overseeing short film programming, and working on the Festival’s Offscreen series of panels and conversations. She was instrumental in the creation of Sundance Film Festival: Hong Kong, which she also programs. During her tenure at the Institute, she has represented Sundance internationally by serving on juries, speaking on panels, and working to cultivate relationships with film commissions, industry, and artists around the world. For the past five years, she has also overseen a new collaboration with the Berlinale’s European Film Market – housed within the Sundance Film Festival at EFM program – which has provided exposure and sales opportunities for Sundance films, immediately after premiering at the Festival. She started her programming career at Outfest Los Angeles, one of the world’s leading LGBT festivals, where she was the Artistic Director and the Director of Programming. She is currently a programming consultant for the Provincetown International Film Festival. She has been a reader for Creative Capital and is on the short film nominating committee for Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking. Prior to her film festival work, Yutani was a film critic and freelance journalist focusing on independent film. She got her start in the industry as director Gregg Araki’s assistant. She was recently named an A100 Honoree on Gold House’s list of the most influential Asian Americans in culture.

  • Like each of the Senior Programmers of feature films, David is involved with selecting films across all Festival programs, but his focus is on U.S. and International documentaries. He is the lead programmer of Sundance Film Festival: London. He represents the film festival as a member of the selection committee of the Sundance Creative Distribution Fellowship. He is the writer, director and producer of the Sundance Awards Ceremony and oversees Public Programming for all Institute programs throughout the year.

    David started his career at Sundance in 2000 as a Documentary Screener and advanced from there. He is the former Co-Director of Programming at Outfest, Los Angeles’ LGBTQ Film Festival. Prior to that, David worked in film development for a number of production companies. He has served on the Advisory Board for IFP and on the nominating committee for the IDA Awards, the Cinema Eye Honors and the Gotham Awards. A native of Buffalo, NY, David graduated from Columbia University with degrees in English and Theatre.

  • Shari joined the programming team in 1998 and currently focuses on American and World Cinema dramatic features, as well as films that experiment and push the boundaries of conventional storytelling. She is also the curator and driving creative force behind New Frontier at Sundance, a program highlighting work that expands cinema culture through the convergence of film, art and new media technology.

    As Co-Director of Programming for Outfest from 1998-2001, she founded the Platinum section, which introduced cinematic installation and performance to the festival. From 1993-1996, Frilot served as Festival Director of MIX: The New York Experimental Lesbian & Gay Film Festival. During that time, she also co-founded the first gay Latin American film festivals, MIX BRASIL and MIX MÉXICO. Shari is a filmmaker and recipient of multiple grants from institutions including the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Media Arts Foundation. She is a graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe & the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program.

  • John deals primarily with programming feature films for the Festival’s World Cinema and U.S. Dramatic categories. He also programs the Offscreen series of panels and conversations at the Festival, which he has done since joining the Sundance team in 2001. He also heads up the Sundance Collection at UCLA, a groundbreaking archive that exists to protect, preserve, and restore past works of independent film. After growing up in Europe and the United States, John studied history at Carleton College and was a graduate student in UCLA’s Film Directing program, where he made several award-winning short films and lobbied tirelessly for better coffee in the vending machines. He attended his first Sundance Film Festival in 1996 and found its energy infectious. He has been to every festival since. He is also the curator for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles’ popular film culture conversation series Lost & Found at the Movies.

  • Charlie started working with the Sundance Film Festival in 2009 as the assistant to the Director of Programming, and has programed feature-length films for the past six years. He also led programming of film, music and comedy at Sundance NEXT Fest. Prior to Sundance, Charlie worked in publicity at Entertainment Tonight, marketing at Tartan Films U.S.A, acquisitions at Paramount Vantage and his mom’s picture frame gallery. He moved to Southern California in 2001 from Dallas, TX to study film & television at the University of Southern California and Chapman University.

  • Heidi Zwicker is a Senior Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, focusing on international and U.S. Narrative Feature Films, Midnight and Shorts. She has been contributing to various Sundance Institute programs for over ten years, beginning with the Feature Film Program, International. Heidi was a Programmer at Palm Springs International Shortfest from 2011-2014 and also programs at the Provincetown International Film Festival. Originally from the north shore of Boston, she has a degree in English from University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth and an M.A. in Critical Studies of Film and Television from UCLA.

  • Adam started at Sundance in 2005 as Manager of Programming, overseeing the selection process for nearly 14,000 film, episodic, and VR submissions that the Festival receives annually. Additionally, he lends his passion for cult and genre filmmaking to the programming of the Festival’s Midnight section, electing to spend the majority of his nights engrossed in all varieties of horror, thrillers, and off-color comedies. Adam also uses his past experience in television development to programming the Festival’s newest program, Indie Episodic. Prior to joining the Institute, he spent five years at Imagine Entertainment, where he worked on shows such as Arrested Development and 24. He is a firm believer that filmmakers are under no obligation to stick to any previously-established rules with regards to zombies, vampires, werewolves or Frankenstein.

  • Harry Vaughn is a programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, specializing in US and World documentary features. He's worked for Sundance's Catalyst Forum and the institute's Feature Film Program, where he began his career in 2011 as an intern. Aside from his work at Sundance, Harry is a consulting programmer for Frameline: San Francisco International LGBTQ Film Festival, and was previously a senior programmer for Outfest Los Angeles. He also assisted in programming and coordinating NewFest in New York and Outfest Fusion. He holds a Master’s degree in Arts Journalism from the University of Southern California and is a Los Angeles native.

  • Sudeep is a Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival focusing on documentary feature films. Having started at Sundance in 2008 as a screener of international documentary features for the festival and a reader for the labs, he has previously been an Associate Programmer, Documentaries and Shorts Programmer. He has also worked in programing at many festivals including the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Palm Springs International ShortFest, Aspen ShortsFest, LA Film Festival, AFI Fest, Tribeca, Indian Kaleidoscope Film Festival and was Director of Public Programming for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science. A native of New Jersey, Sudeep has a BA in English from George Washington University, MA and Ph.D. in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA and has taught film and television courses at universities throughout Southern California.

  • Ania Trzebiatowska is a programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, focusing on US and World documentary features. Most recently, she was the Sales & Acquisitions Executive for doc sales agency, Autlook Filmsales. Prior to that she was with the NYC-based agency, Visit Films, where she served as Senior Director of Acquisitions since 2015. Aside from her work at Sundance, Ania is also the artistic director of Off Camera IFF (Krakow, Poland), which she has been programming since 2008. She trained in production and post-production at the BBC and the British Museum, and holds a Master’s degree in film studies as well as an M.A in Digital Culture and Technology.

  • Dilcia Barrera is a Feature Film Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival.

    Since 2007, Dilcia has worked for numerous film festivals including a tenure as a Sundance Film Festival Shorts Programmer, Senior Programmer at AFI FEST and has collaborated with OUTFEST, LAFF and The Philadelphia Film Festival. Most recently, she was the Associate Curator of Film at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and was invited to curate the return edition of LALIFF (The Los Angeles Latino Film Festival) and two new short film categories for NYFF54 (New York Film Festival). She has served on international film festival juries at the Berlin International Film Festival and SXSW and in 2016 was named one of "IndieWire’s 20 Latin Americans Making a Difference for American Independent Film Today."

  • Lauren Cioffi is a documentary film programmer working in Los Angeles. She was selected to be on the Feature Documentary Programming Team at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015, curating and discovering US and International documentaries. She also aids in selecting new projects in development for the Sundance Documentary Fund. She has been a film Programming Consultant at Outfest Film Festival for the last 4 years. She is excited about documentaries that push the boundaries of the form and highlight underrepresented voices.She graduated from Georgetown University, creating her own major in Film Theory. In addition to programming, she enjoys producing original nonfiction content with emerging directors.

  • Stephanie Owens is new to the Sundance programming team. She started screening for the festival in 2016. She is also a programmer for the LA Film Festival, and has worked with POV, Palm Springs International ShortFest and WIF. She loves films, and documentaries especially. In fact, when she’s not watching documentaries for festivals, she’s chipping away at her first feature documentary project. Owens earned her BA in Studio Art from the University of Virginia and MFA in Art and Film/ Video from CalArts.

  • Born in Brazil, Ana Souza was partially raised in Amsterdam. She holds a B.A. from the University of Warwick, England and an M.A. from the University of Southern California. She joined Sundance initially as the assistant to the Director of Programming under Trevor Groth. In addition to her work supporting the Programming department at Sundance, she has programmed for AFI FEST and the LA Film Festival. She has also worked in various capacities for the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles, Outfest, Ambulante California, and NALIP’s Latino Media Fest, among others. She has been a programming fellow for Film Independent’s Project Involve and the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Industry Academy.

  • Working as a film programmer and projectionist since 1993, Mike Plante is currently a Senior Programmer for Short Film at the Sundance Film Festival, where he has worked since 2001. He helped run CineVegas from 2002-2009. Plante also makes short and feature documentaries, including Be Like An Ant (2011), Giuseppe Makes A Movie (2014) and The Polaroid Job (2016), available on the New York Times Op-Doc series.

  • Emily Doe has been a part of the Sundance shorts team since 2010. Prior to that she distributed short films through McSweeney’s quarterly DVD magazine, Wholphin, and worked in film education at the San Francisco Film Society. She has a degree in film & literature from Kenyon College, and currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and two young daughters.

  • Jon Korn is a Shorts Programmer at the Sundance Film Festival and a Senior Writer at Heat in San Francisco. Previously, he worked at Outfest, AFI FEST, and the late, great CineVegas. Jon's writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Bold Italic, The Bay Citizen, The Goods, LitReactor, and Filmmaker. He is also the Co-Creator of the intertemporally-renowned Echo Park Time Travel Mart and a Jeopardy! champion.

  • Katie has been a Shorts Programmer at Sundance since 2010 and previously worked in short film distribution for Future Shorts and event production for Vimeo and Punchdrunk in New York. She is currently Video Commissioner for global video platform NOWNESS in London, commissioning editorial films and also overseeing short form content for fashion, design, tech & culture brands.

  • Lisa Ogdie is a Shorts Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival and also Membership & Talent Development Manager for BAFTA Los Angeles. She has been part of the Sundance shorts programming team since 2009, selecting the Sundance short film slate from over 8,000 submissions, and has moderated Q&A discussions and panels for BAFTA Los Angeles, Sundance, Toronto Film Festival and the American Pavilion at Cannes.

  • Adam Piron (Kiowa & Mohawk) is a member of the Sundance Film Festival’s Short Film programming team and is the assistant curator for film at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He has also programmed films for AFI Fest and Film Independent's LA Film Festival. From 2014 to 2017, he served as a Manager for Sundance Institute's Native American and Indigenous Film Program.

  • Landon Zakheim is a Shorts Programmer for the Sundance Film Festival, Director of Programming for the Aspen ShortsFest, Senior Programmer for the Philadelphia Film Festival, Head Shorts Programmer for the LA Film Festival, Interactive Curator for the Denver Film Festival, and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of The Overlook Film Festival, a 4-day celebration of all things horror with a focus on live events and interactive experiences currently held in New Orleans. From 2013 - 2015, he programmed at AFI FEST. He enjoys escape rooms, perhaps too much.

  • DaManuel is the newest member of the Shorts Programming team. He began working for Sundance in 2014 as an intern. In addition to his programming duties, he also serves as Assistant to the Festival Director. He's a graduate of the University of Georgia and holds an MFA in Film Directing from California Institute of the Arts. As a filmmaker, his work has screened at the Atlanta Film Festival & Cartagena International Film Festival. In his spare time, he continues to write and develop projects and enjoys working in his community garden.

Awards & Juries

The culmination of the Sundance Film Festival is our awards ceremony. Winning a Festival award can be life changing for a filmmaker and can bring attention to the impactful stories that might not have otherwise reached wider audiences. Films in both the documentary and dramatic competition categories are eligible for a variety of prestigious awards bestowed by our juries, made up of individuals with original and diverse points of view from the worldwide film community. In addition, we invite audiences to vote for their favorites with five Audience Awards—given to one film in each of the four competition categories and the NEXT category—as well as the Festival Favorite Award, chosen from any feature category.

  • U.S. Grand Jury Prizes
    The ranking award is the Grand Jury Prize, which recognizes a film in both the U.S. Dramatic and U.S. Documentary Competitions as the best from the independent film community this year.

    World Cinema Grand Jury Prizes
    The highest award for international films, the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize recognizes the best dramatic and documentary work in international independent filmmaking this year.

    Directing Award
    The Directing Award honors directors in the U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, and World Cinema Documentary Competition.

    Special Jury Awards
    Jurors give a number of Special Jury Awards recognizing excellence in the craft of filmmaking. Inspired by the Art of Film Weekend, these prizes are chosen by their respective juries as they deem appropriate. The Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award will still be given given to a U.S. Dramatic film for excellence in screenwriting.

    Audience Awards
    Audience Awards are chosen by Festivalgoers themselves through ballots cast at the theaters after screenings. Audience Awards are presented to films in the Festival’s U.S. Dramatic Competition, U.S. Documentary Competition, World Cinema Dramatic Competition, World Cinema Documentary Competition, and NEXT categories.

    The U.S. Dramatic and Documentary Competition Audience Awards are presented by Acura.

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    The NEXT Audience Award is presented by Adobe.

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    Festival Favorite Award
    All feature films presented at the Festival are eligible for the Festival Favorite Award, which will be determined by audience ballots across all Festival screenings. Similar to the Festival’s long-standing Audience Awards for each competition section, this award will designate the feature film from any of the Festival’s sections that best connects with audiences.

    NEXT Innovator Award
    This award recognizes the most innovative and forward-thinking film screened in the NEXT category. The prize is awarded by an iconic figure regarded as an important innovator in their respective field. This single juror will choose one film that they believe to be the most innovative.

    The NEXT Innovator Award is presented by Adobe.

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    Sundance Institute/NHK Award
    This annual award was created to support the next generation of emerging directors.

    Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize
    Provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, this juried award is presented to the writer and director of an outstanding feature film focusing on science or technology as a theme or depicting a scientist, engineer, or mathematician as a major character.

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    Jury Prizes and Awards in Short Filmmaking
    The following prizes and awards are bestowed on short films in the Festival that exemplify outstanding vision and creativity in their respective categories:

    • Short Film Grand Jury Prize
    • Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction
    • Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction
    • Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction
    • Short Film Jury Award: Animation
    • Short Film Special Jury Awards

    The Short Film Program Awards are presented by Southwest Airlines®.

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    Awards produced by O. C. Tanner

  • headshotRodrigo Garcia
    Rodrigo Garcia’s films include the award-winning Nine Lives, Albert Nobbs, Mother and Child, and Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her. His television credits include the pilots of In Treatment, Carnivàle, Big Love, Bull, and the upcoming Party of Five series reboot. Garcia is co-CEO of the digital studio Indigenous Media, which produced the series Five Points, Lauren, and Blue.

    headshotEthan Hawke
    Ethan Hawke has starred in over 60 films, including Training Day, Before Sunrise (1995 Sundance Film Festival), and Boyhood (2014 Sundance Film Festival), which garnered Hawke one of his four Academy Award nominations. Recently, he won a Gotham Award, a Film Independent Spirit Award, and over 20 film critics’ awards for his performance in First Reformed. Besides an on-screen actor, he is a director, an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter, a Tony Award–nominated stage actor, and a novelist.

    headshotDee Rees
    Writer/director Dee Rees is the first Black woman nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Adapted Screenplay category, for her highly acclaimed film Mudbound (2017 Sundance Film Festival). Her previous credits include the multiple-Emmy-winning film Bessie (2015) and her Film Independent Spirit Award– and Gotham Award–winning debut feature, Pariah (2011 Sundance Film Festival). Her latest film, The Last Thing He Wanted, is an adaptation of the Joan Didion novel and stars Anne Hathaway as veteran DC journalist Elena McMahon.

    headshotIsabella Rossellini
    Isabella Rossellini has appeared in numerous films, including Il prato (The Meadow), Blue Velvet, Cousins, Death Becomes Her, and Joy. Her award-winning series of shorts—Green Porno, Seduce Me, and Mammas—offer comical and scientifically insightful studies of animal behavior. She recently toured with her latest theatrical show, Link Link Circus. Rossellini also works to preserve the films of her father and mother, Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, and runs an organic farm in Brookhaven.

    headshotWash Westmoreland
    Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer’s feature Quinceañera premiered at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival, winning both the U.S. Dramatic Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize. Their feature, Still Alice, won a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe and earned Julianne Moore her first Academy Award. After Glatzer’s passing, Westmoreland directed the acclaimed Colette (2018 Sundance Film Festival) and the psychological drama Earthquake Bird. Originally from Leeds, England, Westmoreland currently lives in Los Angeles, California.

  • headshotKimberly Reed
    Kimberly Reed’s Dark Money (2018 Sundance Film Festival) was named one of Vogue’s “66 best documentaries of all time,” nominated for four Critics’ Choice Awards and the IDA Documentary Award for Best Documentary, awarded the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, and shortlisted for an Academy Award. Prodigal Sons, the first documentary by a transgender filmmaker to be theatrically released, won 14 international awards. Reed is also one of Filmmaker magazine’s “25 new faces of independent film.”

    headshotRachel Rosen
    Rachel Rosen is the director of programming for SFFILM, which presents the annual San Francisco International Film Festival, where she also served as the associate director of programming. She spent eight years as the director of programming for Film Independent and the LA Film Festival and has worked in various capacities for the New York Film Festival, New York’s Film Forum, and TriStar Pictures. She holds an MA in communications from the documentary film program at Stanford University.

    headshotCourtney Sexton
    Courtney Sexton is senior vice president for CNN Films. Sexton works day to day with filmmakers to supervise the production of documentary films for theatrical exhibition and distribution across CNN’s platforms. Since Sexton joined CNN Films, the team has acquired or commissioned more than 45 original feature and short films. Sexton’s recent work includes Apollo 11, RBG, Three Identical Strangers, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice, Halston, and Scandalous.

    headshotE. Chai Vasarhelyi
    Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi is an Academy Award–winning filmmaker, known for Free Solo, which earned a BAFTA Award, the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and seven Emmys. Her other films include Meru (shortlisted for a 2016 Academy Award; won the U.S. Documentary Audience Award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival), Incorruptible, A Normal Life, and Touba. She has received grants from Sundance Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

    headshotNoland Walker
    Noland Walker is vice president of content at ITVS and oversees the cultivation of independent documentary films for the award-winning public media series Independent Lens, POV, American Masters, America ReFramed, and others. He also steers ITVS’s content partnerships and field-relations strategies. Walker’s documentary credits include award-winning films such as Africans in America, Citizen King, Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple, and Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story.

  • headshotHaifaa Al Mansour
    Haifaa Al Mansour finished her bachelor’s degree in literature at the American University in Cairo and a master’s degree in directing and film studies from the University of Sydney. She is considered the first female Saudi Arabian filmmaker, and her feature film Wadjda was the first international film ever to be shot in Saudi Arabia. Invited to over 40 festivals worldwide, Wadjda garnered numerous awards, including in Venice, Rotterdam, and Dubai.

    headshotWagner Moura
    Wagner Moura is a Brazilian stage, film, and television star. His performance in Elite Squad (2007) put him on the world stage when the film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. He recently starred as Pablo Escobar in Netflix’s critically acclaimed series Narcos, garnering both the show and him Golden Globe nominations. He made his directorial debut in 2019 with Marighella. He currently works with the UN to end forced labor.

    headshotAlba Rohrwacher
    Born in Florence, Italy, Alba Rohrwacher studied acting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and gained recognition for her award-winning collaborations with Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love); Marco Bellocchio (Dormant Beauty, Blood of My Blood); Laura Bispuri (Daughter of Mine); Saverio Costanzo (Hungry Hearts, The Solitude of Prime Numbers); and her sister, Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro). Her awards for best actress include the Volpi Cup, two Nastri d’Argento, and two David di Donatello Awards.

  • headshotEric Hynes
    Eric Hynes is curator of film at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, where he oversees the annual First Look Festival. He is also a longtime critic and journalist and writes a column on the art of nonfiction for Film Comment magazine. Other outlets have included the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Slate, New York magazine, Sight & Sound, the Village Voice, and Reverse Shot, where he has been a staff writer since 2003.

    headshotRima Mismar
    Rima Mismar is the executive director of the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), a grant-making organization that supports artists across the Arab region. She completed her studies at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut, before pursuing a career as a film critic. During the last decade, she has participated in festivals as a juror or a member of the selection committee, moderated panels, and written and contributed to critiques on Arab cinema.

    headshotNanfu Wang
    Nanfu Wang is a Chinese filmmaker based in New York City. She directs, produces, films, and edits feature documentaries, including Hooligan Sparrow (2016 Sundance Film Festival; shortlisted for the 2017 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature), I Am Another You (2017 SXSW Film Festival, Special Jury Award for Excellence in Documentary Storytelling), and One Child Nation (2019 Sundance Film Festival, U.S. Documentary Grand Jury Prize).

  • headshotSian Clifford
    Sian Clifford is an Emmy Award– and Critics’ Choice Award–nominated actress for her role as Claire in the global phenomenon and multi-award-winning series Fleabag. She will star in AMC’s hotly anticipated Quiz, directed by Stephen Frears, later this year, as well as in Sky’s Two Weeks To Live, alongside Maisie Williams. She will also guest feature in Hitmen, again for Sky, and in the second series of psychological thriller Liar from Fleabag producers Two Brothers Pictures for ITV.

    headshotMarcus Hu
    Marcus Hu is co-president and co-founder of Strand Releasing, which has distributed the works of such international filmmakers as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Gregg Araki, Catherine Breillat, Lucrecia Martel, and many others. Strand Releasing celebrates its 30th anniversary with a national tour of original films created by filmmakers and friends shot on iPhones and shown at museums around the country. Hu serves as chair of international inclusion for the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

    headshotCindy Sherman
    Cindy Sherman has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in London (2019) and the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2012). Her work has also been included in five iterations of the Whitney Biennial, two Biennales of Sydney, and the 1983 documenta exhibition. She has received such awards and honors as the Praemium Imperiale, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

  • headshotGregg Araki
    Gregg Araki earned an MFA in film production from the USC School of Cinematic Arts and a BA in film studies from UC Santa Barbara. Araki has made 11 acclaimed independent features, including Kaboom (2011), Smiley Face (2007), Mysterious Skin (2005), and Totally F***ed Up (1994). Araki most recently directed 10 episodes of Now Apocalypse (2019 Sundance Film Festival) for Starz—a series he created, co-wrote, and executive-produced with Steven Soderbergh and Gregory Jacobs.

  • headshotRuth Angus
    Dr. Ruth Angus obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford and is an assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History, an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics, and an adjunct professor of astrophysics at Columbia University. She studies the evolution of stars and planetary systems in the Milky Way using data from NASA’s Kepler and TESS space telescopes.

    headshotEmily Mortimer
    Emily Mortimer is an actress recently seen in Mary Poppins Returns. She won a Film Independent Spirit Award for Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely and Amazing and earned nominations at the Empire Awards and the Critics’ Circle Film Awards for David Mackenzie’s Young Adam. She currently runs the production company King Bee Productions with her husband, Alessandro Nivola. She produced the Film Independent Spirit Award–nominated feature To Dust and is currently writing an adaptation of Nancy Mitford’s novel The Pursuit of Love.

    headshotJessica Oreck
    Jessica Oreck makes projects across mediums in an effort to re-inspire a sense of wonder about the world of the everyday. She’s made several feature films that focus on ethnobiology—the way that cultures interact with the natural world—including Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo (2009), Aatsinki: The Story of Arctic Cowboys (2013), The Vanquishing of the Witch Baba Yaga (2014), and One Man Dies a Million Times (2019). Jessica also works in paper-based animation, creating educational content for TED and several series for forthcoming outlets.

    headshotAinissa Ramirez
    Ainissa Ramirez, PhD, is a materials scientist and science communicator who is passionate about getting the general public excited about science. She has worked as a research scientist at Bell Labs and held academic positions at Yale University and MIT. Ramirez has written for Forbes, Time, Science, and Scientific American and has explained science headlines on CBS, CNN, NPR, and PBS’s SciTech Now. Her book The Alchemy of Us uncovers how tech shaped us and will be published in April 2020.

    headshotMichael Tyburski
    Michael Tyburski is a director and screenwriter. His work has been featured by the New Yorker, Film Comment, IndieWire, and Filmmaker magazine. His short film Palimpsest won a Special Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. He received both a grant and lab support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is a recipient of the Dolby Institute Fellowship, and was selected for Sundance Institute’s Film Music and Sound Design Lab. His debut feature, The Sound of Silence, premiered at the 2019 Festival.

Code of Conduct

The Sundance Film Festival is an environment where bold, creative, and distinctive voices are celebrated.

Sundance Institute is committed to allowing attendees to experience the Sundance Film Festival free of harassment, discrimination, sexism, and threatening or disrespectful behavior. We reserve the right to revoke, without notice or refund, credentials or access to Festival events and venues for those who engage in any such conduct.

We have partnered with the Utah attorney general's office to provide a 24-hour live hotline during the Festival for those who are involved in or witness any conduct that violates this code of conduct at (801) 834-1944.

For emergencies, immediately dial 9-1-1.