Even the most acclaimed filmmakers can be intimidated by the festival market. Take “Transparent” creator Joey Soloway, who premiered their short “Una Hora Por Favora” at the Sundance Film Festival in 2012. “Getting into Sundance is a certain sort of passport to a level of anxiety I’ve never experienced,” Soloway wrote after attending the country’s largest independent film festival for the first time.
Between the costs of travel and submission fees—not to mention, the unease Soloway wrote about—filmmakers can be left wondering if the juice of the festival circuit is worth the squeeze. In the case of Sundance, the answer has been a resounding yes—alongside the New York Film Festival, the Venice International Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, and Cannes, it has consistently been valued as the most robust showcase for what’s next in global filmmaking.
Sundance’s past
Founded in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival in partnership with Robert Redford’s production company Wildwood Enterprises, Sundance was originally intended as a presentation of American independent filmmaking outside of the Hollywood system. The first edition included staples of the independent world such as Alexander Mackendrick’s 1957 masterpiece “Sweet Smell of Success” and Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the film that launched Marlon Brando’s career.
Named after Redford’s role in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” the event officially became the Sundance Film Festival in 1984. Though it has morphed into a more international fête since its first few years and ballooned in size (the 2023 edition had a combined online and in-person attendance of 423,234 people), it remains a major launching pad for new filmmakers. Among the panoply of luminaries who have emerged out of Sundance are Paul Thomas Anderson, Lee Isaac Chung, Jim Jarmusch, Jane Schoenbrun, Quentin Tarantino, and A.V. Rockwell.
The festival’s proudest exports also include Steven Soderbergh’s “Sex, Lies, and Videotape,” Mary Harron’s “American Psycho,” Richard Kelly’s “Donnie Darko,” Rob Epstein’s “The Times of Harvey Milk,” and Norman Jewison’s “Starstruck,” featuring a legendary performance from Cher. And since Sundance has long held a shorts program alongside its features, it has helped further advance the careers of Dee Rees, Debra Granik, Shaka King, and Wes Anderson.
Sundance’s present
In recent years, Sundance has become a launching pad for the Oscar campaigns of countless films. In 2021, Sian Heder’s “CODA” became the first Sundance premiere to go on to win the Academy Award for best picture, and over 250 Sundance films have gone on to garner nominations of some kind or another.
But Sundance’s impact extends beyond its track record of award-worthy films, as the festival has also become a harbinger of technological advancements and trends in indie cinema. In a 2024 survey conducted by No Film School, a majority of filmmakers at the festival said they chose Canon over ARRI as their go-to camera system—only one year after ARRI was preferred by 60% of Sundance artists. At the same time, there was a tremendous uptick in usage of older technology like Bolex and Sony camcorders, suggesting that indie filmmakers are finding both practical and aesthetic use in old reliables.
Sundance’s future
These days, Sundance is in the midst of a multi-year transformation. The 2024 edition was the first with Eugene Hernandez, who joined from Film at Lincoln Center and who founded the website Indiewire, as its festival director and head of public programming. With Hernandez, the festival’s first Latino director, at the helm, Sundance continues to aggressively push for a more diverse lineup; the 2023 edition was the first in Sundance history to feature a majority of filmmakers who identify as female and/or people of color. The event is also pushing for more diversity among attendees—as the average age of its festivalgoers increases, Sundance is scrambling to market toward younger audiences.
Sundance is also nearing the end of its decades-long lease with Park City, Utah, and will likely be heading for new ground in 2027, with Boulder and Cincinnati as possible landing spots. Despite that uncertainty, the 2025 edition, which runs from Jan. 23 through Feb. 2, promises to be just as impactful as ever for the film community. The lineup boasts 87 features and six episodic projects, including 89 world premieres. Among the buzziest entries are Bill Condon’s “Kiss of the Spider Woman,” starring Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna; Sophie Hyde’s “Jimpa,” with Olivia Colman and John Lithgow; and a documentary about Sly and the Family Stone from Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson.
Considering its bona fides, getting into Sundance has, on some levels, never been more difficult; last year, the festival received 17,435 submissions from 153 countries. The good news is that Sundance’s programming team is still dedicated to platforming new voices; on the 2025 lineup, 36 of the 87 feature titles are repped by first-time feature filmmakers.
And if you are one of those first-time filmmakers, you can expect an experience like no other. As Slant Magazine critic Marshall Shaffer tells FilmFreeway, “There’s a sense of ownership that Sundance instills for those first crowds at the films selected to play at the festival. It’s your discovery in a way that is unique in comparison to other events at the world-premiere tier. There’s no better festival for amassing a fan base of people willing to fight for a film to be seen as hard as its production team fought for it to get made. Sundance makes its audiences feel like a part of a movie’s story, and that sense of connection lasts long after the snow melts in Park City.”
