Sundance 2024: The Power Of Values
Thoughts On Commerce, Progress, and Reshaping The Film Community
This past week, I attended the 40th Annual Sundance Film Festival, my 25th in-person visit to the festival, and once again, the opportunity to consider new films and connect with my colleagues proved to be an irresistible combination, one that gave me a chance to think about the state of the industry and the festival’s standing as the leading non-profit in the American film community.
First and foremost, The Sundance Institute, of which the festival is a major program (alongside the Institute’s Labs and filmmaker and industry facing programs), remains committed to living its values in its programming, and that commitment brings a focus that most other film festivals have not achieved. As an institution, Sundance has grown into a contemporary, progressive non-profit juggernaut1, one that not only finds funding for programs from major Foundations and donors seeking to create social impact, but one that has been built and organized as a diverse, inclusive institution, from its leadership to its Lab fellows. On these terms, Sundance is miles ahead of the film industry, with leading positions held by LGBTQIA+ people, people of color, and women at levels that the rest of the industry has not yet2 realized. Its programs are reflective of its commitment to how the organization itself has been built.
As a non-profit committed to living its values, Sundance has been singularly successful among American film festivals. But while no one talks about it, many of the tensions that arise around the festival are a direct result of the disconnect between Sundance’s progressive non-profit vision of an inclusive film community and the perceptions and values of the commercial forces that have attached themselves to the festival. Still, Sundance leads through its commitment to diverse, independently financed films, both domestic and foreign, that address its social concerns. As far as politics and social conditions are reflected in contemporary American filmmaking3, Sundance has been deeply committed to programming the work of artists who have engaged in asking questions about the world that Sundance seems to be constantly asking about itself. These defining questions are not separate or isolated from its programming— they are a part of the same process.
Not surprisingly, this process also exists outside of the “award season industrial complex” of the fall festival calendar, and so Sundance’s enduring success is a huge indicator of the legitimate power of its programming. Unlike most film festivals, Sundance is also supporting the creation of new work by way of its Lab programs, responding directly to industry conditions by training and supporting professional filmmakers whose ideas it seeks to foster. From there, it is able to expand its impact by programming that work alongside films that get discovered during the selection process.
To be fair, the reality is that many of the films that play the festival come not from the process of scouting blind submissions, but from agencies and commercial representatives that have done the groundwork of finding and investing in the work of emerging talents that they hope will deliver commercial success down the road. I have no insight into how much the Sundance Film Festival team takes the perceived commercial value of films and talent into consideration, but it is obviously not “zero”—the festival certainly understands the enormous value of hosting recognizable, established talent at the festival and on its red carpets, and it supports the role of press in the discovery process, an undeniably important factor in attracting attention to the festival itself. This attention is critical in maintaining its position in both the industry and the public’s imagination, but also in sponsorship and donor support, where visibility is a critical metric of impact.
Measuring that impact is not just an artistic phenomenon, it sits alongside the public and industry perception of Sundance as a commercial launching pad, a winning lottery ticket for filmmakers, of Sundance as a festival driven by commercial opportunity for the industry itself. This narrative is constantly reinforced by the festival’s success in finding real talent and the longstanding history of dealmaking those discoveries have generated, with trade-driven reporting on multi-million dollar film sale prices and bidding wars, the promotion of artists eager to be recruited into studio work, bigger budgets, and commercial careers, and the brands that recognize those deals as a vital piece of the entertainment economy attaching themselves to the festival’s physical footprint while promoting the intersection of influence, commerce, celebrity, and luxury.
Despite this, I firmly believe that one of the best ways an organization like Sundance can affect actual progressive change within the film industry is to use the perception of commercial discovery to elevate a diverse and inclusive group of filmmakers into the festival’s bright spotlight, validating its enduring ability to find and foster talent while creating commercial opportunity for new and underrepresented artists to change the industry itself. Again, this is not a problem, but an opportunity. Coming out of a brutal year for film production, with months long production shutdowns due to strikes impacting the creation and completion of new work, the 2024 festival brings with it a tremendous chance to fill that void and expand the commercial impact of its films. As the corporate theatrical and streaming industries continue to seek success by focusing on large scale, broadly accessible films that can provide a solid return on investment on the cost of global marketing and distribution campaigns, Sundance leans on its values to retain its ability to launch films and careers.
This is the independent spirit the festival is always articulating— it is seeking cultural transformation as an agent of structural change. Our legacy film and media industries harbor a completely different set of values, motivated by an almost singular interest in commercial success. To attend Sundance each year is to feel this tension explicitly, and yet most media coverage, including film reviews, pretend to ignore it as they seek to approach each film on its own terms. But there is an unspoken internalization of values that comes to the fore whenever someone talks about Sundance and its films, one I think is important to acknowledge.
So, it is only from here that I can honestly talk about the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. What does this all mean for the films I was able to see? More on that next time.
I do not mean that as a pejorative— the festival’s influence, brand, and impact dwarfs all other American festivals.
…or refused to…
Not enough, IMO.