The Latinx House partnered up with the Sundance Institute’s Women at Sundance program, Netflix and Shondaland created the year-long program with the purpose is to support selected directors’ professional development and establish a pipeline to support independent filmmakers as they level up in their careers and learn more about directing on a series, according to a press statement from Netflix. 

Three Latina and non-binary Latinx directors will be chosen this year and announced in early summer.

The program includes the opportunity to shadow an episode of a series, a grant to support the artist for the duration of a six-week period while shadowing, a two-day orientation with masterclasses and support from The Latinx House.

Shondaland, the production company founded by multiple-Emmy nominee Shonda Rhimes and which is behind the current series Bridgerton and Inventing Anna, will be providing shadowing opportunities as part of the program on some of their productions. The company’s IMDb page shows a dozen projects in development and on TV mini-series in production.

“It’s essential that the industry dedicates the resources needed to develop a strong pipeline of Latina and non-binary Latinx directors,” says Olga Segura, producer and co-founder of The Latinx House. Her production credits include the films Waiting for the Barbarians, starring Johnny Depp, Robert Pattinson and Mark Rylance. “We are so excited to be working with Women at Sundance, Netflix, and Shondaland, allies who can help us build opportunities for talented creators,” says Segura. She added that it is critical for her organization to work with like-minded partners in Hollywood to accelerate change in the industry. “We hope that this fellowship is just the beginning and will inspire even more studios and companies to open doors for Latinx directors,” she stated.

A project of the national nonprofit Justice for Migrant Women, The Latinx House dubbed itself as a “gathering place for people who appreciate and support the Latinx community and who celebrate Latinx excellence in film and entertainment.” In addition to Segura, the group’s co-founders include social entrepreneur Mónica Ramírez and filmmaker Alexandra Martinez Kondracke, whose TV credits include the series Hung and The L Word.

For Adella Ladjevardi, associate director of Women at Sundance, partnering up is key for inclusion. “Women at Sundance continues to support filmmakers from underrepresented communities and recognizes the impact that can be made by working together with our partners to build a more inclusive community of creators,” she says. “Providing a shadowing opportunity is one of many ways we hope to increase access and exposure for Latina and non-binary Latinx directors.” The Sundance Institute produces the annual Sundance Film Festival.

A recent 2021 study from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that of the 1,300 top-grossing films released between 2007 and 2019, there were only 12 individual Latino directors represented. It also reported that only 3 out of the 1,447 directors were women of Hispanic/Latina origin. Additionally, the survey found that only 5 percent of characters in feature films were Latino, with roles often perpetuating damaging stereotypes. There are more than 62 million Latinos in the United States. Accounting for 18 percent of the population, Latinos are the largest minority in the U.S.

“We know that great representation on-screen begins with who’s behind the camera,” says Bela Bajaria, head of Global TV at Netflix. 

Tom Verica, Shondaland’s head of creative production, says his company “is committed to finding ways to ensure equal representation both in front of and behind the camera.” 

Applicants for the Adelante Directors Fellowship will be recruited by The Latinx House and Sundance Institute.

For more information about the program, people can write to info@thelatinxhouse.org. 

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By Julio Martinez

Writer/actress/creator Elaine Del Valle is riding the crest of a fast-surging wave. She recently attached Andrea Navedo (Jane The Virgin) and Arika Lisanne Mittman as her star and showrunner, respectively, and then sold her pilot The System to CBS. 

Del Valle has been in the entertainment business for some time. She started off as an actress, then realized that if she was going to see non-stereotypical Latina roles, she was going to have to write them herself. “I had been an actress for about a decade when I wrote my show as a result of feeling misunderstood and unseen by casting directors, because they couldn’t understand that somebody who looked like me could have my background, and so I wrote Brownsville, Bred.”

Brownsville Bred (2011), is her autobiographical, one-woman stage play, developed while studying with noted New York acting coach, Wynn Handman. It depicted her true Nuyorican (New York/Puerto Rican) coming-of-age years in Brownsville Brooklyn, New York, which quickly garnered acclaim. She subsequently adapted her stage play into a novel, Brownsville Bred: Dreaming Out Loud, which was named, “Most Inspirational Young Adult” book by the International Latino Book Awards.

In 2013, with a desire to make her work more accessible, Del Valle began to write for the screen. She co-wrote, produced, and directed a comedy web series, Reasons Why I’m Single (Amazon Prime). Elaine has since, as the owner and operator of Del Valle Productions & Casting, cast over 50 short films, and produced her own short films. In 2015 Elaine became the first person to license an interstitial series, her co-production of Gran’pa Knows Best, to the HBO Latino Network.

With other notable achievements along the way, Del Valle’s biggest accomplishment to date is the development deal with CBS Television for her pilot titled The System, which she will also co-executive produce. She is excited but keeping it all in perspective. “It’s not my first time at this rodeo,” she affirms. “The process came by way of relationships developed throughout the years and establishing mutual respect. It takes continuous work, continuous growth, and that’s how it happened for me.”

Del Valle describes the arduous work involved from first putting words on paper to getting the deal with CBS. Beginning in 2018 when she was selected as one of nine directors to participate in the Sundance Short Narrative Film Lab after the film she directed, 3.769 was shown at Sundance. “I started taking their classes, including a course on feature film writing.”

Then she found the class on television episodic writing and she decided to look into that because at that time Del Valle was determined to turn her Brownsville Bred into a series. “But the minute I started learning what a network series really needed in order to have infinite longevity, I realized that perhaps Brownsville Bred was not the best story I could tell. And so I turned my time at the Sundance episodic lab into developing The System.”

Del Valle’s idea for the series evolved, eventually focusing on a competent yet jaded female social worker, navigating the same broken New York City system she had grown up in, while dealing with family issues of her own. The character advocates to resolve issues for every family she encounters while struggling to fix her own. When Del Valle finally felt she was ready to pitch the series, she turned to a longtime friend.

“I reached out to my dear friend Andrea Navedo whom everyone knows from Jane the Virgin. She had played Jane’s mom for five seasons. We have been friends for many years, auditioned together all the time. I brought the project to her and told her, ‘I really think that you’re right for it’.”

A year later, about the time Jane the Virgin was ending Navedo reached out to ask about the project. She had called right at the moment when Del Valle was going to sign an option deal for The System with another production company. She had been procrastinating because she really wasn’t happy with the terms of the agreement.

So when Navedo called, “I made some tweaks and sent it over to her,” Del Valle recalled. “The next day, Andrea told me that she read it, her team read it, her entire management team read it. They loved it. And they were on board with her being a producer on it.  And so with that, we just decided to proceed to the next steps.”

As it turned out, everyone was in agreement that the very next step was to get the project in front of Jennie Snyder Urman, Jane the Virgin’s creator and showrunner. Andrea texted Urman, “Hey, can we have a conversation? I have this project” Urman loved it and immediately showed it to CBS Studios where she has a first-look deal.

“They loved it,” exclaimed Del Valle. “And then the next thing I knew, I found myself in an If-Come deal with CBS.”  This kind of deal simply means the series creator has an agreement but is not formally signed with the studio. Basically, nobody gets paid until the project is sold. If there is no sale, the rights revert back to Del Valle, the writer.

Del Valle, Navedo and Urman moved forward as if mounting a military campaign. Del Valle recalled, “Jennie Urman told us we needed a showrunner and within an hour said, ‘I know the right showrunner for you, Arika Lisanne Mittman (Executive Producer of Paradise Lost and Timeless). The four of us first met on Zoom.” The next step was to pitch to CBS. Urman and Mittman shared some of their pitches with Del Valle, “I know writers don’t usually share their pitch ideas, but Jennie and Arika were so generous,” Del Valle recounted gratefully.

It took about a month for Del Valle to fine-tune her pitch, each time going back and forth with Urman and Mittman sending her feedback while also getting notes from the network executives. Del Valle described the process. “I had been refining and practicing that pitch for a month before I did it,” she recalled. “The whole pitch took place on a Zoom call that included the network executives and producers who spoke about their involvement and how they came to the project, then the showrunner spoke, and then it was my turn.” She had three minutes to talk about herself and 20 minutes to pitch the show.

“As soon as I was done, they asked some questions, I answered; the team answered questions, and then the network just said, ‘We want it.’ The whole thing took maybe 30 to 35 minutes.” Afterward, Urman called Del Valle to let her know just how well she had done, words that will stay with her forever. “You did something called ‘you sold it in the room’ and that doesn’t happen often,” Urman said. “You have a lot to be proud of.” Indeed she did.

Del Valle is currently waiting for the CBS corporate decision for the exact date to begin filming the pilot for The System. “So right now, that’s where I’m at,” she declares. “The CBS Network people gave me notes. I made the changes. I’ve been told that the head of CBS, Tom Sherman, loves the pilot and that we should celebrate that right now,” said Del Valle, but then continued cautiously. “But no, this is a very odd time because some pilots from last year have yet to be made.”

In the meantime, Del Valle is busy bringing her original one-woman book, Brownsville Bred to the screen, with the support of Warner Media 150 and The Sundance Institute. This is her first time directing a feature, “I start filming this summer in June, starring 10-year-old Latinx star Isabella Velasquez…and of course, I am looking forward to getting my pilot start date from CBS Studios.”

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Up-and-coming filmmakers Jessica Mendez Siqueiros and Brian Robau have done a little bit of short writing in addition to other tasks like producing, acting, and directing. They are now scripting their first feature film with the help of some seasoned wordsmiths.

Mendez Siqueiros and Robau are among the Sundance Institute’s ninth annual Screenwriters Intensive program, which is supported by the Will & Jada Smith Family Foundation. The program aims to help emerging independent writers and writers/directors develop their first fiction features. The two-day writers’ training takes place online this week.

Mendez Siqueiros is developing the screenplay for Reforma about a young Mexican American girl in 1967 Tucson who tries to solve the problems of her newly-integrated community through dance. A Chicana writer/director of mixed indigenous Sonoran and European ancestry, she says her goal is to “normalize complex and authentic narratives about the Southwest Mexican-American community through film.”

Mendez Siqueiros has written screenplays for three shorts. Her first one was for Before a Mirror in 2016, followed by And Still, We Love two years later. Her most recent is Pozole, a 2019 dark comedy about a mixed-race Latina woman who sets out to reconnect with her traditional Mexican roots on her nana’s 100th birthday, in which things go terribly wrong. She also directs it. Pozole went on to win awards at the Charlotte Film Festival, Cinequest San Jose Film Festival, and Lake County Film Festival. The film is reportedly the first narrative short executive-produced by the data-transfer company WeTransfer. 

For Robau, the other Screenwriters Intensive fellow, stories about his Cuban-American community are important. He is developing the screenplay for 91 Miles, a drama about a Cuban father and his teen daughter who try to mend their relationship while making a perilous journey from their island country to Miami. Co-writing the feature script is Daniel Klein, who also participates in the Screenwriters Intensive. Robau and Klein worked together in two shorts, It’s Just a Gun and Esta Es Tu Cuba.

Robau is a two-time Student Academy Award-winning director. He won the Silver Medal with It’s Just a Gun in 2016, followed by a Bronze Medal for Esta Es Tu Cuba in 2018. The latter film is inspired by his father and other Cuban refugee children that were part of Operación Pedro Pan that brought thousands of unaccompanied undocumented minors to the U.S. in the early 1960s. Esta Es Tu Cuba won a Student DGA award, a College Television Award, and a student BAFTA nomination. The film is currently available on HBO Max.

Robau received a master’s in fine arts in directing from Chapman University’s Dodge College of Media Arts. Born and raised in Miami, he currently resides in Los Angeles.

“This cohort of artists from traditionally underrepresented communities will have the opportunity to interrogate their stories and refine their artistic practice,” says Ilyse McKimmie, deputy director of the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program.

The group of advisors for the 2021 Screenwriters Intensive include Andrew Ahn, Susanna Fogel, Tanya Hamilton, Sarah Koskoff, Michael Starrbury, Wesley Strick, Yen Tan, Joan Tewkesbury, Rose Troche, Ligiah Villalobos, and Kevin Willmott.

Featured Top Photo: Filmmakers Jessica Mendez Siqueiros and Brian Robau by Tammie Rosen/Courtesy of the Sundance Institute.

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Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It, the documentary that looks at the career of the legendary actress and singer from her humble beginnings in her Native Puerto Rico to her success on Broadway and in Hollywood, will have its world debut at the Sundance Film Festival this month. 

Directed by Mariem Pérez Riera (Lovesickness, Chamacas), the doc follows Moreno’s prolific, decades-long career of the 89-year-old actress and singer, using different styles, elements, and media. It utilizes vérité footage of Moreno today, archival footage of her performances and appearances, childhood reenactments, animation, and new interviews. It also features interviews with actors, filmmakers, and singers with whom Moreno has worked, like Morgan Freeman, Hector Elizondo, Eva Longoria, Whoopi Goldberg, Justina Machado, Gloria Estefan, and Karen Olivo. 

“As a filmmaker, woman, and Puerto Rican, I am proud to have the opportunity to tell Rita’s story,” says Pérez Riera. “Her many victories in the face of prejudice are an inspiration to me.” Adds the director, “Hopefully, this film will give strength to the women all over the world, who today face a similar fight towards equality.”

PBS CONNECTION
The documentary is a production of American Masters Pictures and Norman Lear’s Act III Productions in association with Artemis Rising Foundation and Maramara Films. American Masters Pictures is a theatrical imprint for documentaries co-produced by PBS’s American Masters. 

Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It will screen virtually at Sundance as part of the U.S. Documentary Competition on January 29 at noon and will have a second screening on January 31. Also as part of the fest, it will screen at the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico and in U.S. cities like Atlanta, Key West, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Tucson.

“When I learned from my producing partner Brent Miller that a film had not yet been made on Rita Moreno, I couldn’t believe it and suggested we make it together,” says executive producer Norman Lear. “There’s no woman more deserving of the American Masters stamp. Her talent, her activism, her life – all worthy of an audience. And her story, an inspiration to so many, is one that should live on forever.” Both Miller, Pérez Riera and Ilia J. Vélez Dávila are producers on the documentary.

MAKING HISTORY

Born in the small town of Humacao, Puerto Rico in 1931, Moreno was the first Latina actress to win an Academy Award. She earned it for her role as Anita in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical West Side Story in 1962. Despite such an accomplishment, Moreno kept on getting mainly stereotypical ethnic roles. 

Through persistence and hard work, Moreno remained relevant and went on to win other coveted prizes of the entertainment industry, including top awards in music, theatre, and television. She earned the Grammy for best recording for children with “The Electric Company” for the children’s TV show of the same title; a Tony for her performance in the play The Ritz; and two Primetime Emmy Awards for her acting in The Muppet Show and The Rockford Files—all awards in 16 years. As such, Moreno is one of only 16 EGOT artists, those who have won the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony. She is the only actor of Latino descent in that distinguished group. Furthermore, she has won a Golden Globe and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

‘LA REINA’
For Lin-Manuel Miranda, another doc executive producer, Moreno is an icon and inspiration. “Rita is La Reina. Punto. Full stop,” says the Oscar nominee and Tony Award winner of Hamilton-fame. “Her life, talent, and career is a masterclass in the American dream. It is about time that she takes her rightful place amongst her peers on American Masters.”

In recognition of her long illustrious career, Moreno has received the Library of Congress Living Legends Award, Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award, and Kennedy Center Honors Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award. And Two U.S. presidents have bestowed upon her some of the nation’s highest civilian and artistic honors—President George W. Bush presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and President Barack Obama with the National Medal of the Arts.

More recently Moreno received the Online Film Critics Society Lifetime Achievement Award and the Peabody Career Achievement Award, both in 2019. Last year, she was co-marshall of the Rose Parade—along with actress Gina Torres and Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez.

STILL WORKING IN HER 8Os
The passage of time has never slowed down this actress and dancer whose first film work included a part in Singin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly’s 1952 classic musical. Moreno’s movie and TV credits, according to trade website IMDB, lists over 160 roles, including the series Jane the Virgin, Bless This Mess, and One Day at a Time. 

And she returns to the big screen in Steven Spielberg’s new cinematic version of West Side Story, the 1957 theatre musical whose first Hollywood adaptation won Moreno her Academy Award six decades ago.

“Rita Moreno has won every major award–the Peabody, Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony–for good reason,” says Michael Kantor, another executive producer of the documentary, “She is not just an American Master, she is an American treasure.”

For festival tickets to the screenings of  Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go For It visit https://tickets.festival.sundance.org/ 
For in-person screening tickets visit https://fpg.festival.sundance.org/live-events.

Featured Photo credit: Austin Hargrave

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Latin Heat News Services

The documentary Once Upon a Time in Venezuela, that country’s official 2021 Oscar submission, will start streaming in the US and Canada Dec. 31.

The film is being released in North American by Topic, the streaming service from First Look Media. 

The documentary centers on the decline of a little town on stilts called Congo Mirador, located near Latin America’s biggest oil field that extracts from what reportedly are the world’s largest crude reserves at Lake Maracaibo in northeastern Venezuela. That nation enjoyed the riches brought by oil through the 1990s. But socialism arrived in 1997, bringing the nationalization of the oil and banking industries and a contentious relationship with the United States. 

OIL PROBLEMS & MIGRATION
With extreme falling prices of oil in recent decades, Venezuela has been broke and facing a humanitarian crisis that has seen more than 4 million countrymen leave the nation. With millions more expected to flee Venezuela, experts warn of what could be the world’s biggest refugee crisis in modern times—bigger than the one caused by the war in Syria.

Film director Anabel Rodriguez arrived in the middle of Venezuela’s crisis during the first half of the 2010s. She started documenting the decay of what used to be a thriving fishing community. The director focused her camera on two women leaders who come from opposing political camps and offer competing visions for the floating village—and their whole motherland.

This is Rodriguez’s third doc, preceded by the documentary short The Barrel in 2012 and 2018 TV movie doc Los Venezolanos, Retadores de lo Imposible. Based in Vienna, Rodriguez has a master’s degree in filmmaking from the London Film School.

WINNING AWARDS & MAKING FILM HISTORY
Once Upon a Time in Venezuela has won awards at the Cine Latino Minneapolis Saint Paul, Festival de Cine Venezolano, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and International Film Festival Watch Docs. The film competed at the Sundance Film Festival in early 2020, becoming the first Venezuelan doc at the Park City, Utah fest.

In addition to Topic.com, Once Upon a Time in Venezuela will also be available on Apple iOS, Apple TV, Android, Amazon Fire TV, Roku, and Amazon Prime Video.

All Photos: First Look Media

Check out this trailer of this award-winning documentary:

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Movies about a pair of estranged twin sisters, an ailing horse jockey, a traumatized monarch butterfly scientist, and a deaf family are among those with Latino actors in prominent roles in the lineup of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. The program also includes films from Mexico, Spain, Argentina, and Brazil, and a documentary about actress Rita Moreno.

Unsurprisingly, as most fests since the beginning of the pandemic earlier this year, Sundance will go virtual but also offer in-person screenings in about 30 cities across the United States “public health permitting,” organizers have announced. The 2021 edition offers a slimmed-down film selection program with over 70 features and 50 shorts compared to the 2020 festival. (The previous fest presented 118 features and 74 shorts in 2020. That means about a third fewer films this year. Episodic series were cut from eight to four.)

Standing out in this year’s festival lineup are several films by and about Latinos and featuring Latino talent.

EUGENIO DERBEZ IN CODA
Opening the festival will be CODA, a drama about a teenager who is the only hearing member of a deaf family, loves music, and is torn between family and college dreams away from home. CODA, which stands for child of deaf adults, is directed by Siân Heder, who was determined to feature real deaf actors in her film. The drama stars Emilia Jones as 17-year-old Ruby, Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur as her parents, and Daniel Durant as her brother. Mexican actor Eugenio Derbez (Instructions Not Included, Dora and the Lost City of Gold) plays Emilia’s encouraging choirmaster Bernardo Villalobos.

Jockey stars Mexican-American actor Clifton Collins (Capote, Star Trek) playing a seasoned horse jockey facing deteriorating health and the surprising arrival of a young jockey who claims to be his son. This latter role is played by Colombian-American actor Moises Arias (Hannah Montana, Ender’s Game).

Cuban-American sister actresses Alessandra and Anu Messa play identical twins in Superior, meeting again after many years of leading opposite lives. Directed by Erin Vassilopoulos, the feature is a continuation of a Sundance 2015 short with the same title, by the same filmmaker that also featured the Messa sisters.

BUTTERFLIES & PERSONAL TRAUMA
The Mexico-USA co-production Hijo de Monarcas (Son of Monarchs), tells the story of a New York-based lepidopterist who, upon his grandmother’s death, returns to his natal Mexican town nestled in the monarch butterfly forests of the state of Michoacan. Directed by French-Venezuelan filmmaker and biologist Alexis Gambis (The Color of Time), the drama stars Tenoch Huerta Mejía (Narcos: Mexico, Tigers Are Not Afraid). The film won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize for portraying scientists in major roles.

In addition to Son of Monarchs, Mexico has another two films at Sundance. Users a documentary about a mother who feels she is competing with computers, electronic cribs, and other technologies in raising her son. The US-Mexico co-production is directed by  Natalia Almada (El Velador, Todo lo Demás). Also the short El Sueño Más Largo Que Recuerdo (The Longest Dream I Remember) which centers on a woman who leaves her hometown to search for her disappeared father. The drama is directed by Carlos Lenin.

Puerto-Rican actress Rita Moreno, who just turned 89 years old, is the subject of the documentary Rita Moreno: The Girl Who Decided to Go For It by director Mariem Perez Riera. The film explores Moreno’s life from her childhood in the Island of Enchantment to her life in New York and covers her accomplishments as an EGOT artist—one of a few who have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards.

YOUTHS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT
Another documentary, At The Ready, follows a group of high school students in El Paso who aspire to work in law enforcement and immigration. The Mexican-American youths join a criminal justice club and discover the complexities of careers, personal values, family, and community. The film is directed by Maisie Crow.

FROM ARGENTINA, SPAIN & COLOMBIA
There are also several films from other Latin American and Spanish-speaking countries.

Argentina’s El Perro Que No Calla (The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be Quiet) tells the story of a man who faces neighbors complaining about his dog’s barking and employers forbidding pets at work. Shot in black-and-white, the feature is directed by Ana Katz, who competed at Sundance back in 2016 with Mi Amiga del Parque (My Friend From the Park), winning the screenwriting award in world cinema dramatic competition.

Representing Spain is El Planeta (The Planet), a comedy about a broke mother-daughter duo that tries to live the good life on credit, lies, and ingenious shopping that involves makeup sampling at the mall and buying returnable items. It is directed by Amalia Ulman.

In the shorts category, Colombia competes with the futuristic Yoruga in which a lonely old man pays a visit to Yoruga, one of the last animals on Earth; while Brazil’s Unliveable tells the story of a mother who searches for her missing daughter Roberta, a trans woman. 

MIXING LIVE ACTION & ANIMATION
There is a Latin American episodic series that stands out at Sundance 2021. Argentina’s 4 Feet High is a mix of live-action and animation that tells the story of Juana, a spunky 17-year-old in a wheelchair who explores her sexuality but is ashamed of her body. The six-episode series deals with school life, friendship, fear, failure, and politics. Rosario Perazolo, who is wheelchair-bound, and María Belén Poncio co-wrote and co-directed 4 Feet High.

Other Sundance films featuring Latino talent include the racial drama Passing, starring Tessa Thompson (Creed, Man in Black: International) and the rom-com Together Together, starring Julio Torres (Los Espookys) who has written for Saturday Night Live in recent years.

In addition to the virtual screenings, Sundance will also show films in many venues scattered throughout the country, from arthouse cinemas and drive-ins to pop-up movie theaters. These include the parking lot of the Rosebowl Stadium in Pasadena, California, a museum in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and one movie theatre in Park City, Utah—the ski resort that has been the festival’s home since 1981. The online film screening program is available on the festival website, but physical movie screenings details are yet to be posted. 

Other cities with in-person screenings include Austin, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Honolulu, Key West, New Orleans, and Tucson. 

Considered the preeminent independent film fest of the U.S., and one of the most important in the world, the Sundance Film Festival is organized by the nonprofit Sundance Institute. 

Festival organizers acknowledge the challenges facing the fest during the current pandemic.

“Togetherness has been an animating principle here at the Sundance Institute as we’ve worked to reimagine the Festival for 2021, because there is no Sundance without our community,” says actor and filmmaker Robert Redford, who is the Sundance Institute founder and president. But as the coronavirus epidemic has limited public gatherings, Redford explains that fest organizers had to make “room for imaginative new possibilities in a new online format.” 

“Of course, the pandemic year demanded adaptation,” says Keri Putnam, Sundance Institute’s executive director. “On a deeper level, we also recognize the urgency of supporting independent storytellers at a time of great upheaval in the film and media fields.” She described the upcoming fest edition as “fiercely independent” and able to “reach people everywhere” via its new streaming platform.

For tickets, passes, and more information, visit https://festival.sundance.org. 

Top Featured Photo: Adolpho Veloso/Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Check out the video below of what Sundance has been and who have been at the fest in recent years.

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