Quenamá and Piaguaje are two of the few female students still involved in film-making at the Alianza Ceibo project; since they started studying two years ago most women have left to get married or became pregnant, they say. Their diet includes homegrown foods such as peanuts, cassava and plantain, and avoids ultra-processed products. Curacas, lower-level administrators, are elected by the community every year, and Kichwa, their mother tongue, is widely spoken; Spanish is only used to communicate with outsiders. Despite their diversity – 29 films from nine countries and 27 communities – the featured films tackle common themes, such as Indigenous rights, environmental preservation and other climate justice issues at the centre of international debate. Click the ☆ next to the films you want to see to add them to My Favorites.
- Some film festivals focus on a specific filmmaker, genre of film (e.g. horror films), or subject matter.
- This documentary short unpacks what it means to call a neighborhood home—highlighting familiarity’s importance in establishing community.
- As director of the Center for Documentary’s DocX initiative at Duke University, she launched the interdisciplinary DocX Archive Lab Fellowship for BIPOC documentary artists.
“Pictures of Ghosts,” the latest from the Brazilian writer-director Kleber Mendonça Filho (“Bacurau”), is a deeply personal, intricately constructed meditation on, well, everything, though mostly movies or rather his life in and with movies. Divided into three fluid chapters and set at the intersection of documentary and fiction, it wistfully yet playfully focuses on the apartment, the city (Recife) and the movie theaters that Mendonça Filho inhabited and that, in turn, sustained and inspired him. There’s an elegiac cast to “Pictures of Ghosts” — most of the once-bustling cinemas are now derelict as are his old stamping grounds — yet the vigor of the filmmaking is a testament to how our beloveds never truly leave us. Irene Suico Soriano has curated community-centered Filipinx and AAPI film programs in Los Angeles since 1999. She was part of the inaugural cohort of Outfest Fusion QTBIPOC FF’s 2022 Film Programming Fellows Program (In partnership with the Programmers of Colour Collective).
Prior to Sundance, Emily worked in short film acquisitions and distribution at Wholphin, a DVD magazine from McSweeney’s. She’s also worked for the San Francisco International Film Festival and Aspen ShortsFest. Emily is originally from Massachusetts, she studied Film & Literature at Kenyon College in Ohio, and now lives in the Bay Area with her family. 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.
The core tradition of film festivals is competition, or judging which films are most deserving of various forms of recognition. Some festivals, such as the famous Cannes Film Festival, may screen films that are considered close to competition-quality without being included in the competition; the films are said to be screened “out of competition”. On Jan. 25, select competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT), as well as additional selections from the feature, episodic, and shorts programs will be available online at festival.sundance.org. The short film selections and 40th edition programming for the 2024 Sundance Film Festival will be announced on December 12.
Quenamá now plans to make a fiction inspired by the last female shaman of her community and a documentary about her people’s food culture. “The audiovisual enters your heart and, little by little, you see yourself blossoming,” she says. With Indigenous ways of life systematically attacked and communities often torn apart, Montahuano believes the screening of these films in Indigenous territories can create a sense of alliance. Among this year’s more unsurprising attractions is “Maestro,” an intimate, energetic, largely politics-free and scrupulously well-behaved look at the different lives — both on and off the podium — of Leonard Bernstein ( ).
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. The Mumbai Women’s International http://businesssblog.com/ (MWIFF) is an annual film festival in Mumbai featuring films made by women directors and women technicians. The Sundance Film Festival founded by Sterling Van Wagenen (then head of Wildwood, Robert Redford’s company), John Earle, and Cirina Hampton Catania (both serving on the Utah Film Commission at the time) is a major festival for independent film. To Kim Yutani, the director of programming, the number of unsold films is a positive sign. “It’s really encouraging just to know that we can convene the industry in Park City and know that there’s a lot to be discovered and hopefully be bought and go on to meet other audiences beyond Sundance,” she said.
Several film festivals focus solely on presenting short films of a defined maximum length. Some film historians, including Jerry Beck,[2] do not consider film festivals as official releases of the film. Mehdi is a documentary filmmaker, with experience in the film industry (ARTE, Studiocanal, Doc Edge), and is a member of various documentary film festivals’ screening committees. He started Film Fest Report in 2019 to share his passion for film festivals and independent cinema. Evá Williams is a member of the Sundance Film Festival’s short film programming team. This year is her first rodeo, but she’s been an active member of screening committees for the Sundance, Hamptons, Montclair, TIDE, HollyShorts, and Brooklyn Film festivals.
The Expresión en Corto International Film Festival is the largest competitive film festival in Mexico. It specializes in emerging talent, and is held in the last week of each July in the two colonial cities of San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato. Australia’s first and longest-running film festival is the Melbourne International Film Festival (1952), followed by the Sydney Film Festival (1954).
RIFFA annual Award show and red carpet arrival event is getting noticed in the contemporary film and fashion industries in Western Canada. A few film festivals have focused on highlighting specific issue topics or subjects. Some examples include military films, health-related film festivals, and human rights film festivals.
Discovery is what the festival has always been and remains about, going back to Soderbergh’s splashy debut and even before that. Still, it doesn’t hurt that top Oscar-nominated talent including Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun (Love Me), Saoirse Ronan (The Outrun), Michael Fassbender (Kneecap), and Chiwetel Ejiofor (directing Rob Peace) are among the faces starring in this year’s program. “How do we help launch a film that a studio has taken a chance on with a first-time filmmaker, and how do we help those films get seen by larger audiences?
Jackson was drawn to these filmmakers, along with many others, because of their use of innovative cinematic storytelling to challenge accepted orthodoxies, and, as a result, revealing a little more of the human condition. Tabitha Jackson – award-winning commissioning editor, director, producer and writer – who believes passionately in the arts as a public good, is the Director of the Sundance Film Festival. Festival Favorite AwardAll feature films presented at the Festival are eligible for the Festival Favorite Award, which will be determined by audience ballots across all Festival screenings.
