A year later, 7 festival filmmakers reflect on 'the real-world payoff of Sundance'
LOS ANGELES — The Sundance Film Festival recently wrapped its 40th edition, a milestone for the event that has come to define American independent filmmaking. While this year's event featured works by rising filmmakers including Jane Schoenbrun, Rose Glass, Sean Wang and Alessandra Lacorazza Samudio, there were also new films from Steven Soderbergh and Richard Linklater, established directors still closely associated with the early years of the festival. The legacy of Sundance is very much ongoing, extending far beyond the snowy mountains of Utah.
Starting at Sundance 2023, The Times has followed a group of filmmakers throughout the year to get a sense of the highs and lows of the job at this particular moment in Hollywood and cinema history. They reflected a wide range of experiences, from entering the festival with distribution already in place to waiting, still, to announce how their films will be more broadly seen by audiences.
writer-director Nida Manzoor recalled the nods of respect and approval from the crew when she subsequently wore her official Sundance hoodie on the set of practically nonstop through the year. Erica Tremblay saw , the star of her movie "Fancy Dance," go on to be nominated for an Oscar for her role in Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" — even as it took more than a year for Apple Original Films to be announced as distributor for Tremblay's movie.
