What Is The Sundance Film Festival And Why Does It Matter So Much

On an annual basis, Utah sees a preponderant count of migrants enter it. Filmmakers, actors, producers, directors, and celebrity enthusiast, during this season, all assemble at Park City; only to commemorate their passion and enthusiasm for entertainment. The Sundance Film festival- in its traditional observance of film festival norms-compromises of screenings, panels, talks, events, parties.

What Is The Sundance Film Festival?

The 10 day movie marathon has a lot of distinctive independence. It is a lot of things. But most importantly, it is gateway that opens Hollywood to a fresh, yearly dawn. The Sundance Film Festival is equally crucial for all participants. For the films that premiere ahead of schedule, the festival is a fortune-predicting ticket. For talent hunters, it is a huge market with quality supplies. While for the fortune seekers, it is the most expedient networking environment.

The Sundance Film Festival carries both the worlds of Hollywood independently and be-straddles them in a qualitative manner. The primary function of the festival is to allow early bets on the year’s major game-changers. In this early analysis phase, not only the potential nominees of the next Oscars emerge, but also a general idea of the socio-political situations being targeted is communicated.

Sundance: A Heaven For Indie Movies

Sundance is the chief bazaar for independent films. Streamers and distributors amass at the festival to acquire creative masterpieces and render them an audience. Although in recent years streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have restricted content to original airing, studio arms like Fox Searchlight have largely found their theatrical stock at Sundance. The buzziest films sell well at Sundance. And some even go on to become blockbusters when they translate monetarily well at the box office.

How Sundance Turned Independent Films Into Major Blockbusters

The Sundance Institute has been for long a major tent-pole for American Indie movies. Beginning in 1978 and retaining its inaugural chair Robert Redford, the festival has given the nation countless quality movies.  From Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989) to  Wes Anderson’s 13-minute short Bottle Rocket(1993) to Sophia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides (2000), the festival has largely set records. Projects that find studio homes at Sundance are very likely to land Oscar nods. (think Call Me By Your Name). In 2015, the Sundance paved way for Brooklyn to become a Oscars Best Picture Candidate.

Diversity At Sundance

Sundance has also worked in recent years to promote the work of women in the film industry with its Women at Sundance initiative. More than half of the 16 films in the US Dramatic competition in 2019 were helmed by women, compared to 31 percent in the same competition last year. Moreover, of the 112 features selected for the 2019 festival, 40 percent are directed or co-directed by a woman. That outpaces the broader industry substantially; in 2018, of the 112 directors behind the year’s 100 top-grossing films in the US, only four were women.