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At the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, TV is invading the schedule in a whole new way. The Park City film fest has previously dabbled in what’s possible on the small screen, but this year marks the launch of the Indie Episodics section — which will spotlight TV pilots that mostly lack mainstream distribution.

The selections include “America to Me,” a new docu-series by “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James; as well as “The Mortified Guide,” a screen adaptation of the popular stage show “Mortified,” spotlighting the most embarrassing true stories of adolescence. There’s also “This Close,” showcasing star/creators Josh Feldman and Shoshannah Stern (both of whom are deaf), and “Franchesca,” featuring digital star and “The Nightly Show” writer/contributor Franchesca Ramsey.

This marks a major change for Sundance, and a renewed commitment to independent television. While Sundance has featured TV programming since the premiere of “Top of the Lake” in...

Caveh Zahedi: "I think honesty is the most subversive thing you can do in this world." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

An episode spoofing Spike Jonze and Viceland with Emmy Harrington as "Slut Machine" from Caveh Zahedi's spine-chilling The Show About The Show was a highlight of this year's Tribeca Film Festival N.O.W. Showcase.

Person to Person director Dustin Guy Defa (in Matías Piñeiro's Hermia & Helena), Eléonore Hendricks (Peter Brunner's To the Night with Caleb Landry Jones), Alex Karpovsky (Jess Bond's Rosy with Stacy Martin), Kentucker Audley (Celia Rowlson-Hall's Ma and Charles Poekel's Christmas, Again), Sam Stillman, editor Peter Rinaldi, Applesauce director Onur Tukel and his cinematographer Jason Banker, Amanda Field, and even IndieWire's Eric Kohn have been seduced by the creator to play themselves or others.

"I feel that way about all my films, not just this one. I think they're all a perfect expression of me.

All of my fantasies about meeting and talking to Anna Karina have been set in France, at her home, under constant worry of arrest, having just knocked on her door without an invitation. I ask her questions and she answers them all with tears in her eyes: "What was it like to act for Jean-Luc Godard, the man you loved, even when you were fighting like cats and dogs, even when he broke your heart? And how, in God's good name, did you manage to create performances that never age, that show no sign of origin, no influence, that absolutely confound me in the best possible way? How did you do it?” These fantasies found nourishment in the assumption that the icon of the French New Wave was fairly reclusive, not wanting to be bothered, certainly not wanting to talk anymore about those films, that time, that man. So imagine...