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Exclusive: The Gotham Film & Media Institute has today named the fellows set for the 2023 edition of its Festival de Cannes Producers Network Program, scheduled to take place in person at Cannes from May 17-22. The list includes independent filmmakers Maria Altamirano, Liz Cardenas, Leah Chen Baker, Yoni Golijov, Emma Hannaway Nikkia Moulterie and Carlos Zozaya.

Running concurrently with the Cannes Film Festival and the Marche du Film, the program is specifically designed for experienced producers to build up their international networks and learn more about international production, financing, legal and packaging. As its sole U.S. partner organization, The Gotham annually selects U.S. fiction and nonfiction producers to participate.

“The 2023 Gotham/Cannes Producers Network Fellows are an extraordinary group of talented producers, who have demonstrated so early in their careers both the taste and acumen to bring excellent new projects to life,” said The Gotham’s Executive Director,...

Film Independent has unveiled the three filmmakers who will participate in its inaugural Imaginar Producers Residency, first announced in November.

“The Imaginar Producers Residency is an innovative and holistic program that provides Latinx producers tailored support with the goal to help achieve long-term sustainability,” Film Independent director of artist development Angela C. Lee said in a statement. “We couldn’t be more thrilled to launch this program with these three immensely talented artists.”

The program, made possible by Disney and its subsidiary Searchlight Pictures and in collaboration with the National Association of Latino Independent Producers, will provide each fellow with a $50,000 unrestricted grant, professional coaching from Renee Freedman & Co. and financial and business coaching from The Jill James, as well as support from Disney and Searchlight executives on how to make the leap from independent producing to packaging projects for studios.

“Our goal with this initiative is to build community...

Exclusive: Mario Van Peebles (Power Book III: Raising Kanan) has wrapped production in Montana on Outlaws, a new Western that he wrote, directed and stars in for Quiver. Others joining Van Peebles in major roles include Whoopi Goldberg (Till), Cedric the Entertainer (The Neighborhood), Edward James Olmos (Mayans M.C.), John Carroll Lynch (Big Sky), William Mapother (Son of Monarchs) and M. Emmet Walsh (The Immaculate Room).

Outlaws follows Chief (Van Peebles), a renegade cowboy putting together a multicultural team of new and old friends in order to ride into dangerous unsettled territory to retrieve gold from an abandoned mine. Hot on Chief’s tail is Angel (Mapother), a spurned lawman and Civil War veteran with a thirst for vengeance. So begins a cross-country journey, with Chief and his band of Outlaws crossing paths with a number of interesting historical characters along the way, including a true-to-life Stagecoach Mary played by Goldberg.

"I think she wants us to have a new home." Gravitas Ventures has released an official traler for an indie film titled They Want Me Gone, which is another very literal and unoriginal title that is describing the plot of the film. This will be available to watch next week on VOD for those curious to see what it's all about. As she struggles to escape rural poverty with her young daughter, a loving mother suspects those closest to them in the community are starting to turn on her. "This slow-burn thriller will keep you on the edge of your seat, turning its suspenseful screws as it builds to a shocking climax." The film stars Alexia Rasmussen as Monica, with Jennifer Lafleur, Stephen Plunkett, Frank Mosley, and Delaney Wilk. This is quite an unsettling trailer, with almost a supernatural or cult vibe to it. Check it out. ›››

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In its continued bid to provide compelling artist-forward stories, WarnerMedia OneFifty has picked up the live action Oscar-nominated short “Please Hold” to stream exclusively on HBO Max where it bows on March 17.

The directorial debut of Mexican-American screenwriter Kd Dávila, who co-wrote the short with Levin Menekse, “Please Hold” is a darkly comic dystopian tale set in the not-so-distant future.

It follows young Mateo Torres (played by Erick Lopez) who in a case of mistaken identity, is arrested by a police drone while on his way to work. He finds himself in a fully automated prison cell where he struggles to find a living human being to set things straight as his situation gets even more absurd and frustrating by the nanosecond.

“The idea for the film came to us after I read this article about a Latino man who got arrested and jailed by mistake because he had a common Spanish name,...

One of the most pleasant surprises in this year’s Oscar nominations was “Drive My Car,” the critical darling Japanese-language film, earning four nods including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. But almost immediately, those trying to find out where to see the three-hour drama were met with the reality that it’s only playing in select theaters.

However, just in time for the Oscars on March 27, “Drive My Car” is getting a streaming release next month on HBO Max. The service revealed Monday that “Drive My Car” will be streaming on HBO Max starting March 2, as a result of WarnerMedia OneFifty acquiring the drama for streaming.

Directed and co-written by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, “Drive My Car” is based on the short story of the same name by Haruki Murakami and follows a widowed actor/director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) as he makes a multilingual production of “Uncle Vanya” in Hiroshima...

WarnerMedia OneFifty has acquired the short films, “Namoo” and “When the Sun Sets,” to be released on HBO Max.

Both films are shortlisted to be nominated for the 2022 Academy Awards, with “Namoo” as a contender in the animated short film category and “When the Sun Sets” in the live-action short film category. The nominations will be formally announced on Feb. 8.

“WarnerMedia’s ‘artist studio where innovation happens,’ OneFifty has built a track record of identifying incredible artists whose vision we believe in, and acquiring their extraordinary, groundbreaking content. We are excited to continue working with these filmmakers for many years to come,” Axel Caballero, Vice President of Arts & Cultural Innovations and Head of WarnerMedia OneFifty, said in a statement announcing the acquisitions.

Leslie Cohen, senior vice president of film acquisitions for HBO/HBO Max, finalized the deals for both titles. Amanda Trokan, HBO Max director of content acquisitions, worked on...

Marielle Heller (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Garrett Bradley (Time), Joey Soloway (Transparent), Andrew Haigh (Lean on Pete) and Dawn Porter (The Me You Can’t See) have been named as jurors for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, taking place virtually from January 20-30.

Heller, who brought her first feature The Diary of a Teenage Girl to the festival in 2015, will preside over the U.S. Dramatic Competition with C’mon C’mon producer and former Annapurna Pictures exec Chelsea Barnard, and A Separation actor Payman Maadi.

Bradley, whose Sundance-premiering doc Time earned an Oscar nomination in 2021, will oversee the U.S. Documentary Competition with Peter Nicks, the director behind 2021 Sundance title Homeroom, and director-cinematographer Joan Churchill.

Soloway, the Transparent and I Love Dick creator who brought their first feature, Afternoon Delight, to Sundance in 2013, will serve as this year’s sole juror of the Next section, with Reservation Dogs director...

Eleven months in to 2021, and Warner Bros. movie streaming strategy on HBO Max is still going strong. Now the list of new releases for November 2021 on HBO Max is highlighted by yet another big ticket film.

King Richard, starring Will Smith, is set to arrive on HBO Max and in theaters on Nov. 19. The movie will tell the story of Richard Williams, the father and coach of tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams. Smith is already getting some early awards buzz for the role so Oscar-heads may want to check this one out.

Read more TV Peacemaker: All the DC Heroes and Villains in that HBO Max Trailer By Jim Dandeneau TV House of the Dragon: Game of Thrones Prequel Trailer Breakdown By Alec Bojalad

Aside from that, it’s a relatively light month for originals on HBO Max. The streamer is clearly attempting to step up its non-English...

November is a good month for saying goodbye on HBO Max. The streaming platform will host the final 2021 episodes of HBO late-night staples “Real Time with Bill Maher” and the Emmy Award-winning “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” the season finales of Max originals “Love Life” and “Doom Patrol,” and also provide home viewers their last opportunity to watch “Dune” on HBO Max until sometime in 2022 (“Dune” leaves HBO Max on November 21).

But beyond those conclusions, there are some huge premieres as well: Oscar contender “King Richard” arrives on November 19 with Will Smith in the lead role, the back-half of “Gossip Girl” Season 1 will make its debut at some point, and the HBO Music Box series continues with the Alanis Morrisette documentary “Jagged” (which the singer roundly criticized) and a new feature on Dmx. All of that content, plus a number of library classics, including but not limited to “Moonstruck,...

Rebecca Hall’s deft directorial debut “Passing,” which competed for Sundance’s Grand Jury Prize and was acquired by Netflix, and Julia Ducournau’s sophomore feature “Titane,” winner of Cannes’ Palme d’Or and France’s entry in the International Feature Film Oscar race, have been selected to compete in a section devoted to up-and-coming directors at the 29th edition of EnergaCamerimage, a film festival that focuses on the art of cinematography.

The films play in the Directors’ Debuts Competition, which is open to the outstanding first or second feature films of rising directors. Ducournau’s first feature was 2016 “Raw,” which played in Cannes’ Critics Week. Also competing is Sebastian Meise’s second feature “Great Freedom,” which won the Jury Prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section, and is Austria’s candidate in the Oscar race. Meise’s first feature was 2011’s “Still Life.”

The festival also revealed Thursday the...

“Son of Monarchs” has a lot on its mind. When Mendel (Tenoch Huerta), a biology grad student living in New York City, returns to his home town in Mexico to pay his respects to his late grandmother, old wounds he’d kept at bay resurface. Yet Mendel’s story becomes but a way for writer-director Alexis Gambis to map out an urgent plea about the effects of climate change, among many other timely concerns. As if wanting to give us a key to decipher his often clipped and dreamlike sensibility, Gambis offers us plenty of didactic moments throughout. Like when an artist explains she believes “we live in a time where social and environmental issues can’t really be treated separately anymore.” The line may well be a thesis statement for the film, capturing its intriguing concepts as well as it’s all too blunt rhetoric.

Brimming with ambitious ideas...

Butterflies Are Free: Gambis Mines Identity Through Metaphor/mosis in Sophomore Film

Director Alexis Gambis returns to his favored motif of genetics in his latest film Son of Monarchs, dissecting how inherent biological mechanisms override the trauma potential in the nurture side of an age-old debate. If Calvin Bridges was the underlying inspiration of his 2014 debut, the period piece The Fly Room, then it’s Gregor Mendel whose spirit is personified by the main protagonist of his latest, exploring hybrid cultural identities through the metaphorical lens of the orange-winged royal butterfly of the title. It is a theme which Gambis has touched upon in short works as well, from his contribution to the portmanteau Mosaic (2017) through a quartet of 2018 shorts which explored themes expanded upon here.…...

Winner of the Alfred P. Sloan prize at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Alexis Gambis’ Son of Monarchs follows a New York-based Mexican biologist who returns to his hometown in the majestic monarch butterfly forests of Michoacán. After his grandmother’s recent death, the journey forces him to confront past traumas and reflect on his hybrid identity, sparking a personal and spiritual metamorphosis. Ahead of a theatrical release beginning on October 15 and an HBO Max bow on November 2, we’re pleased to present the exclusive trailer.

As Diego Andaluz said in his Sundance review, “Alexis Gambis’ fifth feature Son of Monarchs tells the story of Mendel (Tenoch Huerta), a Mexican biologist residing in New York who returns to his native country after his grandmother’s death. A lyrical portrait of a fractured identity torn between family and personal success, the film debuted in the Next section of Sundance and...

HBO Max Pa’lante!, the social-first audience initiative aimed at driving culturally-relevant programming on HBO Max is launching the Pa’lante! Promise. Through a creative partnership with OneFifty — WarnerMedia’s artistic studio — the goal is to support Latino creatives whose work has a strong cultural aesthetic and features Latinos in front of and behind the scenes. The initiative includes a slate of original projects and a roster of OneFifty-acquired Latin films that will premiere on HBO Max.

“Visibility and opportunity is everything,” said Jessica Vargas, Director of Multicultural Marketing, HBO Max and HBO. “The Pa’lante! Promise and WarnerMedia OneFifty is a great example of a network creating a platform where Latin creatives and their work are supported and elevated, through promotional campaigns that resonate with our audience in an authentic way.”

“We are thrilled and excited to be collaborating with HBO Max Pa’lante! on this exciting and powerful slate of projects.

The Woodstock Film Festival has announced the slate for its 22nd edition, with 11 world premieres among the 43 features on the bill.

The festival will take place September 29 to October 3 in three Hudson Valley communities about two hours north of New York City. In-person screenings and events will be featured throughout the fest’s five days, but online options will also enable attendees to connect amid the ongoing challenges of Covid-19.

Panels, concerts and comedy sets along with film screenings are planned in Woodstock, Kingston and Saugerties. Neon chief Tom Quinn is slated to receive the festival’s Honorary Trailblazer Award, an honor announced in 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic.

The festival will kick off with Fanny: The Right to Rock, a documentary about a pathbreaking Filipina-American garage band, with a performance by some of the band’s members following the screening. Music is an annual touchstone for Woodstock’s lineup,...

Sundance director Alexis Gambis has signed with M88.

The French-Venezuelan filmmaker and biologist saw his second feature, Son of Monarchs, debut at Sundance 2021 and earn the Sloan Feature Film Prize. The drama, which stars Tenoch Huerta, follows a Mexican biologist who studies butterflies in a New York City lab return home to the Monarch forests of Michoacán.

Son of Monarchs was acquired by WarnerMedia 150 creative hub and is set to stream on HBO Max this fall. Gambis’ first feature film, The Fly Room, based on the true story of the birth of modern genetics, was produced with support from the Spike ...

Sundance director Alexis Gambis has signed with M88.

The French-Venezuelan filmmaker and biologist saw his second feature, Son of Monarchs, debut at Sundance 2021 and earn the Sloan Feature Film Prize. The drama, which stars Tenoch Huerta, follows a Mexican biologist who studies butterflies in a New York City lab return home to the Monarch forests of Michoacán.

Son of Monarchs was acquired by WarnerMedia 150 creative hub and is set to stream on HBO Max this fall. Gambis’ first feature film, The Fly Room, based on the true story of the birth of modern genetics, was produced with support from the Spike ...

There aren’t many moments of levity in Everardo Gout’s “The Forever Purge,” but you’ll probably have a hearty chuckle when — at the end of this dystopian thriller about America devouring itself over political, economic and racial divides — the credits claim that “Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”

Yeah, right.

The “Purge” franchise imagines a very near future in which rage is openly stoked by American politicians, the populace is heavily armed, and just enough people think that violence is the solution to their problems that it threatens the safety of the entire populace. The idea, as laid out by political party The New Founding Fathers, is to accept America’s violent nature and give citizens carte blanche to let off steam one night a year.

The reality of “Purge Night,” as revealed over the course of the franchise, is that it’s...

WarnerMedia OneFifty, WarnerMedia’s content innovation hub, has snagged the U.S. rights to the winner of the Sundance Film Festival Alfred P. Sloan prize, “Son of Monarchs,” for HBO Max where it will start streaming this fall.

The semi-autobiographical film by biologist-filmmaker Alexis Gambis stars Tenoch Huerta (“Narcos: Mexico”), who is playing a villain in the upcoming “Black Panther” sequel. Here he plays Mendel, a Mexican biologist working at a lab in New York who is called back home for his grandmother’s funeral in his hometown of Angangue, a butterfly forest town set near the stunning Monarch butterfly reserves of Michoacan, Mexico. Once back home, he embarks on a personal journey where he faces the traumas of his past and his own mixed identity.

“This film exemplifies what WarnerMedia OneFifty is all about: It is a powerful, unique, and bold vision from a talented creative team and an innovative filmmaker that perfectly juxtaposes,...

Who knew peeling open a chrysalis under a microscope could be so mesmerizing? Apparently, Alexis Gambis did. The filmmaker opens “Son of Monarchs” (“Hijo de Monarcas”) with that unique image — a pointy tweezer piercing through the layers of an inert butterfly cocoon. The effect is a compelling mixture of beautiful and disturbing aspects that Gambis revisits throughout the film, as well as collages of pixelated close-ups of opaque wings, and the circular cells speckling a slide. These geometric images blend fluidly with more pastoral scenes — a young boy covered in a flutter of orange and black spots, the rolling greenery of Michoacán, the cold blues of a flooded memory — to form a visual landscape shrouded in unnerving color.

As arresting as it is disorienting, the imagery in “Son of Monarchs” eclipses its unwieldy script, which crowds its compelling protagonist with too many sub-plots and incidental players. Pared down to its essentials,...

CodaU.S. – DRAMATICGrand Jury PrizeCoda (Siân Heder)Directing PrizeSiân Heder (Coda) Audience Award Coda (Siân Heder) Special Jury Award for Ensemble CastCoda (Siân Heder) Special Jury Award for Best ActorClifton Collins Jr. (Jockey)Waldo Salt Screenwriting AwardAri Katcher and Ryan Welch (On the Count of Three)Summer Of SoulU.S. – DOCUMENTARYGrand Jury Prize Summer Of Soul (Questlove) Directing Prize Natalia Almada (Users) Audience Award Summer Of Soul (Questlove)Special Jury Award for EditingKristina Motwani and Rebecca Adorno (Homeroom)Special Jury Award for Innovation in Non-fiction ExperimentationTheo AnthonySpecial Jury Award for Emerging FilmmakerParker Hill, Isabel Bethencourt (Cusp)HiveWORLD Cinema – DRAMATICGrand Jury Prize Hive (Blerta Basholli) Directing Prize Blerta Basholli (Hive) Audience Award Hive (Blerta Basholli)Special Jury Award for ActingJesmark Scicluna (Luzzu)Special Jury Award for Creative VisionBaz Poonpiriya (One for the Road)Writing With FireWORLD Cinema – DOCUMENTARYGrand Jury Prize Writing With Fire (Rintu Thomas, Sushmit Ghosh)Directing Prize Hogir Hiror...

Alexis Gambis’ fifth feature Son of Monarchs tells the story of Mendel (Tenoch Huerta), a Mexican biologist residing in New York who returns to native country after his grandmother’s death. A lyrical portraitl of a fractured identity torn between family and personal success, the film debuted in the Next section of Sundance and deservedly went on to be presented with the Alfred P. Sloan Prize for its scientific depictions. The drama works best as a metaphorical exploration of interpersonal turmoil, resulting in a deeply personal and intimate project that signals much promise for all the talent involved.

Orphaned from a young age, Mendel (Huerta) and his older brother Simon (Noé Hernández) are raised by their family in the heart of Morelia. Introspective, curious, and wide-eyed, Mendel never ceases to inquire about the world around him, contrasting Simon’s more methodical and grounded perspective on life. As the film brings us ahead,...

The narrative feature “Coda” and the documentary “Summer of Soul” swept the top categories at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival, winning the Grand Jury Prizes and also taking the audience awards in the U.S. dramatic and documentary competitions.

“Coda,” director Sian Heder’s coming-of-age story in which Emilia Jones plays the only hearing member of a deaf family, also won an award for its ensemble, many of them deaf actors who performed in ASL. Its wins come three days after the film set a record for the largest sale in Sundance history, a $25 million deal with Apple.

“Summer of Soul,” which like “Coda” screened on the festival’s opening night, is a documentary by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson built around long-unseen concert footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, a six-weekend event that first-time director Questlove uses as a launching pad to explore race relations and Black culture in that tumultuous time.

As a child, Mendel explored the nearby forests of Michoacán, a state in Mexico, with his older brother Vicente. The trees there are filled with massive, beautiful clusters of monarch butterflies. Their metamorphosis fascinated him throughout his life and, today, he studies the evolution of their wing design as a research scientist in New York City. Finding a balance between the land of his birth and his promising future abroad is at the heart of Alexis Gambis’ dazzling new drama “Son of Monarchs,” which screened at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Continue reading ‘Son of Monarchs’: A Biologist Looks For Tranquillity In His Life Work [Sundance Review] at The Playlist.

Director Alexis Gambis didn’t spend his 20s studying at a prestigious film school, but rather as a research scientist studying fruit flies in a New York City lab. Years later, in what he called his “new skin” as a filmmaker, Gambis took those experiences and funneled them into the new film “Son of Monarchs.” The drama about identity and loss premieres at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

“In many ways, the story I told about trying to find who I was comes through in the film I made. The experience of making it, I discovered it’s interesting to understand identity from a different perspective,” he tells Gold Derby. “From a scientific perspective, from a cultural perspective, from a political perspective, from a sociological perspective — identity has all of these different ways in which we think about it. One of the biggest challenges for me was trying to...

The Sundance Institute and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation on Friday unveiled recipients of their 2021 grants and bestowed the annual Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize to Son of Monarchs, Alexis Gambis’ feature that is making its international debut in the Next section at the Sundance Film Festival.

This year’s honorees also include Pharmacopeia‘s Tania Taiwo (Sundance Institute | Sloan Commissioning Grant), Chariot‘s Alyssa Loh (Sundance Institute | Sloan Development Fellowship), and Jennifer Lee and Graham Sack for The Harvard Computers (Sundance Institute | Sloan Episodic Fellowship).

Son of Monarchs will receive a $20,000 check for the honor, part of the annual Sloan program to encourage filmmakers to create more realistic and compelling stories about science and technology and to challenge existing stereotypes about scientists and engineers in the popular imagination.

The grant awards this year total $70,000 as part of the Sundance Institute Science-in-Film Initiative, which is made possible by a grant from the foundation.

French-Venezuelan biologist and filmmaker Alexis Gambis, whose sophomore drama, “Son of Monarchs,” screens in t Sundance’s Next section, has always been fixated on the confluence of art and science. It led him to found the Imagine Science Film Festival, which enters its 14th edition in October, and the five-year old VOD platform Labocine, both of which showcase science in film and seek to further the discourse among scientists, artists and educators.

In December, Sundance bestowed its 2021 Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize on the semi-autobiographical drama, which the jury cited “for its poetic, multilayered portrait of a scientist’s growth and self-discovery as he migrates between Mexico and New York City.”

For lead Tenoch Huerta, who plays a villain in the upcoming “Black Panther II,” portraying a scientist on “Monarchs” was a far cry from his previous roles in such projects as Netflix’s drug trafficking series “Narcos,” and migrant caravan drama,...

Park City, Ut — 22 celebrated voices across film, art and culture will bestow this year’s awards on feature-length and short films at the Sundance Film Festival, at a digital ceremony taking place February 2nd. This year’s Festival is fully available online at Festival.Sundance.org; Awards Night will be live-streamed. Award-winning films will be available for special extended-run viewing the day after the ceremony.

The awards, which recognize standout artistic and cinematic achievement, are decided on by 6 section juries. As in years past, Festival audiences have a role in deciding the 2021 Audience Awards, open to films in the U.S. Competition, World Competition and Next categories.

“Our jurors have reached a high level of achievement in their individual fields, and can bring their unique perspective to the process of analyzing and evaluating films,” said Kim Yutani, the Festival’s Director of Programming. “We’re pleased to bring this accomplished,...

“Harriet” star Cynthia Erivo and “Daughters of the Dust” director Julie Dash are among the 22 names selected to oversee the competition juries at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival.

Erivo and Dash will lead the U.S. Dramatic Competition jury this year alongside Hanya Yanagihara, editor of the New York Times Style Magazine and author of the novels “The People in the Trees” and “A Little Life.”

Leading the U.S. Documentary jury are Ashley Clark, a curatorial director at Criterion Collection and formerly the director of film programming at Bam, “The Act of Killing” director Joshua Oppenheimer and Lana Wilson, whose Taylor Swift documentary “Miss Americana” premiered at Sundance last year.

“Our jurors have reached a high level of achievement in their individual fields and can bring their unique perspective to the process of analyzing and evaluating films,” Kim Yutani, Sundance’s director of programming, said in a statement. “We’re pleased to bring this accomplished,...

With less than two months to go before Genius: Aretha finally hits the small screen, the Oscar nominee who is portraying the Queen of Soul is hitting this year’s Sundance Film Festival as one of the shindigs’ jurors.

Cynthia Ervio will be joining the likes of Sff alum Raúl Castillo as one of the 22 jurors at this year’s semi-virtual cinema gathering (see the full list of jurors below)

Watching films and conferring from home via the likes of Zoom, the jurors’ decisions in the six selection categories will be unveiled on February 2 at a now digital ceremony. Well, except for

the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize which has already been awarded to Son of Monarchs.

“Our jurors have reached a high level of achievement in their individual fields, and can bring their unique perspective to the process of analyzing and evaluating films,” Festival’s Director of Programming Kim Yutani said Friday.

The 22 jury members for this year’s virtually unfolding Sundance Film Festival have been revealed. Jurors include actors Cynthia Erivo and Daniela Vega, filmmakers Julie Dash and Joshua Oppenheimer, author Hanya Yanagahira (“A Little Life”), and many more. They will bestow awards on features and short films at the festival’s digital closing ceremony on February 2. The event will be live-streamed, and winning films will be available for special extended-run viewing the next day.

The awards, which recognize standout artistic and cinematic achievement, are decided upon by six section juries. As in years past, festival audiences have a role in deciding the 2021 Audience Awards, open to films in the U.S. Competition, World Competition, and Next categories.

As previously announced, the juried Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize was awarded to “Son of Monarchs.” Below are all this year’s jury members, with bios courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival.

The Sundance Film Festival has announced its full slate for the 2021 edition, which will take place primarily as a virtual event through an online platform in addition to physical screenings at satellite locations across the country. The program includes 72 feature-length films, representing 29 countries, and 38 first-time feature filmmakers. Fourteen films and projects announced today were supported by Sundance Institute in development, through direct granting or residency labs. The festival runs January 28 through February 3, 2021.

This robust lineup features plenty of familiar names and faces, including Edgar Wright, Lucy Walker, Robin Wright, Betsy West and Julie Cohen, Siân Heder, Sion Sono, Daryl Wein and Zoe Lister-Jones, Ana Katz, Kevin Macdonald, and many more. More than half the lineup is first-time filmmakers, and they range from established actors like Rebecca Hall and Jerrod Carmichael to newcomers like Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. Sixty-six of the festival’s feature films, or 92 percent of the lineup announced today,...

“It’s been an absolute beast,” says festival director Tabitha Jackson.

Rebecca Hall’s feature directorial debut Passing starring Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga, Metro Manila director Sean Ellis’ horror Eight For Silver, and Nikole Beckwith’s comedy Together Together starring Ed Helms are among 72 features selected for 2021 Sundance Film Festival, which runs online and in select US arthouse venues from January 28-February 3.

The line-up, announced on Tuesday (December 15), includes One For The Road, Thai filmmaker Baz Poonpiriya’s follow-up to Bad Genius; Edgar Wright’s music documentary The Sparks Brothers; Robin Wright’s feature directorial debut Land; Ben Wheatley...