Category Archives: Sundance

Sundance Film Festival Tickets On Sale

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Festivalgoers will once again return to theaters while still having the opportunity to see online films chosen for this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It’s a “hybrid” event this year and in-person and online single Sundance Film Festival tickets go on sale starting tomorrow, Thursday, January 12th at 10 a.m. PT. The 2023 Festival will take place January 19–29, 2023, in person in Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort, along with over 130 films available online across the country January 24–29, 2023.

Sundance invites audiences to create their own Festival experience by selecting feature films, short films, and Indie Episodics. The 2023 Lineup includes 110 Feature Films from directors including Nicole Holofcener, Ira Sachs, Sebastián Silva, Anton Corbijn, and more; and 45 first-time feature directors to discover. See exciting new projects featuring talent including Anne Hathaway, Cynthia Erivo, Penelope Cruz, Emilia Clarke, Jason Momoa, Daisy Ridley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jonathan Majors, Jeremy Allen White, Sarah Snook, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alexander Skarsgård, Teyana Taylor, Ben Platt, Jennifer Connolly, Eve Hewson, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Phoebe Dynevor, Randall Park, Nicholas Braun, and documentaries on Stephen Curry, Michael J. Fox, Willie Nelson, Brooke Shields, and many more including visionary directors and emerging talent. The documentary programming illuminates the ideas, people, and events that shape present day dialogue, from Ukraine and Iran, to the current food crisis.

In addition to the film program, there will be panel conversations running January 19–23, 2023 in-person and available online starting January 24-29, 2023. Sundance Film Festival’s Beyond Film conversations are open to the public and made up of three series called Power of Story, Cinema Café, and The Big Conversation. Beyond Film rounds out the Festival experience, providing a place for the community to engage through artist conversations, filmmaker panels, and audience discourse. Talks this year include Barry Jenkins, Dakota Johnson, Jonathan Majors, Randall Park, and Marlee Matlin.

Sundance Film Festival Ticket Prices

Individual in-person screening tickets are $25, while online access to one film is $20. Purchase an Explorer Pass for $25 to maximize your Festival experience, unlocking six immersive days of online access to Indie Episodic screenings and select Short Film programs.

You can still purchase the Salt Lake City in-person pass (until 1/16) for $500 to enjoy films playing in theaters across Salt Lake City, including The Megaplex Theater at The Gateway, giving priority access to all in-person screenings in Salt Lake City with just one pass for the entire Festival. Explorer Pass benefits are included. And a special SLC Youth Pass is available to attendees ages 18–25 to purchase at a discounted price of $200 (until 1/16).

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In Person Sundance Is Back!

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The Sundance Institute today announced their initial plans for an in person Sundance for 2023, taking place from January 19-29, 2023.

First and foremost is their priority of bringing the film community back together with actual butts in seats to watch and experience next year’s culture-shaping stories. Therefore, the Sundance Film Festival begins in person, in Utah in Park City, Salt Lake City, and the Sundance Resort, on January 19 and runs through the 29th. The first weekend will be in-person only but then beginning the following Tuesday, January 24, the Festival expands to online with select films.

The digital side will offer an on-demand, curated selection of feature films from the 2023 Festival, including all competition titles (U.S. Dramatic, U.S. Documentary, World Cinema Dramatic, World Cinema Documentary, and NEXT), as well as other sections of the feature film program, alongside episodic work and short films.

Audiences globally can experience a regenerated edition of New Frontier that tunes to today’s times, emphasizing independent artistic practice and environmental engagement at the crossroads of film, art, and new media technology. New Frontier will feature a cutting-edge lineup of multimedia works and keynote discussions on a bespoke spatialized digital platform beginning January 24 when the online portion of the Festival kicks off.

“We are excited to bring the Sundance community together for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, a celebration of independent filmmaking. After two years of being apart, our priority is reuniting in person, while still sharing bold new films with audiences across the country through online access,” said Joana Vicente, CEO of the Sundance Institute.

“The health and safety of the Sundance Institute staff, artists, volunteers, and audiences remain of the utmost importance to the Institute. We are continuing to work with our COVID-19 safety team and are following all CDC guidelines.” All staff and volunteers working the Festival will be required to mask and test weekly. Attendees will be encouraged to wear masks in all Sundance Film Festival spaces to keep themselves and other Festival community members safe.

Program Submissions are currently open. They close on the following dates: Feature film submissions close September 5 (official) and September 26 (late), 2022. Short film submissions close September 5 (late), 2022. New Frontier submissions close September 9 (late), 2022. Episodic content submissions closed August 26 (official) but late submissions have until September 12, 2022. Details on applications, including frequently asked questions, are available here.

Information on ticket packages and venues will be announced in late September. Stay up to date at festival.sundance.org, and visit lodging.sundance.org to help plan your stay at the Festival.

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38th Sundance Film Festival Off To A Rocky Start

Jill Adler Leave a comment

It may be Day Three but there’s still plenty of time to get in on the Sundance Film Festival game. Unlike the in-person experience where everything is sold out months in advance and people wait hours in a freezing-cold standby line, hoping package holders don’t show up for a particular screening, the online or “virtual” Sundance Film Fest is the ultimate version of “inclusive”. No matter where you live, your socio economic status or the company you keep, the only thing holding anyone back from watching a Sundance flick will be their tech savviness.

Only Buffers a Few Times

The complaints and drama abound regarding the 38th Annual Sundance Film Festival. In an effort to “do the right thing”, organizers killed the live part and went virtual without much notice. The technology was in place thanks to last year’s Covid chaos but visitors expecting to finally travel to Park City, Utah, for January had purchased ticket packages upwards of $750 for live screenings and events that would not happen. Sundance’s response to the request for refunds was to thank everyone for their donation; leaving people with only one option – rage on Facebook and dispute the charges with their credit card companies.

Then there was the automatic cancelling of everyone’s ticket selections (including thoses who only had online tickets) in order to transition to their online platform and forcing everyone to start anew. Because the live screenings moved to virtual, there was shuffling to be done and it wouldn’t be fair to make those with live tickets have to take the leftovers.

Another issue that was immediately apparent were the struggles older generations faced trying to link computers to smart TVs. Sundance developed a Festival app that, if you could understand the instructions, was fairly easy to download, connect to your account and stream all of your selections on Roku, FireTV, etc. Your movies sit on a screen of thumbnails and switch from “coming soon” to “renting” as soon as they hit their screening time. However, many took to Facebook to complain about not getting pin codes, not finding their films after the setup, or having their movie stop mid-play and getting kicked out of the app. It did happen once to me but I was able to immediately return to my film where it left off. Another bonus is the ability to pause to grab a snack or use the bathroom.

Taking Your Online Picks

If you’ve done it once, you can do it again. With my former selections in hand, I easily navigated to my first choices and selected them all over again. Thanks to increased bandwidth, only a handful of films are now sold out – like the three awesome movies I’ve seen so far (The Worst Person in the World, Call Jane, Fresh) and the Sundance team is holding out on the Best of Fest tickets until later in the week so those might be available to watch then. If you want to watch a Sundance film it’s entirely possible.

Single Ticket Prices For Sundance Films

It’s a pricey $20 ($15 for Utahns) to screen one Sundance film from your couch but invite five friends and it suddenly makes sense. Have them buy the cocktails, popcorn or pizza and it’s a better deal than the theater. The only differences between a Premiere ticket and a second screening ticket is that you have a shorter window to watch your movie (three-hour window vs. 24-hour window) and the chance to participate in a 30-minute live Q and A after the premiere. But because these live chats can only be viewed on a computer and, let’s be real, we all would rather toss to a 55″, you’re better off going for the second screening tickets where you have more flexibility to see the movie and you can watch the replay of the Q and A for free later if you want. For example, I watched Call Jane and a few hours later, I opened up my computer, surfed to the film description and clicked “watch the Q and A replay”. BTW, these recorded Q&As are available to all and not just ticket holders.

You can also purchase a Day Pass, $75, and watch movies until your brain explodes or the day ends; whichever comes first. The Explorer Pass ($25) will get you access to the short films, the New Frontier and three of the Indie Series programs.

See Sundance Films In Theaters

Twenty cities including Salt Lake City are planning in-person ‘satellite’ screenings. If you want a pseudo Sundance experience check out this list of live events to see if there’s a theater near you.

What’s Free At the Sundance Film Festival

There are so many ways to check in with Sundance, the movies and the filmmakers for free. Navigate here to see what’s on tap for any particular day. Sundance does a How to Fest Daily with Festival Director Tabitha Jackson at 10 a.m. MST presented by Acura. There are Daily Recap Videos presented by Adobe, and the highlights of what happened the day before all on Sundance’s YouTube Channel. In case you missed it, be sure to watch the Robert Redford 2022 Festival Welcome.

2022 Sundance Film Festival Goes Virtual and Cancels “Hybrid” Event

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2022 Sundance Film Festival: Update

The Sundance Institute announced today that they’re caving to the Omicron variant.

“The 2022 Sundance Film Festival’s in-person Utah elements will be moving online this year. While we’re disappointed to not provide the full hybrid experience and gather in-person as intended, audiences this year will still experience the magic and energy of our Festival with bold new films and XR work, the discovery of new storytellers, direct encounters with artists, and an innovative globally accessible social platform and gallery space.”

The Institute had hoped to bring their annual Sundance Film Festival back to an in-person experience, but the recent record spread of the Covid-19 virus in Park City and beyond forced their hand. When you think about it, it’s not really that thousands of attendees might get sick; it’s that staff, volunteers and resources would fall victim. Look at what happened this Christmas- hundreds of employees got sick and stayed home leaving the resorts and support services to operate at half-capacity, obscene liftlines, limited terrain, no dining availability, cancelled flights and all-around pissed-off guests. Can you imagine the lines at the theaters and venues if half the volunteer staff went missing?

No Hybrid 2022 Sundance Film Festival

Sundance had been looking forward to the first fully hybrid 2022 Sundance Film Festival (and I was too! Watching movies from my couch but hitting the speaker series and parties that were cancelled last year). However, Omicron’s high transmissibility rates “is pushing the limits of health safety, travel and other infrastructures across the country. We do not believe it is safe nor feasible to gather thousands of artists, audiences, employees, volunteers, and partners from around the world, for an eleven-day festival while overwhelmed communities are already struggling to provide essential services.”

The Festival is the most important fundraising tool the Sundance Institute has for underwriting the year-round artist support labs so they’re not about to go silent for a year. Therefore in two weeks, audiences will gather online starting Jan. 20, 2022 as promised. Screening schedules are being adjusted to add those that would have only premiered in person. I’m totally psyched for the entire Animation Program to be online! Seven “satellite partners” will also host screenings for locals from January 28-30. As previously announced, single tickets will go on sale January 13 (January 12 for the membership pre-sale) at 10 a.m. MST.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this is a good call. The Christmas period had a terrible impact on our town. Sure, the hotels and CEOs at Vail Resorts were rejoicing but locals and guests struggled. Sundance brings nearly 50 thousand people to town. Egads! The bright side of this is that if you are thinking about a Park City ski vacation, get your asses out here! Lodging will be clearance sale cheap and the resorts and restaurants empty. And I’m now freed up for more private lessons. 😉

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Free Sundance Film Festival Tickets For Locals

Jill Adler Leave a comment

I just picked my Festival films! The program went live this week and the Sundance Film Festival tickets went on sale for Press and Industry today with everything being released to the general public on December 17.

Sundance Film Festival is back with in-person screenings, lectures and gatherings but for those still afraid of catching Covid in a movie theater, the Institute has instituted a variety of protocols that should make you feel safer. They range from mandatory vaccination card presentation and onsite PCR tests to online viewing of just about everything the Fest has to offer. Would you believe that you have to download an app and show it to people at the door to prove you’re infection free? If you attend a party, they will also force you to get another PCR test if you want back in on the public screenings!

And while there are some restrictions on movie choice if you are not in the USA, organizers have made the Festival more accessible than you could ever imagine- and that includes local opportunities.

Sundance Film Festival Locals

The Sundance Film Festival will once again offer locals-only opportunities for the 2022 Festival. The Festival takes place January 20–30, 2022, and as part of its new Local Lens program, they have planned a handful of free in-person and online screenings, ticket discounts, student screenings, and more.

This 2022 version features a lot less opportunities for the public to have a seat at the table- three less theaters, no Music Cafe and more. It’s to “protect the health safety of the community,” said Festival Director Tabitha Jackson.

Following are the Local Lens offerings with details on the specific film screenings. Locals can prepare for the 2022 Sundance Film Festival by registering online at festival.sundance.org and sign up for Insider emails here. Details for how to get tickets to the free screenings and how to take advantage of the discount offer will be on the locals page (and more on that below.)

In-Person Free Screenings
For residents in and around Summit and Salt Lake counties, the Festival will offer the following free screenings. Thursday, January 27: Two Summit County screenings at the Park City Library and Redstone theaters. One Salt Lake County screening at the Grand Theatre
Friday, January 28: One Salt Lake County screening at the Grand Theatre
Additionally, there will be two free Best of Fest screenings in Park City and Salt Lake City on Sunday, January 30, with each venue exhibiting an award-winning fiction and nonfiction feature from the 2022 Festival. Two films at the Eccles Theatre in Park City. Two films at the Grand Theatre in Salt Lake City.

Online Free Screenings
Utahns from across the state can participate in two free Sundance Film Festival feature film screenings from the comfort of their homes.
On Saturday, January 22, catch a film during the first weekend of the Festival on the online Festival platform.
On Saturday, January 29, locals can log back in for a Best of Fest award-winner film.

Free Screenings for Students
The Sundance Institute provides Utah high school students (and their families ;)) with the opportunity to watch three screenings of feature-length films and/or view a shorts program during the Sundance Film Festival, and then have a conversation with the artists who created it about the film’s themes, storytelling, and production. These free screenings engage students with emerging and leading independent filmmakers, introducing them to new perspectives.

The screenings for high school students will be available through the online platform exclusively, allowing young film lovers in grades 9–12 to participate from anywhere in Utah. Educators interested in having their classes attend an online screening should contact studentprograms@sundance.org.

Discounted Access to the Festival
For a limited time only, the Salt Lake City Package can be purchased at an early bird 20% discount ($100 savings) for $400 starting on December 17, 2021, through January 3, 2022, after which the package price will return to $500. Created for Utah residents, this package offers 10 in-person tickets to feature film screenings at all Salt Lake City venues, with early access to ticket selection, and includes all the benefits of our Explorer Pass.

Beginning Wednesday, January 26, the Festival will offer a 25% discount on single tickets – $15 ($5 savings)- for locals for in person screenings taking place on Wednesday, January 26, through to the end of the Festival. Utah residents can receive a $5 discount for up to four single tickets per person, based on availability. Utah residents who have created a Sundance account will receive the discount and tickets can be purchased online or in person at any box office location beginning January 26th at 8:00 a.m. MT.

Sundance Film Festival Venues
Festival venues for 2022 include both theater and non-theater locations. Non-theater venues will host conversations and events (including live music and panels) — an ideal spot for Utah artists to converge. The Sundance Film Festival’s online platform will expand the reach by increasing accessibility for audiences across Utah (and beyond).

Park City
All Park City theater venues will be operating for the duration of the Festival (January 20–30):
The Eccles Theatre, 1750 Kearns Blvd., Park City, UT 84060
The Egyptian Theatre, 328 Main St., Park City, UT 84060
Holiday Village Cinemas, 1776 Park Ave., Park City, UT 84060
The Library Center Theatre, 1225 Park Ave., Park City, UT 84060
Prospector Square Theatre, 2175 Sidewinder Dr., Park City, UT 84060
The Ray Theatre, 1768 Park Ave., Park City, UT 84060
Redstone Cinemas, 6030 Market St., Park City, UT 84098

Two Park City non-theater venues will be operating from Friday, January 21, to Tuesday, January 25. These venues are free and open to all Festival patrons:
The Filmmaker Lodge, Elks Building, 550 Main St. (2nd Floor), Park City, UT 84060
The Craft, 950 Iron Horse Drive, Park City, UT 84060

Salt Lake City:

All Salt Lake City venues will be in operation for the duration of the Festival as well:
The Grand Theatre, 1575 S. State Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84115
Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway (300 S.) Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Broadway Centre Cinemas (2 screens), 111 E. Broadway (300 South) Salt Lake City, UT 84111
SLC Library Theatre, 210 E. 400 S., Salt Lake City, Utah 84111

Two Salt Lake City non-theater venues, hosted by Visit Salt Lake, will be open from Friday, January 21, to Saturday, January 29:
Festival Lounge at Copper Common, 111 E. Broadway #190, Salt Lake City, UT 84111
The Queer Lounge at Twist, 32 Exchange Place, Salt Lake City, UT 84111

Sundance Mountain Resort
Sundance Mountain Resort Screening Room, 8841 N. Alpine Loop Road, Sundance, UT 84604

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